I can count on one hand how often I met the police. And when I did, it was in my younger years within traffic. They were usually nice and helpful in those times and think many of them are still. One day I was driving to visit my mom and had already mastered over hundred kilometers when my second back light went off. I did not notice, of course, until a police car stopped me. They asked if I knew about the back lights and I said "No". They wanted to know where I was heading and I told them I have only 20 kilometers left to my destination. They decided to give me an escort and drove behind me until I got home. Even though they easily could have told me to park the car and see myself how to solve the problem, they did not. In Germany, you usually were not lectured by cops, rarely was implications of "how dare you to brake the law" but rather a cool attitude towards speeding or driving without belt and just shrug shoulders on both sides (exceptions confirmed that rule). Sometimes I was even unfriendly to them, but they kept being polite to me. Dunno, maybe because I was a young woman.

In the States my experiences with cops were quite different. They seemed way more scary than our cops and also liked to lecture when stopping our car. How it is nowadays here or there, I cannot really tell.

Where police de-escalate they do a good job. Where there are bad apples amongst them, they increase violence and high emotions. Public gatherings are a different matter, though.