When and where I grew up the cop was like obeying Mom and Dad, you just did it. And the police didn't have this wall of separation. I had the fastest muscle car in my state, challengers would come from all over to take their shot at the title.
A major highway was being built, but not completed, there would be two hundred cars gathered to watch the race, they would pull off to the side and shine their headlights on the road so we would have light. Guess who started off the race? The cops. They were so much a part of our young fun lives and took us with them to do stupid things like lay on the top of their vans and mace pigeons sleeping in underground parking shopping mall rafters.
Today this would be considered appalling behavior I suppose. But when a drunk hit a car and ran inside a closed service station it was my teenage brother, a witness, that walked to that dark door with the officer. When the officer opened the door and said police show yourself, a bullet hit him square in the chest, right in the middle. My brother grabbed him under the arms and hauled him behind the police car, another teenager in the car was hammered down on the microphone screaming officer down. There was never a thought of leaving this downed officer and running away, leaving him to fate.
My brother held the officers arm up so he could keep exchanging fire with the nut owner hold up inside the service station. Everything turned out well because the bullet hit the officers shirt button and traveled right under his skin and out his underarm. There isn't anything we wouldn't have done for our police in that day, in this town, no protection withheld, no sacrifice for them too great.
My point is the question of what happened to that relationship? How is an officer to approach a free citizen, what should be the relationship? What if the officer had said, "Excuse me ladies, you are jaywalking and I wouldn't want to have to live with seeing you get hurt. I know it's a pain to use the stairs and the pedestrian over walk, and I don't want to have to ticket you, so please use the stairs".
Instead of him being seen by them as being a money making machine for the city, or an up tight bully, they may have responded to a human being taking to them as fellow human beings. I think that connection has been lost at great cost. I know I'm not explaining it well, the difference between then and now, I just know there is a big difference and it's sad to see.
The difference is an attitude change on both sides and not just officers, Society is degrading and it’s everyones fault.