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The modern one is police, though, not military. Not really a good comparison.
If we want to be pedantic, a lot of those plate armors were rather nobility than regular army too. Most of the army was made up of regular peasants, most of which could not even afford armor, let alone a full plate. They even fought with their tools instead of actual weapons.
This is a common misconception. The idea of the ill-armed peasant levy is largely something that was relegated to the small-scale intrafeudal wars of the period. Most of those called to arms in large-scale wars would have been either middle-class farmers required to have a minimum quality of equipment by law, or else been mercenaries or part-time mercenaries who had a reasonable standard of training and equipment.
The most common drip would've still been ring or chainmail. Not full plate. Maybe some richer folks had a chest plate.
By the 1400s-1500s, munitions plate was in fashion for foot soldiers, and even poorer soldiers would have been more likely to been in a brigandine than mail. Mail during the period of full plate was more expensive than a breastplate - European metallurgy had at that point progressed to the point where forging a plate of metal was less resource and labor-intensive than interlocking thousands of individual chain links.
And a helmet! A good skullcap with a brim was like a shield for your head, even if it didn’t cover up your entire face.
Nothing wrong with a good gambeson.