The standards aren't the highest. Just be fit and be able to know how to enforce the law. And even those aren't exactly enforced if they're really hurting for new hires. That attracts mainly two kinds of people. People who want to serve and protect, and people who want the power. You're never sure which is which, because it's hard to keep cops. It's a hard job. So they try and protect their own because you never know when the next person you're going to pull over is going to pull a gun on you. From the civilian's perspective, you never know if the cop talking to you is the person who wants to help people, or the bully in highschool who still wants to give people swirlies. Only instead of sticking their head in toilets and flushing, they want to pull their gun and be a badass.
It's bad here. We keep our nose clean because we don't want to die at the hands of our police officers. It's bad.