they are street level employees

Uh huh.

they are armed

They are police officers.

many, if not most, are paid +$100K /year. In fact, they are one of the best-paid police forces in Canada, and are frequenty paid overtime premiums for their entire fourth and fifth day of a non-overtime, under-40 hour work week.

1st Class Constables (after 4 years of work) of the VPD are paid $92,167, not including overtime. You can do the math yourself for other police officers that are higher or more experienced. The pay rate for a private police rate is normal.

As for the fourth and fifth day of a non-overtime, under 40-hour work - sources or you're pulling the number out of your ass.

their principal job is to check the validity of tickets, to issue fines to those without, and to issue summonses to appear to multiple violators.

What're you on about? They're a fully functioning police force with a standard mandate to provide safety to passengers. Yeah, they check fares - that's one part of their many aspects of their job.

Several of them have been charged, in multiple incidents, with assaulting innocent people. They have been caught tasering people simply to collect payment of an alleged and petty debt. At least two have recently been charged with assaulting a rider, destroying their possessions and they lying about the incident in their reports. Two more did appear in court just eight weeks ago, charged by the Crown Attorney with both assault, and assault with a weapon - acts committed (allegedly) while they were on duty. So it's pretty clear that at least some of them can reasonably be considered sociopathic.

So let's just blanket call-them sociopaths, right? People are shitty. Police are shittier when they abuse their power. But a few shitty cops does not make the whole organization a bunch of sociopaths.