"I can only tell you how I and the rest of my colleagues in a provincial English city felt whilst on duty the night that PC Keith Blakelock was brutally hacked to death in London. Believe it or not - Police Officers are 'only' human as well and experience the same emotions as anyone else, no matter which part of the country they're in.
We had to carry on that same night doing our duty 'normally' as if nothing had happened. Also, I was on duty in our control room on another occasion on a night when two colleagues, known personally to me and on the same shift, were killed in a car smash. We nevertheless had to see out the rest of our shift."
Not to diminish this in any way whatsoever Kerosene, but I spent 8 years in the casualty department of a hospital that received over 80% of all sectarian victims in Belfast back in the 1980's I watched people come out of ambulances in bits, literally, I lifted dead people off trolleys as their brains spilled on the floor, I contacted their relatives to tell them and I finished my shift. That was my job.
The police are not alone in suffering.