Nobody likes making fun of the french more than me.
I did it a long time before the current brouh ha ha too.
20 years ago in college, I was prone to say, "France has not won a war since Ceasar conquered Gaul" and so forth.
Nobody laughed louder than I did when Captain America yelled, "This letter A on my mask doesn't stand for france" when beating the tar out of a bad guy last year in the "Ultimates" comic book....
Now, having said all that, I have to point something out that most of us would probably not want to admit.
The typical French police officer is a HELL of a lot closer to our cinematic "Dirty Harry" than most American swat cops are.
The reason is that over here, our police are basically tormented and hamstrung by liability lawyers, weak kneed police chiefs and the likes. The American police officer has become nothing but a glorified babysitter, handing out Domestic Violence Petitions, telling people to cooperate with criminals and showing up AFTER the crime to sweep up the mess and fill out paperwork. They spend 90 percent of their time having to act as babysitters to wife beaters and idiots who can't behave like adults. They live in terroro f that moment when they do get the chance to do their job, the job they love and the job they were trained for when the monday morning quarterbacks and the administators and the attorneys will jump forward and CRUCIFY them.
The French police officer HAS NO such restrictions placed upon him by his society the way we do our police.
When American cops carried .38s, they carried magnums. When American cops got magnums, they got autoloaders, etc. They tend to shoot first and ask questions later too. They don't have much consideration for the rights of criminals, and they are pretty much feared by criminals. Hate the french thoguh I might, they dont have the crime problem that we have here in the US simply because they would never tolerate it.
When the typical citizen of the US could not get a gun permit, french citizens could, by the way. Heck, with a hunting permit, you could carry a .44 magnum revolver concealed in france way back in the 1980s.
Don't mistakenly confuse the French policeman's aggressiveness, just becuase he comes from a country full of @$$ holes and his government is infested with them.
For crying out loud boys, it ain't like they are British bobbies, after all.....