I've thought about this topic for a while, and discussed it with many of the people that I've played with. The risk vs reward for cops is completely fucked at the moment, and it's worsening the experience for civs. If you look at any thread about making money on the server you'll see most people suggesting that in order to make serious money one should just become a cop. It makes sense too -- dying as a cop is extremely cheap, and you make an absolute fuck ton of money when processing people with high bounties or by impounding trucks with tons of drugs.
To make good money as a civ, you have to buy a full kit, take out a big truck, and then risk losing all of your gear, your vehicle(s), and potential profits by cops tasing you and other rebels cucking you because illegal runs are easily the best way to make money as a civ. Every run is always risky, even legal runs, because cops don't patrol those areas to protect civs. If you put in a call to the APD on the phone 99/100 times they'll ignore it. Instead they patrol the processing plants every 10 minutes, and arrest randoms in town because that's where the profits are
There's the argument that sometimes a cop won't make money because of a lack of high bounty opportunities, and that's true, but civs face the same issue with even more to lose. Cops can easily discern where civs will be doing illegal runs by simply checking the market, then camping whatever is high until they get a big ass pay day. If they die then they regear for peanuts, and can be back out in the next wave in literally less than 2 minutes.
I think cops need to pay an equivalent amount as civs for their gear on death, need a NLR applied to them the same as any other player, should make less from arrests/ impounding and they should be encouraged to actually help legal players instead of camping drug processors. People should play cops for the RP, not to make easy millions