I think you're falling into a trap of romanticizing the past. One way to avoid that is to look at data, most of which shows crime dropping and productivity increasing over the past few decades.

Additionally, we have access to large amounts of news and information now. If there were an incompetent police chief in a random town forty years ago few would hear about it. Now there are whole industries built around pushing outrage and it can get livestreamed to your brain 24/7 if you let it.