Who could have imagined?

[Benton]

It falls into a chicken/egg situation for me.

At some point, crime goes up. Also at some point, we start going from cops being parts of communities as peace keepers to cops being trained to be shock troops.

Personally, I don't think the answer is doubling down on giving young cops an attitude that the world is against them. I interviewed a state police post commander once for a retirement story. I asked him what was the biggest change he saw during his run. He said it was the troopers. Paraphrasing as I wrote the story 15ish years ago but basically he said: 'When I hired on, you'd ride with a guy and ask him what he used to do. It was always a mechanic or selling cars or a farm hand. Now it's all guys out of the military.'

I asked him if that was better or worse, he just shrugged.