Lawyers enjoy an even better familiarity but not the same level of trust. Police officers are trusted to run after criminals and catch them so implicitly with t

Lawyers enjoy an even better familiarity but not the same level of trust. Police officers are trusted to run after criminals and catch them so implicitly with the authority to do this also comes that trust. They need it to do their job. Otherwise they would face the same reaction when doing their job as you would as a normal person trying to act like a police officer. As for the punishment, there is no reasonable analogy here. They only get the privileges enshrined in law and are treated equally everywhere else (e.g. punishment), it's not a matter of favoritism. I'm not aware of cases where a country imposes substantially harsher punishment for police officers convicted of a crime, especially when during the line of duty.