Considering my not-so-perfect childhood, I was never taught to "trust" anyone outside my immediate family. Moreover, I was always, even from childhood, quite skeptical. Luckily, being skeptical is healthy, while of course, being suspicious is always indicative of having had really bad conditioning.
To me, the element of trust is only present when there is love. As a matter of fact, when there is love, trust is a part of that love, and the issue of whether or not to trust doesn't even come up. Other than that, in ego development, it is something to be earned. The nature of trust always includes honesty, openness, transparency and above all, generosity of spirit. I can always tell who is generous and who is selfish (and not to be trusted) by the way in which they are capable of revealing the full extent of the core of why they say what they say - in other words, how they respond. You see, the worse kinds of lies are the lies of omission.
Insofar as public officials are concerned, I always thought that police officers were there to help you, especially if you were lost, and I have even driven to the closest RCMP office while driving thru Canada to get directions.
I really didn't know any police officers while growing up, and I read in my 20s how there was a large number of law enforcement who beat their wives! Recent estimates are that they are 4 times more likely to hurt women than the rest of the population. I could never trust someone who was on a power trip.
Insofar as politicians are concerned, nothing that any Canadian politician has ever done has had the slightest effect on my life. If anything, their lack of action regarding climate change (and other issues) since I read "Silent Spring" in my 20s has always made me think they should all be arrested and charged with the genocide of the animals who live in nature (and more recently the Australian PM who should definitely be charged with murder - the estimates are about 1 billion animals killed in the Ozzie wildfires).
In the building where I live, the police even knew my apartment #, and would buzz me when they wanted to get into the building. Eventually, I found out that they had a code they could push and would tell them to call their head office and get the code and stop bugging me. Just because someone wears a uniform does not make them "perfect". Just because someone holds some government office doesn't make them "perfect". The worst kind of person is someone who plays god with the lives of others, and tries to get them to live according to their idea of how they should live. These kinds of people usually attract a gang of people who are susceptible to peer pressure, and the members of such a gang are notoriously untrustworthy, basically because their idea of how they see other people is always screened through their loyalty to whoever is in charge. They just can't be true to themselves, because their idea of being true is always to their "leader", and not to themselves - the whole issue of being a "leader" or a "follower".
As Shakespeare wrote, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." So, in the same vein, I would say, neither a leader nor a follower be. It is only then that one can clearly see what the heck is going on.
So, my only question would be why on earth should anyone trust any "authority"? My main motto would be to "question authority", while remaining skeptical.