Law enforcement officers. They deserve the lost respect from the public.

Law enforcement has never deserved the respect it got. Things like closure rates dropped sharply once police had to read Miranda rights to people and stopped being able to beat confessions out of suspects. Forensics further eroded the ability of law enforcement to close crimes, because they could no longer pin the crime on people they didn’t like. Surveillance cameras and people taking video with cell phones continues to erode confidence because the public is seeing how the police actually treat people, people that are in many cases not guilty of any crimes.

If law enforcement wants respect, people in law enforcement need to start acting in a respectable manner. That means they need to clean their own fucking house, and get the shitty cops out, rather than letting all the shitty cops push the few decent ones out.

I think detectives and other police that legitimately solve crimes and help the community should be lauded. Law enforcers can tend to be thugs who like brandishing big sticks though. Sometimes they may start that way, other times they may end up that way due to constantly having to deal with horrible situations and people over and over again. I can imagine it would tend to skew your view of people, thinking that they tend to be worse than they actually are, and that affects how you interact with them. Not excusing, just attempting to understand why someone would choose to be that way.