Just a few years ago, police officers were assumed to be protecting the public from bad actors. When your home was broken into or you were mugged on the street, the first to be called were the police. They would send someone out to wherever you were, take your report, and send you to a hospital or otherwise help you out of your predicament. If you saw a police car parked at a coffee shop, you would think to yourself, “what kind of doughnuts are those officers eating with their coffee?” You would expect off-duty officers to be providing security at various public events, and you felt safer.

Those days are gone. In many big cities, police are assumed to be hostile to the public, an opinion drilled into the population by constant news stories of white officers shooting “unarmed black teenagers” whom the press always assumes to be totally innocent. If your home is broken into, no one comes to take your report, and you are told to file your report online.