"She probably saved over a hundred lives,"

Re: "She probably saved over a hundred lives,"

Historically Law Enforcement Officers have been seen in the eyes of a lot of people as thugs. Thugs who they pay to protect them from harm. This is how it started out in London, England hundreds of years ago when Mr. Peel went around and hired a bunch of thugs to police the streets of London.

Australia, started out as a penal colony where a lot of prisoners were transported from the streets of England to colonize the wilderness of Australia. With this in mind, hundreds of years have past but people still don't trust and accept their Law Enforcement Officers the way I see they do here. It's a different mentality. It's like trying to get a Latino person (I hope that's politically correct?) to trust a LEO here, they have an ingrained mistrust of them.

All that being said, people have hired all these LEO (thugs) to patrol the streets when they go to bed at night and protect them from all the boogie men out there wanting to do them harm. They don't care that these people have brains too, that's not a requirement in the mind of the public in general, they just want them to be every where that they are needed instantly. When it comes up that maybe the members of the public may have to help defend themselves from time to time, it's kinda repulsive to them stating "That's why we have Police to do that for us". How do I know all this?? Because I have been in Law Enforcement for over 26 years, and still patrol the streets when the sun goes down.

None of this was said to invoke an argument, it is just how I see the world having lived on 3 continents, and is just my humble opinion as a person who has served their community for 26+ years and enjoyed nearly every minute of it.

Re: "She probably saved over a hundred lives,"

In general I think LEO do a good job.

But, people should also be prepared, capable and allowed to defend themselves. There aren't enough LEO to protect everybody all the time, and no economy can afford to have enough to do so. LEO try to prevent crime, but usually react during the crime or after the crime has occurred. As an individual you should be prepared and ideally both able and capable, to defend yourself when the crime actually occurs.

Not a criticism of LEO, just a factual statement. Self defence and LEO services complement each other to protect people from violent crime. Expecting LEO to take the whole burden for crime prevention, crime reaction and post crime work is unrealistic.

If someone breaks into my home and tries to kill me and rape my wife I'm going to try and defend us. Ideally the police will be able to come, but only after the engagement has ocurred. To expect anything else is unrealistic. But at the end of the day if ther is a shootout at a bank or some other street scenario, civillians will run away, police will run towards the fireefight and do their job. Enough said.