Seconded. Word of advice from a friend: In India, you gotta know how to fend for your own ass, because it'll be hours before any viable help comes after you make a call, and even then, they may be unreliable. Just goes to show how much better the US police are and how ungrateful most US citizens are.

That's what videogames have taught me. If someone drops a gun, pick it up and USE IT!

You might have an argument that we take it for granted, but to say we are ungrateful is a statement made from ignorance and it's pretty insulting as well.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what point you were trying to make =P Was it that Indian police are terrible all the time and therefore this is acceptable? That seems pretty ridiculous to me.

I'll take your word on it that the Indian police are miserable at doing their job, but then that makes this even worse, not better.  It means their cowardice goes beyond just freezing in a tough spot all the way to just generally being useless all the time. It sounds like you might even agree with that....and if so, why not just call this what it is instead of turning this into an issue about Americans...are you saying that only Americans have high standards/expectations for their policemen?  That's as silly as saying we are ungrateful for what they do, lots of peoples have high standards/expectations for their law enforcement officials.

Look I'm not begrudging 1 or 2 people freezing up, that's to be expected, but the entire lot of them?  Unless they had orders to stand down, it's patently ridiculous regardless of training, regardless of the AK-47's the bad guys were using, and regardless of any other excsuses that you want to toss out for them. 

Plain and simple, their behavior was a pathetic disgrace that cost innocent men, women, and children their lives.  The fact that anyone even wants to defend that is simply mindboggling to me.  And if you aren't trying to defend it then please just say that.

He isn't saying that Indian police are terrible all the time and therefore this is acceptable. He says that indian police is terrible therefore you've got to hold your own, because whining about how it's wrong and they should be good won't keep you alive.

I guess he is saying how ungrateful you U S and A citizens are because the image you built of the stereotypical cop is the "pig". Really makes me sad to see this because some of these "pigs" WILL put your life over their own's, still, everybody despises the police because of some bad apples in the basket.

Look, i'm not defending the act of hiding when you are a cop, i'm sort of defending those men that were there and can't be called police and i'm bashing the indian police system.

Those men knew they could face a dangerous situation, and they knew that when the day came they would hide. Being a cop doesn't make you a well-trained, brave guy. You can hold a badge and keep being a chicken, the blame is not the guys being afraid, is India hiring those bastards who is to blame. You can't expect someone like this to do something, you've got to put trained and willing people and pay them right. And put these guys who can't shoot anywhere else.

After i read what i wrote, the image of a policemen being shot and a gun surrounded by a red glow appearing on the ground and making a "beep" came to my head, and then a civilian walking over it, the gun dissapearing and another beep lol, just like gta iv.

Police in third world countries are very corrupt. It doesnt suprise me that if they will harass foriegners for cash in 'traffic stops' (I speak from experience) that they would rather hide than put themselves into danger.

As for the rest of this: The very concept that the blame doesn't rest on the cops who did the hiding when they should have done the fighting is patently ridiculous by every remotely reasonable standard.

They are directly to blame for their own actions by definition. They signed up to be policeman and said they would protect people, and according to you they even knew full well the day they signed up (presumably years in advance) that they weren't going to do their job.  Again this makes it far worse, not better. Not OK. But rather even more unacceptable.

You guys keep revealing new information about these "cops" that you present as some sort of rationalization.  But in fact they tell me that they these "cops" are far more despicable than I had previously suspected.  Saying they are corrupt doesn't change anything, it makes it even worse!

What I really don't get is that we seem to agree that the senseless killing was bad.... and we agree that the fact that nobody did anything was bad...but somehow the people who were supposed actually stop the killing but chose not to....that's OK?  Instead, according to you, it was the people who trained them who are to blame...do I have that right? 

I want to be clear here, I agree that they probably need better training and that they need better men.  And that was certainly a factor here.  But in no way does that legitimize their inaction.  These men must take the blame for allowing innocent people to be slaughtered.  The people who trained them must take the blame for failing to do their jobs and putting men who would allow such a thing to happen in positions of authority.  They both have their own distinct type of blame, neither group should be excused for their actions simply because it's expected.

Honestly the mentality that you can't blame these men is actually part of the problem that allowed them to take those positions to begin with. By taking away any blame they might recieve they have no drawback to failing in their duty...why bother at all if you still get paid even when you utterly fail to do your job?  This alone illustrates how destructive that line of reasoning, your line of reasoning, can be.

@Manus

Not being surprised that they would do it is one thing, and thinking they should be able to avoid blame for their own actions because it was expected is quite another.  I agree that given the reported state of their police force it is not as surprising as I had initially thought at all.  But would you agree that they still must bare the brunt of the responsibility for their inaction?  

@nobody in particular

Personal responsibility is dying a slow painful death at the hands of apathy and ignorance. Take responsibility for your actions and demand that others do the same.  Without it, places like India will never have reliable law enforcement.

Problem is, they take people that should be mowing law or taking trash or delivering newspaper and put them on police. A guy like this have a choice to get some more money on police but, still, he doesn't know what the hell to do with a weapon and he won't risk his life, he's there for the extra dough, that ain't much. It's like building a house on cardboard and complain that cardboard is weak after the house crumbles. Cardboard is still weak, you would do better with it building boxes, but the blame is mostly on the dumb guy who built the house.

Damn, i love comparisons.

I was raised in India, and I can tell you that after this incident I realize that the US has had it right all along.  If the citizens were allowed to arm themselves there, these goons (apparently arriving on boats and arming themselves in Pakistan, based on reported news) would have at least encountered some resistance.  Mr. D'Souza would have legally had a gun and maybe these terrorists never make it to the Taj Mahal hotel.

This whole situation in Mumbai terrified me for many reasons. There were great acts of heroism going on in the Taj Mahal hotel - five South African body guards saved nearly two hundred people, including carrying a ninety-year-old woman down twenty flights of stairs because she couldn't walk - but this here is just despicable.

Does anyone know whether or not they managed to piss off Israel? Someone tell me they didn't piss off Israel.

I wasn't trying to defend their behavior. I was just making a comparison between situations like this in the US and India. Where the former gets useful police, the latter gets close to none as you can see in the news, and it's because of this that you have to fend for yourself and I'm female. My friend's house was robbed, and it took three hours for police to come, and when they saw that all was said and done, they just got up and left.

The ungrateful part is directed toward the fact that most US citizens, especially teenagers, give police officers a bad image or view them in a bad way despite all they do for us and how much better they are than Indian police, or any other police for that matter. In this way, we really take our police for granted.

Sorry if I wasn't clear on that, my gender, or my post.