text: mc.  Have a look at British police TV series.  Compare to American police TV series.  They are drastically different.  The British almost universally portray their police as unarmed and having interactions with citizens that are drastically different than we are used to.  British TV, which shows how the Brits think, shows police interacting respectably with citizens.  The mindset is profoundly different.  American TV shows citizens gunned down by the dozens as if their lives meant nothing, nothing at all.  The British show us that our way is not the only way.  Even though some British police are now armed, the attitudes remain very very far from those that prevail here.  Our attitudes reveal the peculiar American attribute of being willing to flush the lives of fellow citizens into the sewer on the slightest excuse.