Broadly speaking, police justify "controlling the situation," which often entails various forms intrusion into the peace and dignity of others, based on the need of officer safety. But police officer seatbelt use is far, far, far below the use by the public as a whole and car accidents cause far, far, more serious officer injuries and deaths than assaults and homicides. This tells me that police officers either do not care about their safety or they do care about their own safety but in the calculus place their own comfort and convenience above the lives and dignity of others.

As similar issue to emphasise the point: Loud pipes on motorcycles are justified on the basis that they save lives. Putting aside the factually contention, helmets save more lives. If you drive a loud bike without a helmet or leathers, you are an asshole because you want others to suffer for your safety but are not willing to inconvenience yourself.

Other than that, cops are bureaucrats like most public employees. The effective ones, like virtually all effective bureaucrats, understand this: They understand that they get paid to do a job with a more or less arbitrary set of rules, but following those rules is what they're paid to do - a small cog in an incomprehensible machine. Ineffective and destructive cops, like virtually all effective and destructive bureaucrats, have a manichean outlook and believe they must guard their own minor bureaucratic kingdom against all outsiders who, by virtue of being outsiders, cannot possibly fathom the importance and complexity of their role. Cops, middle-managers, municipal clerks - same thing, same problem when you believe that your job is more than something you're paid to do. The problem, however, is that a shitty, self-aggrandizing DMV officer can really ruin your day, but he can't ruin our life.