The US is a massively policed society. As an Australia, I expect to see a police car about once a month. In France, where I have lived for the last 10 years, it might be more like 1-2 times a week. In the US (based on a few weeks holidays that included rural/small town/big cities), I saw multiple police cars every day. I saw two violent arrests in those few weeks, which was the same as I had seen in my life up to that point.

Now maybe I was just unlucky, but Washington DC, and rural Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania are hardly considered hotspots of trouble (well, maybe DC, but I was in the nice parts of town!)