One thing I found very surprising when moving from Germany to the UK was that your average UK "beat cop" doesn't carry a firearm. They call in armed police when

One thing I found very surprising when moving from Germany to the UK was that your average UK "beat cop" doesn't carry a firearm. They call in armed police when needed, but this seems to often result in delays in pursuing criminals and sometimes escalation where armed criminals are given the time to take hostages and/or barricade themselves in. On the other hand, when seeing some recent encounters with these beat cops, I was glad they weren't armed. Overall I got the impression that the UK police forces suffer from a training or selection problem that wasn't apparent in Germany.