"You are kidding, right? They cannot strike and they dont produce revenue, so in most places the cops rate somewhere below dogcatcher for political clout, no matter what the FOP wants you to believe."
No, I'm not kidding. Not at all. You are demonstrating your political, er, naivety. If the cops ain't happy, nobody's happy. The cops WILL have the ear of the people, especially a voting, unarmed people, and the pols know that. If the people are being told to call 911 when they are in trouble, and the same people know that they can't rely on the cops' response, then the pols who have set that up are in HEEP DEEP DOO-DOO. It is just that typically the cops are just effective enough to lend credence to the pol's line of BS. And as long as they are doing that job, then they actually will be that far down the food chain. You let the cops get unhappy, and the crime rate gets even that much worse with that much less response, and that will go right down the toilet. Especially when the public is being kept informed about just WHY all of this is happening to them. And that is the other thing that has to happen -- the public must be informed as to what is really going on...
BTW -- why do you think that local pols are so interested in getting police/firefighers unions' endorcement come election time? Because it carrys a WHOLE LOT OF WEIGHT with the voting public, that's why. I've seen that be a really big political factor in local elections in Houston. Don't discount the political clout of the FOP and other law enforcement orgs, especially when crime starts getting out of control and the police start feeling the pinch for hardware. They'll scream bloody murder, and the public WILL listen.