As there is a lot of distrust against the police in this thread, I'd like to share my experience with them in my home country, Belgium. In every case, they wer

As there is a lot of distrust against the police in this thread, I'd like to share my experience with them in my home country, Belgium. In every case, they were professional, as human as possible, and did more than required form them in bad situations: * Suicide attempt by close relative: Police called us in the middle of the night after making sure immediate medical aid was given. They let us stay in the police night office until we could enter the hospital in the morning, gave us coffe, calmed us as much as possible. At that point the suicide attempt vs murder attempt part wasnt very clear and they could have treated us as potential murderers. * Unexpected death of another close relative in Holland: Both Belgian and Dutch police gave every help they could, even calling back the 2 cops from a day of who had found him in very messy circumstances (which explains the day off). Lots of legal wrangling because he died in another country, but they did everything they could and more. * Failure of a traffic light in heavy storm with zero visibility in the middle of the night. It was a temp traffic light in road works, that sank away in the mud. So basically everyone from one direction ignored the red light while seeing almost nothing. We had just avoided an accident ourselves, then witnessed another one seconds later. So we called 112. Ten minutes later, in the storm, in the night, they came and started regulating traffic until they found the guy (hours later) that could fix the light. I hear horrible police stories from the USA, but at least in western europe the police has by default my respect.