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"Sting wrote the lyrics but Summers and Copeland made the music and where ripped off by Sting, back in the day (1980s). Why were these two so stupid to allow this?"

I agree. A song is much more than a piece of sheet music, which is only the skeleton of a song. Even if only one person wrote what appears on the sheet music, that is not the song in its entirety. There is also the arrangement, the choice if instruments, solos, harmonies, and so forth. Those things are what make up the totality of a song. In pretty much any rock band, it is the band as a whole who should be given credit for "writing" it. Maybe the allocation could be done on a percentage basis by giving an extra share to the person who wrote the lyrics and came up with the general melody.

I have a DVD about the making of The Band's "brown" album, which I thnk was their second. They make it clear that the makeup of the songs - with a lot of testing this or that effect - was a creation of the entire band even if Robby Robbertson wrote most of the lrics.

Robby Robertson robbed his (brothers) band members of songwriting credits. This is common knowledge. Levon Helm was always very angry about this. Rick Danko less so. Robby claimed 100% songwriting on many Band tunes, that were really co-authored, when the other guys were too stoned (heroin) to do anything about it.

Helm hated his guts!

As far as the Police go, when you are a trio you are practically living on top of each other. You cannot avoid anyone. So of course Summers and the drummer Stewart Copeland contributed to the tunes Sting claimed sole authorship for.