There's a continual mental impact of always dealing with the nasty side of humanity that I think often gets overlooked- everyone is always lying to you or hiding something, and you get to see a large number of dead kids and wasted lives.
And a lot of the corrosiveness that cops have to suffer is from other cops. Racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia etc. If you're smart, you're excluded by IQ tests since departments prefer to avoid you.
This ends up altering your worldview as an "Us versus Them" where there are cops and there are criminals. Everyone else is a potential criminal. Everyone is given side eye. The system is rigged, so why not put in for extra overtime. Bump up your salary the last three years so that your pension goes from a $90k/year basis to $175K.
And if you think cops are out to protect you? What a joke. Cops are out to protect themselves first. They've been glamorized since the 1980s as "foot soldiers in the war on crime." Their unions have fought to protect the "few" bad apples, when the bunch is rotten.
They go through the motions of "protecting" us, but that's just paperwork. Showing up and taking some notes. If you've ever had anything stolen, you'll know what I mean. The cop will write down some information, maybe give you his biz card, then that's the last you'll hear of it. They never do any leg work/investigation, unless it's something mandated by their bosses.
Defund needs to happen soon. Spend the money on drug rehab, mental health, etc. We need less than half the cops we have, and no damn PD needs an MRAP.
I mostly don't agree with this as I know too many cops. The racism is tricky- if the only X people you saw were criminals, without any balance on the positive side it can very easily get into some sort of loop. And lots of places are like that in the US, for a variety of reasons- the cops see the bad side of X, without a balance of neighbors and other helpful examples to counterbalance. They're part of the problem, but they're also caused by the problem.
