Largest, capital, and most surveilled! I know Europeans often talk about discomfort with US police - their prevalence and armament, mostly - but London in turn never ceases to shock me with the sheer density of cameras. The Metropolitan Police have never felt even a bit 'neighborhood' to me.

Considering some of them seem to patrol tube stations at rush hour with MP5 sub machine guns they aren't exactly warm and cuddly friendly police either.

Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy. An MP5's on display is a show of force against the populace not a reassuring sign of protection.

> Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy.

The Met use the MP5SF (Single-fire) variant (routinely anyway - I'd imagine they have access to other weapons for specific situations), so it isn't necessarily accurate to refer to it as an SMG. It'd take serious misuse of such a weapon to end up gunning down 30 civilians.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/met-armed-police-...