Part of the problem is, he wasn’t wearing a badge and didn’t identify himself as a police officer when he approached the individual and demanding his can of iced tea.
In Nazi Germany, the badge meant one was correct in ALL situations, up to and including pulling out a luger and shooting another in the head for no particular reason. In the Iced Tea episode, if this had escalated to fisticuffs or something more deadly and it wasn’t discovered until after the incident that the offender was an officer, the officer would immediately be granted the benefit of the doubt. From that point on, the wronged man would be fighting for his life.