zlacker

Usually police in dictatorships, at least the more successful ones, tend to be much more professional, polite and non-brutal. Until they are very professional, very cruel and very brutal. The latter usually against very well defined groups, in very well defined ways.

Simple reason being, that random police violence just results, ultimately, in the kind of uproar and civil unrest the US experience now. Basically the last thing dictatorships want.

>>hef198+(OP)
Dictatorships also project power through police so imagine high intimidation from “the system” or “the state”. USA uses a similar power projection to keep people afraid and supposedly lawful.

>>hef198+(OP)
I actually found that most of the police in China are not particularly scary. I'm sure they can mess up your day if they wanted to, but the day to day officers are unarmed, not particularly physically imposing (lots of normal looking men and women). They wear a sort of light blue office collared shirt.

Outside of big cities it gets even more lax. You just see police officers hanging out like regular people. I once saw an old guy get into an argument with the cops that looked like an argument between two people, not between "officer and civilian". In the US that wouldn't happen, the officer would feel slighted and probably arrest that guy, or the guy would never dare to talk back to a police officer in the first place.

But to your point I suspect the military police is very brutal.