Of course, it's only once a week or so that Joe has to treat serious wounds, or fish bodies from the sea. Most nights it's the more mundane stuff... at pub kicking-out time, it's his job to get between the two drunks with the broken bottles. When Mrs. X's neighbour phones in *another* report that Mr. X is beating her up, it's Joe's job to restrain himself from beating the crap out of Mr. X whilst a counsellor once again fails to make Mrs. X understand that protecting her husband may not be in her best interests.
And whilst I don't want to sound like a recruitment advert for the Gardaí, with the single exception of the name "Joe", all of the above is just as factually true as the brutality I have witnessed at demos. I've sat across the dinner-table from "Joe" and I know he's not lying when he tells me what the daily routine is like.
And y'know, the point of the fable is *not* that the man crying "snake" was actually the one who got it right. And I think we often fail to acknowledge that for a *great* many people, their entire experience of the police is "oak tree". The man holding the trunk is *never* going to convince the man holding the leg that he's touching a snake. The very notion is absurd.
We all need to recognise that, like it or not, we've got an elephant on our hands.
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