I should probably have elaborated.

I was a bit emphatic because I'm considering the general culture, i.e. beyond (thus before) current news stories.

A couple examples. Keep in mind none of this is absolute, with close to a billion people involved in this comparison there's bound to be a bunch of counter-examples. My anecdotal and very subjective perception is by no means 'reality', at least not yours, not necessarily.

Ok, let's look at citizen <-> police rapport. Generally in the US, there's a very strict and quite 'robotic', not to say dehumanizing (perhaps both for the citizen and the agents...) process, which can appear quite shocking to foreigners --being forced to put hands on the car, etc. There is a very strongly enforced sense of authority (what Kelsen called "monopoly of violence" of the State, here materialized through the Police) in the way State-emanating agents operate and interact with the population in the US. To many european people, it seems a bit "too much", or too military-like, perhaps brutal or violent on a psychological if not physical level.

At the same time, considering the kind of shit that happened during the last century in the US (gangs, mobs, etc.), you have to understand logically why all of this has evolved as such; it probably was a response to a both very organized and diffuse menace. I'm not sure the intensity of crime has been felt as strongly in Europe generally since WWII, aside from localized places/events obviously (war theatres such as Serbia or Ireland, etc.) --again this is a very general impression of major cities during peace time.

That's actually another "thing" that sets aside the US from Europe: war. I can only speak from a personal point of view but it seems to me that the toll of war (how many young people become soldier, the whole challenge of supporting a large veteran population, the actual cost relatively to other endeavors, and perhaps most importantly the general culture that it brings to a society) is relatively heavy, at least enough to be felt, to shape individuals thus society on a high-level --it's not the end all be all of course, but it's something, it matters. I'd love to hear feedback, actually. If my country had been at war for essentially as long as I'd been alive, I'm not sure I'd feel as safe as I do right now in my lively coastal city in the south of France --a probable SF clone as far as the weather is concerned.

So I'm not considering the hype at all, I'm generally comparing these two continents, over the anecdotal and admittedly little perception 20 years of travelling infrequently between the two let me appreciate (from age 12 to now, 34, I must have spent about a year overall in the US, always as a tourist).

It goes without saying that the EU also has its fair share of 'wtf' moments, and the situation has degraded quite rapidly in recent years (especially in regards to racism and racial 'profiling' and everything it entails, regardless of the actual nationality of individuals --judging a book by its cover and all that). It also goes without saying that there are far more 'wtf' places in this world than the US.

To put a final nuance to all this, on a personal level I have no problem living in the US --all of this is cultural and I can adapt. I could also talk about hundreds of very cordial and even enjoyable encounters with the Police all over the States, I think that's the most common case actually. It's just that when it goes 'wtf', well it does so in a rather dystopic hollywood style... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯