The life of a cop here seems mostly to be to issue fines and unfortunately corruption is rife. Because they have to meet targets on tickets issued, when they start falling short they get desperate and will issue them whether you were speeding or not. If you question it they'll threaten you with defaulting your car. The only polite policeman I've met was actually Scottish, not Australian.
Having said that, it's probably preferable to your situation. I wouldn't want to be a cop in any situation.
I have barely issued a single fine. I always warn that same person twice, then issue the fine for the third time around. I have mitigated thousands of drug arrests. I see the problems from a different perspective. The rookie cops who really want to run-and-gun are the problem on the streets in the US. The problem in my city is the corrupt politicians. There is no tax base and the better police should be building communities in the worst neighborhoods. The exact opposite happens though, the really bad cops are put in the really bad neighborhoods. If you are good, you can go work for a private agency, like I do. In between are community relations officers and prevention experts. The community relations officers get murdered and attacked in the bad neighborhoods, we saw one executed last month in Baltimore. If the area is so beat-up that there is actually zero community, it is the citizens and the government, who share in the guilt. America needs a new model for sure, one with a lot less idiotic cops, and one with a service oriented mentality. Once a cop becomes service-oriented he leaves the crappy city job, almost every time. The concept of policing is not what is broken here, it is the mentality of the police and the criminals. Also, we incarcerate an actual percent of our population in the US. The "correctional" system is really broken here! 5% of the world's population, and over 50% of the worlds incarcerated; that is much more "way off" than the various police departments. A corporation that runs the jails, charges more for empty beds, and gives kick-backs to the states.....that's the gaping chest wound of the American Justice system, not the cops.
NAILED IT!
The police get warnings from their bosses here if they give a caution instead of a fine. They aren't even allowed to use their own judgement.
It feels like everyone's hands are tied in some way. You're afraid to protect yourself for fear of reprisal from the justice system. Interference from bureaucracy only tends to make more problems because they aren't at ground zero to know how things work and you behin to think they don't really care anyway as long as it doesn't touch them.
It's beyond me why anyone thought privatising the prison system in the US would be a good thing.