I can relate many stories about why I think the Phoenix PD is an excellent police agency, but here's the one I'll use to illustrate:
Our modest downtown condo complex of 31 owners was plagued by a serial thief from 2005 to 2007. Anyone who left anything of remote value in their vehicle in our "secured" parking area would be rudely surprised when waking up the next morning to see their car window smashed and everything inside gone. One neighbor borrowed expensive video equipment for her daughter's wedding the next morning and forgot to remove it: Gone. My own visiting mom forgot my advice to take the most valuable life-long sentimental souvenirs she'd had from the trunk one night: Gone. One girl discovered her car was broken into while I happened to be there and she burst into tears right in front of me.
Phoenix PD set up a sting. Officers set up a "dummy" pickup truck in the lot with valuables in the back and sat hidden in the front seat for 15 hours, switching off every 6 hours or so. In the middle of JULY. With no air-conditioning. In their full uniform dress including bulletproof vests. Would you be able to do that? More importantly, would you even *want* to do that, knowing that it's not for some big murder case and you're not going to get more than a few grateful handshakes in return?
It worked. They caught the fucker. We haven't been hit in well over a year now. But this is the kind of shit officers go through on a daily basis to thanklessly serve the community. It's easy for the other reviewers here to give them "one star" because some cop yelled at them for taking a wrong turn during a downtown event or because they don't show up according to your own amateur perception of how quickly they should to deal with your stupid cat up a tree. We have the luxury to give them one star because we don't see what they actually do every minute of every shift, behind the scenes and dealing with calls more serious than our tree-cats and wrong turns in traffic. Lucky us.