Thanks for the info. Although I have a few friends in law enforcement and have worked with them in disaster exercises, they were all relatively small-town folks where everyone was civil.

This is all very nice. (OK +1) I cannot help but remember all the anti-cop. anti-police, anti-law enforcement posts here. From Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVay, to "Ragnar Danneskjold's" killing of State Science Institute security ("They deserved it."), it has been the super patriots who target police. The classic left wing analysis (endorsed even by Bill Ayres) is that the police are exploited workers, turned against the working class by ruling class propaganda. Very radical leftists (*not* Bill Ayres) sought to recruit the police. Hence, the Police Patrolman's Association was created in opposition to the allegedly servile Fraternal Order of Police.

Instead of sitting in their car chatting about whatever, one should have been in the car monitoring the radio and the computer, while the other stood outside, smiling at passers-by to establish Presence and Awareness. I do not blame them. I blame the perpetrator. But they left themselves open to harm by inattention and a lack of situational awareness.

(I have ten years in private security and degrees in criminology. I understand and appreciate the full depth of the assertion that policing is the sine qua non of government. )