Also, many cities have a "no chase" rule for police now because of high-profile crashes which killed people. Guessing the lawsuit payouts were large and contributed to the decisions.
I think people realized there are no consequences so decided to do what the heck they wanted.
Here in Florida the cops are complete dead weight, they used to enforce DUIs religiously Friday / Saturday night. Now you will barely see anyone pulled over and definitely a marked increase in suspected DUI drivers in the early hours (2-4am).
We literally have people planning open street races and shut downs on Facebook groups, and the cops do absolutely nothing.
How? That movement failed and police have more funding now. If you're paying them more and they're doing less that's a problem between y'all. You got what you wanted you don't also get to blame us.
The "risk their life for" thing I don't even want to get into but here we go. Most of the risk is the normal health damage and accident risk of being in a car all day, and it's comparably dangerous to other jobs where you're in a car all day. Statistically in a police encounter, the lives most at risk are any but the officers'. And were you not here for Uvalde or what?
Ideally because they are paid to do so, and voluntarily sel-selected into a job that requires such. Nobody is forcing anybody to be a cop. But every citizen has a responsibility to hold their public servants accountable for their (again, self-selected) responsibilities.
Come back to me when I can just refuse to do my literal, contractual job and have the supreme court rule that it's fine, and I won't even get a negative mark on my record.