Why Indian citizens may fear the police while children in a US park approach an officer without hesitation

In an American neighbourhood park, a police officer stopped his patrol car, invited children to look inside, explained the lights, siren and radio, answered their questions and handed out stickers. That is the encounter described in an Instagram reel shared by @amrita_life_in_usa. The narrator was struck by how comfortable the children seemed around the officer. She contrasted it with her impression that a police vehicle entering a park in India might cause anxiety rather than excitement.

The real question is not whether Indian police officers can be friendly to children. It is why, for many Indian citizens, contact with police can feel like a problem in itself: Will they listen? Will they demand money? Will they side with someone who has influence? Will approaching them make matters worse?

These are serious questions about the way power is exercised. The reel cannot prove that everyone in America trusts police or that nobody in India does. But independent research and the Indian Supreme Court’s own record show that fear of misuse of police power, political interference and weak accountability are not imaginary problems.

Why a police uniform may inspire anxiety instead of reassurance

In the reel, children meet a person who answers their questions patiently. In India, a person’s experience of police may be shaped instead by a complaint at a station, a roadside stop, an investigation, a protest or a confrontation with a more powerful person. A friendly community visit and an investigation involving influence or money test very different things.

The 2018 Status of Policing in India study examined citizens’ perceptions and experiences across 22 states, while later studies have investigated police working conditions and abuses. India is too large and varied to describe every citizen’s attitudes with one sentence. Yet distrust need not be universal to have damaging effects: when people expect humiliation, extortion or retaliation, the fear itself can discourage asking police for help.

When the powerful can influence policing

The idea that police sometimes serve influential people instead of the law has an evidentiary basis. The 2019 Status of Policing in India study surveyed nearly 12,000 police personnel across 21 states. Reporting on its findings, ThePrint noted that 72% of surveyed officers said they had experienced political pressure while investigating cases involving influential people. This measures reported pressure, not proof that those officers gave in to it, but it directly challenges the assumption that investigations are insulated from power.

This is an old and recognised institutional problem. In the 2006 Prakash Singh judgment, the Supreme Court ordered reforms intended to protect policing from improper political interference, regulate leadership appointments and transfers, and establish independent complaints mechanisms. Repeated concerns about implementation have persisted long after the judgment. Political control over postings and investigations can make ordinary complainants reasonably question whether they will receive equal treatment.

Money, corruption and unequal treatment

Bribery is another part of the public’s distrust. The India Corruption Survey 2019, reported by The Indian Express, found that 51% of respondents in the survey said they had paid bribes in that year. That figure covers corruption across public services; it must not be presented as the percentage of people paying police bribes. It nevertheless documents the wider environment in which citizens can come to see access to public services as something they must purchase.

It would be inaccurate and unfair to claim that every officer works for money or for a powerful patron. It is equally wrong to dismiss the corruption problem because honest officers exist. A protection service becomes unjust when someone’s wealth, contacts or ability to pay can determine whether they are heard or treated fairly.

Fear of police violence is not just a misunderstanding

The 2025 Status of Policing in India report by Common Cause and Lokniti-CSDS surveyed 8,276 police personnel across 17 states and territories and investigated attitudes towards force, torture and accountability. Among surveyed personnel, 71% agreed that police should be able to use force without fear of punishment. The same report also found substantial support for human-rights and anti-torture training, highlighting that attitudes within the police are not uniform. These are survey responses, not a measurement that 71% of officers committed violence.

But the wider finding is disturbing: when the use of force without accountability is considered acceptable, the citizen facing an officer has reason to worry about whether legal protections will be respected. Custodial torture, arbitrary humiliation and punishment outside the law are abuses of state power, not legitimate methods of building public safety. Police officers also face political pressure, demanding workloads and poor resources; those conditions need improvement, but they cannot justify abusive treatment.

Can India build the kind of trust suggested by the reel?

India has tried to create more positive police–student contact. Its Student Police Cadet programme, launched nationally in 2018, was intended partly to bring police and communities closer through schoolchildren. Such programmes can make officers seem more accessible. Yet programme enrolment or a cheerful visit says little by itself about how fairly police respond to an ordinary citizen facing a powerful accused person.

For trust to become deserved rather than advertised, a person must be able to report a crime without paying a bribe or seeking a connection, expect police to treat rich and poor alike, receive a respectful response, and seek independent action against misconduct. The Supreme Court’s reforms are relevant precisely because they address pressures and accountability beyond public-relations exercises.

The American park reel is therefore more powerful as a contrast than as praise for an entire country’s policing. It shows what unafraid interaction with an officer can look like; it does not establish how US police behave in every community. India’s more urgent task is to make ordinary people feel equally secure when they actually need protection — especially when the other side has money, connections or political influence.

The test of a people’s police is not whether children smile beside a patrol car. It is whether an ordinary person can approach an officer without fearing that power or money will decide what happens next.