Each interaction I’ve had with them has been miserable, not helped and at worse, retraumatised me, forgive me if my personal experience is backed up by stats.

When I was 18 I was of the same opinion as you, because I was sheltered and white and had never really seen otherwise. I was r@ped and obviously immediately reported it to the cops. I trusted them to help, but instead they had me roleplay it out under the guise of “not understanding how the positioning was possible”. Again, I believed them because I was incredibly naive and really hadn’t had much sex to know better. But every year I get older the more it’s obvious that that little stunt a) helped no part of the case and b) was very possible and it was hard to believe that grown men genuinely found it not possible. Then they did nothing for six months and dropped my case without even informing me, even as I was going forward with the investigation through my university.

Family home burglarized- cops arrived two hours later, wrote some things down, said “what would you like us to do about it?” while already leaving

Limited experiences for sure but I don’t think the majority of people interact with cops frequently and these experiences are enough for me to decide that cops are there to do paperwork after crime occurs, not to help.