In today's society, people are use to the police, and accept them as an essential and necessary component within our criminal justice system. The importance of the police is manifold, of which, the most pertinent component, is that police, in particular, are the face and the boots of our criminal justice system. This, for most people, is the only part of our criminal justice system that they will actually visibly see or interact with on a near daily basis.
You might think that because of the general mission statement of the police, which is "to protect and to serve" that the people that the police would be protecting would be all of us, and the people that the police are serving, would logically also be all of us. That would be a reasonable assumption to make, as this country is supposed to be by the people, and for the people, with equal justice for all. However, pretty words are not the same as real actions, and the actions of a significant amount of the police forces around this country would indicate that all of the protecting and all of that serving is very, very selective.
For instance, in point of fact, in almost any case where there is civil unrest, or civil disturbance, this would imply strongly that there is some tangible reason for such a dispute or a basic reason for such unrest or disturbance. In almost every instance, but not always, the police are clearly and unequivocally on the side of the status quo, which means that their interest is not in fair play or free exercise but to return the present situation back to the "normal "order of things, signifying that the people that need to be contained, and policed, are the protestors and they are the ones that are subject to arrest, to monitoring and infiltration, to violence from the State, and to incarceration, with nary a real concern as to the validity and reasoning of their particular protest.
This signifies that the police are in actuality the physical enforcement arm of the criminal justice system, that they take their marching orders from higher-ups, whom ultimately are the arbiters of how policing is performed, prosecuted, and enacted within that community. Further, all these legal codes and laws, which are often endless, loopy, and convoluted, are specifically written in the manner that they are written, so as to make, just about any undesirable activity or action, illegal in some way or manner, depending uponthe interpretation of those that write these sorts of laws in the first place. The reason that the law is treated this way is to make harassing and arresting people easier by making law, arbitrary and capricious, as opposed to sensible and reasonable, thereby making it simpler and easier to control the masses of people who could through their collective physical force create havoc and mayhem.
The protection of the status quo is always, first and foremost the duty of the police in any given city. These people that make up the elite are by definition, a small minority of the community, that do not on their own, have the numbers or the means to protect themselves from outside elements, unless the police and the criminal justice system are on their side, and then they have everything that they could possibly need. The police are there to protect against the barbarians at the gate, to their death, if necessary, and those barbarians are represented by the people that own no real property, that have no real economic opportunity, that struggle paycheck to paycheck, to which, their lot in life, is not to ever mess with those that have the real money and power, but rather to know their place, and to thereby humble and submit themselves to their master.