“Our officers have a level of life experience which students can’t possibly have at the age of 21 or 22.”
Some of those students he’s talking about are probably Iraq or Afghanistan vets. There could also be older students there who are Gulf War vets etc.. so is this police chief including those people in his list of people without life experiences?
I’ve mentioned this before, but I was talking with a police officer one time and mentioned about my 1911 A1. I had to explain to him what that was. People should not assume that police officers are experts in weapons. To be sure, there are some. But there are plenty of officers who don’t know a whole heck of a lot about firearms.
I’m pretty sure that I have a lot more weapons training and experience than the vast majority of police officers. I don’t need to hear their preaching on the subject.
In fact, in England going back 100 years, police men did not have weapons, but a lot of civilians did. There were a number of recorded cases where officers were chasing armed suspects and borrowed a handgun from a passer by. I think that was a better way for law enforcement to operate.
As a counterpoint, one of my sister's girlfriends is a cop in a small Arizona town where they not only know what the 1911 A1 is, they carry them cocked-and-locked as their duty pistols.
She weighs about 105 lbs, but I once was with her in a bar off-duty and saw her knock down a man twice her size with one blow. He was a big belligerent drunk, but when he pinched her ass, she turned around quicker than a cobra strikes (or so it seemed) and had him whimpering on the ground in no time.
The best part is while he was being arrested for assault, he started blubbering to the uniformed cops about how this crazy bitch attacked him for no reason. Boy, did those cops ever have a horse laugh at his expense, as they explained that the "crazy bitch" was a cop too, and would be riding down to the station in the cruiser to help book him.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a man so humiliated in front of so many people. I still laugh like a fool when I think about the way the crowd jeered and insulted him.