Yeah. I remember near the end of the game Russell had no problem intimidating the prefect to help Jimmy (I think it was Seth). So after that I was like woah Russell is a beast, I should pay him to help me out and go fight some prefects. What happened when I fought prefects? Russell stood back and just cheered, gee, thanks.
I know this is more of a complaining kinda thread but if you're interested I have made mods to try and fix this, and in fact it fixes most the things wrong with the trouble meter. I may wanna make a new better version since I've learned a lot since I've made it, but basically it limits the trouble meter to the orange level (never red so the prefects don't come out of nowhere) until you attack an actual prefect or authority figure, only then can you get a red wanted level. Once you do that, Jimmy will automatically push the prefects/police off if they try to bust him and they will start fighting Jimmy with some other type of fighting style.