Spoon
Yours is an opinion based on where you were a patrol officer. In our little community there is only one stop light in the whole town. The fire department/ems/police department and sheriff's are a very close nit crowd. They hunt together fish together etc etc. This is more of a Mayberry atmosphere than a LAPD or DC.
As you must know there is a huge difference in police departments and procedures. My wife was an officer in a small mountain town when we married. Small mountain towns and communities handle things quite differently in some cases compared to the larger cities.
Before you suggest foul play please take a moment and realize that things are done differently sometimes out west than back east, especially rving.The RV lifestyle is quite different here than it is back east.There are no or very few campgrounds with full hookups and the majority of campers do not use camp ground because there are so many places to camp that are not camp grounds.
So I would suggest to you that the way your department handled things is not the way all departments do. I would also suggest that the fire department here are as tight with the police department as your department was with each other. All this is, is a small community working together to protect and serve without compromising anything.
That's why the most applicants for the police department come from big cities.Experienced officers wanting to shed the red tape problems seen, especially in the news now.