@AmericanChampion @GrungeQueef U.K. cops are under the control of the central government, that’s how Blair was able to withdraw police protection from areas that voted against Labour like rural ones or certain suburbs. Rhe Left knows how to use anarcho-tyranny to punish its enemies there and here in the US, I heard about that happening in D.C. in the 1990s when I was living next door in Arlington, VA (which didn’t ban gun ownership).
How much “Back the Blue” et. al. lost during the acute COVID years would depend entirely on how their political masters handled it. In my part of deep Red State flyover country and I gather most others, the police simply weren’t ordered to be nasty because that wasn’t the style of the political leaders from local to state. Completely different than communist Blue hellholes.
See Michigan and Vermont which went so far as to effectively ban gardening unless you were able to buy your seeds mail order and all your plots were at your residence. So here it was steady as it goes for the police, not that that stopped them from being their usual murderous selves.