Well. Not exactly.
I'm not going to disagree with any of the anti-police stuff that's been said here. I too have had my own run-ins with the uniformed mafia on demos... and had them hassle me for a variety of - often undisclosed - reasons on the street, in airports, at festies, and in my own home. All over the world I've witnessed men and women in uniform (though mostly men, in my experience) do truly horrendous things under the shield of "upholding the law".
However, the messages on this thread have brought to mind that old fable of the four blind men and the elephant. One man reaches out and grabs the trunk. "It's a snake" he exclaims. Another grasps a leg; "Fool! It's an oak tree". etc etc. Well, we've had the snake. Let's hear the oak tree...
Not too many weeks ago, a young man drove his first car to the edge of a cliff, left a note on the dashboard, walked to the edge and threw himself off. Next morning a local woman out walking noticed the car and - seeing nobody nearby - made a phone call. She called this guy I know, Joe.
It was then Joe's job (along with some of his colleagues) to drive to the clifftop, climb down the cliff face and recover the body. After that, it was his job to drive to the 19-year-old's mother and tell her that her son has just commit suicide. Then, with what I have no doubt was extreme sensitivity, he kept the woman company whilst her husband drove back home from work.
Only a few days before that, Joe was called when a bunch of boy-racers wrapped their car round a lamp-post. He arrived before the ambulance and probably saved a life, because he is also a skilled medic. The other two in the car were already dead. What made this all the more difficult was the fact that he knew these guys. Everyone in the area knew that these guys tore around the narrow country lanes at phenomenal speeds after dark. In fact Joe had often spent long nights trying to catch them in the act, but had found only the burnt tyre marks of hand-brake turns. He'd been round to their parents' houses to try to plead with them to rein in their children. That they'd end up dead... and probably take another carload of people with them.
But Joe was told, in no uncertain terms, to "mind his own business".
A couple of months ago Joe had a *really* far out situation to deal with. A man who had just lost a custody battle for his child strode into his ex-wife's lawyers office, doused himself with petrol, and set himself alight. Along with firemen and paramedics, Joe was one of the people who had to deal with that situation and its aftermath.
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