there seems to be a highly concentrated effort to show the police in a negative light and do everything possible to undermine their efforts and ability to do the job they're tasked to do
I think that's just a consequence of where we're at. As an example, an acquaintance will often neglect to do something when asked and normally that's just one of those things, but at some point another issue will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and then all the things that have previously had a bye get brought up. After that, for a period, you ask him to do something and he says he will but you don't believe him and he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt now because experience tells you what will happen. It will take quite a few 'successful' requests to get to trust his word again, but in the meantime he thinks you're now picking on him.
That's where we are with the police, I think. Up until now they have got away - literally - with murder. All those instances where a detainee 'fell down the stairs' and they got away with it because there weren't half a dozen civilians with phone cameras taping them. Their word against a crim, and police wouldn't lie, right?
I just read about some chap that crashed a truck into a police car and the police shot him. Took him to hospital with a punctured lung, etc, and the report just said he got injured. None of the police put in the report that he was shot by them.
So, yes, a majority of police are great people doing a difficult job but right now there is distrust in the police as an organisation because of all this stuff that's finally seeing the light of day. There is now real proof that some are power-crazed, and psychologically if you kit them up with tanks and stuff, just like an army at war, they're going to see the people they police as the enemy.
This latest one, the Rolfe chappy, is a good example. Without the video it would clearly be a justified shooting of a drugged-up criminal intent on shooting the police. Even if it was, there is surely no excuse to kick the bloke when he was dying. Or how about that recent one where some chap asleep in his car got shot
thirty-five times by six cops as he woke up.
There's an argument that the police are only human and mistakes can be made, it's the heat of the moment, etc. But these are people given special powers and with those powers should come special responsibilities. They should be held to a higher standard than mere civilians because of that, and they should suffer harsher penalties when they do wrong because of that.