A significant portion of the population believes that the more police that a given community has, the safer such a community will be; yet with today's modernized militarized police, such a presence in certain communities, exacerbates relations between the police and the people, for the sheer amount of police thereof and their tactics leads not to better and safer communities, but rather leads quite often to the oppression and harassment of certain segments of that society.
In point of fact, the police in so many ways represent not a force that is there to protect and to serve the people as a whole, but rather is best seen as a force that specifically is present to protect and to serve a designated section of that population, to the exclusion of all others. This means, that police officers, routinely deal with certain segments of the population in a diametrically different way than they treat other segments of the population, in which, those that are movers and shakers of the community, are almost always the ones that have an undue influence upon how and where and what a given police force will do, for police agencies should be correctly seen, as obedient to the authority that runs the show, and that authority is typically the most influential and powerful people within the community.
So then, those that are the most vociferous in their praise of and in their strong belief of the need for the community to have a strong and vibrant police force, are those that are in control of such, so as to augment, to enhance, and to protect their own power and assets; as well as those that are typically part of the milieu that the police would typically see as segments of society that they should treat in a manner that shows and accords those people, the general respect and the courtesy of acknowledging their Constitutional rights. On the other hand, all those that are not of that milieu, and specifically those parts of communities that have been designated as troubled spots, or those people that do not act or look or behave in a manner that matches or conforms to the community standards as promulgated from above, are going to be dealt with in a manner in which they will suffer far more from police intimidation, police violence, arrests, incarceration, and freedoms curtailed.
It must be recognized, that the police in one part of the community, may be rightly seen as protectors of the people, and that their duties are often performed in a professional and just manner. Then there are those other parts of the community, in which, the people of those communities, rightly perceived the police as, more often than not, dangerous elements to that community and specifically a threatening menace to the people of that community, in which the police exercise their power with almost limitless impunity and vengeance directed in a way, that justice is first served by those police in the streets.
All of the above means what it appears to mean, that the police behave and perform their functions in a manner, absolutely consistent to the powers that control them; of which those powers, are careful not to upset the designated good people of that community. On the other hand, those powers need to and want to control and to thereby suppress the perceived bad people of their community, by utilizing the strong arm of the police to keep order, per the instructions so given.