this may be a dumb question but, why is it that alot of the tactical scopes i see and the ones used by LEO are low power like 10x. why would you not want the most power you could have? there are many high power tact. scopes i see, but with all i read and come across the scopes of choice are always low power, am i missing something? does it come down to smaller target smaller group thing? just curious.

Field of view at expected ranges and moving targets.  It does a sniper little good to look through his glass to see the passing threads of a suspects tshirt.  He needs to see whats going on before he takes that shot.  I would guess a lot of those 3.5-10 power scopes stay in the low end of their power for these reasons in most marksman scenarios.  High power is great when you need it though.  A 2-20x would be nice!

Well, 10x is not exactly low power, but here are a couple of reasons:

Field of view - in general, the higher the magnification, the smaller the FOV

Range - the average for LE shots is something like 76 yards, so no need for more magnification.

Mirage gets problematic above 10x on a hot day.

You can easily make precision shots on Man sized targets at 1000 + Meters with a 10X Tactical scope, if the optics are good. As a matter of fact, many of the military .50 caliber sniper rifles are equipped with 10X optics.
Benchrest shooters usually prefer a high powered scope to shoot a a very precise spot at long ranges, but remember, the target is perfectly still & the rifle is resting on a 4" thick slab of concrete.
It depends on what you are shooting I guess. High powered scope are fun to shoot targets with, but highly impractical for real life tactical situations & moving targets. You would be very frustrated if you pick up your nice 22X scope to shoot at a moving target & you have to keep looking above the optic to see if you can figure out where the target went.
The only thing that the high powered optics are good for is Target ID, but a good 40 or 60X spotting scope works even better.
I personally use a 4-16X Mildot scope or a straight 10X Mildot scope. To me, there is only one scope, Schmidt & Bender Police Marksman II.
Some of the Leupold line of Long range M1 variable power scopes might be worth looking into for a few less bucks.