This describes a lot of jobs. Statistically, police work is less fatal than roofing, truck driving, garbage collecting and farming [1]. With respect to dealing with non-dangerous people who simply aren't nice, talk to a server or bartender or anyone who works in retail.
> will likely fight and resist
A small fraction (about one in eight) resist arrest [2]. Most of this is due to police having been thanklessly given, fairly recently, the job of dealing with our mentally ill [3].
> can just avoid risky situations by doing absolute minimum and not showing up or not engaging
Again, this describes a lot of jobs. If a department is staffed by people who won't work unless they feel free to break the law, it's crying out for overhaul.
We've given police tremendous pay, perks and employment protections. If it turns out a good fraction of a department's staff are too lethargic or terrified to do their jobs (for which we have zero evidence), they were improperly staffed.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-23/how-da...
[2] https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36600547/Terrill_Polic...
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William-Terrill/publica...
There's essentially no penalty for being a cowardly cop. The las Vegas cop who chickened out of confronting the shooter got fired, for instance, but even he was reinstated.
Just checking are you aware that this isn't how it is in most other countries?
The people in similar countries manage to get by with a whole lot less violence just fine.