You raise some good points and it's helpful for me to understand how you arrived at them.
I don't disagree with most of what you said, but I feel that law enforcement ought to be agents of societal order, where that benefit is to the good of society at large. They're the enforcers of a social contract -- one that we happen to write down and call 'laws' -- and only by willfully violating these laws would I incur the antagonism of the police.
My rationale for using the construction "... law enforcement is a benevolent actor" does reveal my view that certain types of proactive policing result in tactics indistinguishable from a malicious actor: stalking suspected future offenders, aggressively policing minor offenses that in other circumstances would be excused, and creating an environment where proper etiquette to not end up detained, injured, or deceased is getting exceedingly difficult.
See also, this comment [1] where I address the original question from the context of another reply.
I don't disagree with most of what you said, but I feel that law enforcement ought to be agents of societal order, where that benefit is to the good of society at large. They're the enforcers of a social contract -- one that we happen to write down and call 'laws' -- and only by willfully violating these laws would I incur the antagonism of the police.
My rationale for using the construction "... law enforcement is a benevolent actor" does reveal my view that certain types of proactive policing result in tactics indistinguishable from a malicious actor: stalking suspected future offenders, aggressively policing minor offenses that in other circumstances would be excused, and creating an environment where proper etiquette to not end up detained, injured, or deceased is getting exceedingly difficult.
See also, this comment [1] where I address the original question from the context of another reply.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12690543