I live in the downtown area of my city. Home owner. So there are homeless, and drug addicts, etc... Its an urban environment. Goes w/the territory. Its mostly a nice area, but its downtown in a city and so there are desperate elements that will go very far to get what they need and cross any line to do it.
My next door neighbor has been broken into repeatedly by different people (dunno why they pick that person's house over mine, but they always seem to. We've had one attempt at my place, and it was just an attempt (he was scared off)). Anyhow, in those burglaries of my neighbor's home, the culprits (or most of them anyways) were almost always caught thanks to quick response police (some times w/the help of watchful neighbors). Interestingly, the breakins were always in the day time too. But they were caught due to attentive police. Who knows what would have happened to my neighbor otherwise. In some areas, you *need* attentive/inqusitive police, just to be able to sleep w/out worry. Crime is a problem where i live, so i'm happy if a cop recognizes that someone who isn't part of the neighborhood is around and asks them some questions if only to just let them know that cops are nearby. I would not want them to racially profile or anything dumb like that, but if they are familiar w/the neighborhood and know this person isn't part of it, then its nice to know that they'll be curious and make their presence known before moving on.
The police have changed over the decades in the U.S. An interesting book on the subject is called 'cop in the hood', if i remember correctly. Its this author who tries to ride along w/cops to learn more about them but fails to learn anything productive, so instead - he becomes an actual cop himself, in the bad part of boston no less. He sees a lot of negative things from the inside and w/some research compares it to periods of better policing in U.S. history. Interesting read. Was featured on some national radio show (was how I heard about it, can't remember which radio show it was though).
