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> 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.

The cops were even worse before. The crime wave of the 80s and 90s was way worse than what we have now and that was just the continuation . We’ve always had this problem.

Qualified immunity and the George Floyd protests have done a lot to make policing worse in the US.

>You would explain it as somehow, across the entire country, all police, at all levels, just become incompetent sometime in the last generation?

Over a longer time, and not just police, but yes. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.