My experiences with police are slightly different than most on this board I think, in that most of my dealings have been with university police (including the infamous cape incident).
Almost overwhelmingly, I've found university police to be wonderful, kind, and patient people - save for one cop at UArk who was very surly, but he was probably having a bad day, or annoyed at the dingy GA who accidentally locked his keys in his office
, so I give that a pass.
City police, it's varied. The ones in La Crosse, WI were efficient and firm, but fair. (It was always amazing to watch how swiftly they moved to nail somebody committing a traffic violation, or shut down house parties that got too loud). Lot of students hated them, but to me they were just doing their job.
Now Las Vegas Metro... holy shit, are they a bunch of assholes by and large. And the ones that aren't assholes? They've acted completely indifferent, like they don't really care about anything. Again, these are just my experiences, and I realize that there's some cyclic effect here - bad cops on the force engage in unlawful shootings (which there seem to be several each year) and/or questionable behavior, and that turns the citizenry against them, which makes the cops defensive.
And I know they have to deal with a lot of really aggravating things like jagoff tourists who act like toddlers in the terrible twos. But still... the difference between UNLV campus police and Metro couldn't be greater. And I expect that's all to do with the environment they're policing in.