[squarefoot]

It (mostly) works like that pretty much everywhere, not only in North America where probably the news system make the phenomenon more noticeable. I think it's the result of bad selection done on purpose: the effect is that it moves the blame to the police rather than those who give them orders and power, and apparently it works. And then there's that thing about steroids abuse which if proven would explain a lot since the side effects of that shit match suspiciously close to how abusive violent cops behave.

[zzzcpan]

It doesn't work like that everywhere, certainly not in Eastern Europe, which is a broad term that includes both police countries and the opposite of police countries, a wide range of policing behavior, but I don't think any of them is as brutal as the US. In Russia, for example, fear of the police is pushed from the very top, people fear it a lot, maybe not as much as in the US, but a lot and disrespecting the police is certainly going to get you in trouble. But in Ukraine it's the opposite, it's not a police country, police don't do and can't do much against disrespect and people can always just runaway from the police.