Law enforcement is like the military in that they are organizations in charge of legitimate use of force. At the same time, they are bureaucracies and bureaucracies are hierarchical organizations in charge of translating public will and resources into quantifiable results.
The hierarchical element means that the people at the top in charge of making overarching decisions that the entire bureaucracy then has to follow has very little visibility into the "facts on the ground". Even worse, they can have zero insight into how said problem space actually works because they're often political appointees and not people that rose from the ranks.
This normally isn't that much of a problem in other types of endeavors. But when the use of legitimate force comes into play, decisions from 'on high' can be amazingly arbitrary from a public interest standpoint. The military generally solves this by making it so there aren't any purely political appointees in the chain of command. That, plus the fact that the military generally doesn't exercise force within the borders means that any problems can be hidden from public scrutiny.
The hierarchical element means that the people at the top in charge of making overarching decisions that the entire bureaucracy then has to follow has very little visibility into the "facts on the ground". Even worse, they can have zero insight into how said problem space actually works because they're often political appointees and not people that rose from the ranks.
This normally isn't that much of a problem in other types of endeavors. But when the use of legitimate force comes into play, decisions from 'on high' can be amazingly arbitrary from a public interest standpoint. The military generally solves this by making it so there aren't any purely political appointees in the chain of command. That, plus the fact that the military generally doesn't exercise force within the borders means that any problems can be hidden from public scrutiny.
But law enforcement does not have this luxury.