I grew up in San Francisco in the 50s and 60s. Although it is considered a big city, the geography of hills and valleys make a lot of the areas in the City borders more like small villages. The one thing I do remember about the police at the time was there was a practice of keeping the same officers patrolling a given beat for very long periods of time. The officers were then able to get to know the citizens of their area and to know what problems or difficulties might pop up. We knew our beat cops and they knew us; as a kid, we knew, if we did something wrong, the cops were more likely to take us to our fathers rather than to the precinct house; our neighborhood was blue-collar working class, predominantly Irish and Italian; those fathers were harder on the kids than any police force could ever be...
I also remember that the cases of officers pulling guns were very few and far between; an officer firing a weapon was front page news in the papers, above the fold , and that's saying something for a city with a population of about 750,000 citizens...
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