Sarge - no apologies necessary. Even without what you're going through - it is entirely natural for someone with your connections to the police to see this through that lens. You know what it is like to be in a position where the danger may come from anywhere and anyone and you have to react lightening fast.
Good luck with your deposition
Further to that point - I think this is one of the reasons very few British police support the idea of being routinely armed. If it becomes standard practice to carry a weapon - it's a short step for it to become standard practice to draw that weapon on approaching any potential situation - and that tends to lead to people being shot. That and the fact that if the police are routinely armed then it wuoldn;t be too long before the criminals were routinely armed. Right now, some are, but it's nowhere near as ubiquitous as it seems in the US.
Even so - even with only specialist response teams armed we still have fucks ups anc those fuck ups are usually black lads getting shot. Usually this is followed by an attempt to smear the reputation of the dead black boy (right down to operating surveillance on the grieving family and friends) and a closing of ranks - cue years of wrangling before any enquiry gets underway.
The riots a couple of years ago in the UK were sparked by the police shooting a black man who they thought was armed but who wasn't.