FWIW, because of the decentralized nature of the US political system, there's a wide variety of different kinds of cops. In LA, for example, Wojtek is right. (L.A., outside of the Westside and similarly affluent areas, is run like occupied territories.) But in other places, including places I've lived, he's not. In some places, like in many small towns (e.g., Culver City, CA), paternalistic corruption is the rule. (The LAPD isn't very corrupt in the NYC sense of the word. It's collectively corrupt, with little individual corruption.) College towns like Berkeley have more in the way of "community policing" (at least when I lived there). JD