[willyt]

Safety is not the same as feeling safe.

In Britain, about 10-15 years ago, they changed all the emergency services sirens to the same sound as the police have always used. You used to be able to tell the difference between an ambulance, a fire engine and a police car from the sound, now you can't. Also, these days a typical emergency medical response consists of 2 vehicles, a mobile ER doctor followed up by an ambulance.

So my point is that in a densely populated area, like London, it now sounds like the police are all over the place all the time. Actually it's usually a medical response to an elderly person having a fall or heart problems or such like but, because they all sound like police, people assume the worst.

If I were a politician and I wanted to introduce a rational and humane policy for treating the problem of criminality, like they have in Norway, the first thing I would do is change the sirens for all new fire and ambulance vehicle purchases so you can tell the difference from police. Then seed the media with the idea that there are less police sirens than there used to be. People would think crime had dropped precipitously and your policy would feel like it was a success as well as actually being a success.