There are also a fair amount of bully cowboys out there hiding behind the badge.
I was a teenage passenger in a car when a friend of mine held up his wallet in the light of the back window to see if he had his bank card or w/e. Cop car was behind us in traffic, pulls us over, and two cops get out guns drawn instructing everyone to get face down on the pavement.
Turns out they thought they saw a knife/gun when my friend had held us wallet up in the light, and they figured we were brandishing a weapon at them. We all got searched and when they found half of us Boy Scouts were carrying pocket knives things got really stupid really fast. We had to beg them to be rational with us, nose down on the pavement. Still makes my blood boil.
This is anecdotal in rural small-town Iowa.