> It could be. It could also be a sign that the cops are individually sane,
> or lazy, or however else you want to characterize the vast majority of
> people, who avoid conflict rather than seeking it out. My money's on the
> latter.
This is precisely where the Marxism that you reportedly reject (or at least, evidently, neglect) is so useful: in seeing that what people tend to do - including the kinds of conflicts they tend to avoid, and those they tend to seek - is largely determined by their positionality vis-a-vis capital, rather than by some tacitly invoked “human nature”.
Your average "beat cop" in any major American city almost certainly tends to avoid conflict with her / his superiors - for reasons that should be too obvious to require recounting here - but also tends to seek it out when patrolling neighbourhoods that, according to the common wisdom, "require extra vigilance”.
I feel certain that you recognise immediately the classed (and raced, and gendered) undertones involved in such calls for “extra vigilance” - having their obvious parallels in relation to Gaza, and so many other places - so I must confess I feel slightly annoyed by your refusal to recognise their implications for understanding the tendential behaviour of "law enforcement” in general.