It's human to help your friend because they're in need; that's how tribes work. But it's just as human to disparage or sabotage someone who isn't a part of your tribe, to not care about them. To lie and cheat and be corrupt.
As for police effectiveness; there are shady groups of people that hang out in dark alleys in some central London areas every single weekend. You need only walk around/down the wrong place to meet them. All it takes is sting operations where a plainclothes officer acts drunk and hits a "get 'em, boys" button to bring in the fuzz when they inevitably get attacked.
There are all sorts of socio-economic-political issues that contribute to all this, though. But the root problem is in the apathy of the general public, none of us care about anything unless it affects us personally.
You can kinda see that in some parts of the UK still, but certainly lack of staff really affects them; particularly when UK seems to have higher incidences of more violent crimes, more drug related crimes, etc. Turkish gangs shooting little girls in the middle of London.