The Onion

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but I've got this sense that the shift coincided with increased public awareness that police were generally being pretty shitty to marginalized and black/brown communities. I think we probably all knew that on some level, but through a mix of generally more racist attitudes that existed back in the 60s/70s/80s and lack of exposure to the problems those communities faced, it was pretty easy for lots of the country to happily go on believing cops were the good guys.

Through the 90s/00s/10s it got increasingly harder to ignore or justify shitty policing tactics, even to those who weren't directly impacted by them. And when the calls for change and reform started to come from more diverse audiences, police unions and propaganda groups decided to circle the wagons and ramp up the us-vs-them attitudes towards the public in general, rather than tackling the problems that were being called out.

There's a whole other level of WHY they chose that path, but that's my 2 cents on the surface level question at least.

I'm maintenance and building worker, and my profession is much higher on the danger list than cops, so does that mean I'm also a hero (...)?

Yes. Thank you for your service.

Thanks to the likes of Dave Grossman and 'warrior' type training it is what they're actively taught. They take personalities that want to engage in modern policing and teach them how to kill, all adapted from soldier training. It's so popular they're building ~~a disneyland of violence~~ cop city in Atlanta

They have always acted this way. The reason you see it more now on video is because we all have high res cameras in our pockets.

Cops have acted this way as long as their have been cops in this country.

It wasn’t after 9/11 that this started. But after 9/11 smartphones started to become prolific enough to capture their behavior

Idk but as a veteran I make sure every cop I see going on about their job knows they are not one of us.

No part of getting paid 100k to drive in circles and shoot at dogs is related to being in the military.

Although I agree with you entirely, I just want to be clear that this is a satirical video from The Onion.

And I don't know. Their assumption that anyone they interact with wants to kill them, and that physical violence is the solution to all forms of noncompliance, seems to be at the root of a lot of needless deaths and injuries, though.