[klibertp]

In theory, police officers (and similar professions, also military) have various privileges, like early retirement and some other benefits (depending on the country).

I'm not sure if there even was a time where these things were enough, but right now they certainly don't outweigh the psychological devastation which almost inevitably follows being on duty for a couple of years.

I don't know the reasons but I'm sure there are many, ranging from cultural shifts in society to particular regulations they use to operate.

Still, the fact remains that the job is nowadays really bad. It's hard for people who never experienced it to understand how bad it is. An analogy which often speaks to programmers is: imagine the worst case of big corporation you can, stuffed with dick-head managers, full of pointless activities which obviously contradict each other, and so on. Now imagine every single manager above you can put you in jail for almost anything - but doesn't have to, if they don't feel like it - and that you are one weird rumor away from being fired (or worse). And that's on top of actual job being shitty, tedious, sometimes pointless, always psychically and emotionally draining.

All this is to say that I agree that "one day a week of social positive work" wouldn't help very much.