[Smokin' Joe]

When the next generation of cops started (my cousins and others I grew up with), they changed focus. For starters, many have told me they would just follow orders, no matter what those orders would be. My uncle did not and would not do that. The other shift was the guys I knew all of my life began to seem themselves as above the ordinary people, or as equivalent to soldiers in Iraq (as in fighting a war). Never mind the Army and Marine cousins and friends of mine do not like that attitude. (In general, the regular guys HATED reserve forces made of from police officers. They got to many people killed).

Look at how the rhetoric changed in that era, though. It went from fighting crime to the "war on this" and the "war on that", as if that justified the extraConstitutional tweaks in tactics and shift in equipment.

When everything is a "War", you're going to get a Fort Apache attitude.

Movies were as responsible for the shift as the daily media rhetoric, but protect and serve went out the window in a lot of places on account of the 'war' and the 'us vs them' attitude (easy enough to get when you deal with dregs daily), and it became CYA and get home, put in 20 or 25 and collect your check.

I'm not saying all LEOs are that way, not by a long shot, but there are enclaves where the attitude seems to prevail.

[C. Edmund Wright]

I'm not saying all LEOs are that way, not by a long shot, but there are enclaves where the attitude seems to prevail.

True, and I would also add that to be completely accurate, it is important to add that this attitude is growing rapidly and that many LEO's now only "protect and serve" themselves and their unions. They get that macho "we're better than everybody else" from the absurd Horatio character on CSI Miami, for example….