As a UK citizen, I find that when I see armed police it is inherently intimidating, because the cultural expectation is that police are unarmed and so it repres

As a UK citizen, I find that when I see armed police it is inherently intimidating, because the cultural expectation is that police are unarmed and so it represents a massive escalation. (Seeing them in the UK is becoming more common these days as a counter-terrorism thing, though it is still rare, thankfully.)