Your sociological explanations may be accurate, but it’s probably worth noting that very low police:population ratios in the US combined with a gargantuan supply of unrestricted handgun possession in the hands of the populous is also a strong contributor to bunker mentality from the police.
[Edit: I see that Norway has a similarly low police:population ratio, so that observation isn’t really relevant for comparisons with Norway or the rest of Scandinavia. My error!]
Also, Norwegian border patrol agents seemed pretty damned authoritarian in my experience, so my personal contact with law enforcement doesn’t match yours for the respective countries. /end anecdote
Aggregate numbers for actual officers on a beat are quite different for large countries.
Most of Western Europe (according to the studies I’ve read) have significantly higher numbers of police in the community.
To answer your larger question: Humans don’t respond well to small probability high negative outcomes. One common theory in criminality is that we want to optimize people’s sense that they’ll be caught, and then give smaller, more certain punishments. Basically, ideally we’d have many more police, many fewer prisons.
[Edit: I see that Norway has a similarly low police:population ratio, so that observation isn’t really relevant for comparisons with Norway or the rest of Scandinavia. My error!]
Also, Norwegian border patrol agents seemed pretty damned authoritarian in my experience, so my personal contact with law enforcement doesn’t match yours for the respective countries. /end anecdote