> somehow, across the entire country, all police, at all levels, just become incompetent sometime in the last generation
It isn’t as far-fetched as you make it sound. If the incentives stop rewarding competence, then people focus on other stuff instead.
This seems inline with the general decay we’ve seen across the Western world where actually doing work and doing it well has a lower ROI than engaging in shenanigans to artificially boost one’s earnings such as office politics, fraud, etc. A certain airplane maker recently got to see the end result for example.
It isn’t as far-fetched as you make it sound. If the incentives stop rewarding competence, then people focus on other stuff instead.
This seems inline with the general decay we’ve seen across the Western world where actually doing work and doing it well has a lower ROI than engaging in shenanigans to artificially boost one’s earnings such as office politics, fraud, etc. A certain airplane maker recently got to see the end result for example.