There was an interview with a Met Officer from the 70's and he was talking about how Hendon used to pump out Police who were 6ft tall at a minimum and "hard men" who ran from no-one and gave twice as good as they got if someone dared whack them and he was ashamed by this "new" form of Policing. While being inclusive has had some fantastic results in some areas I think it's now being shown to have some very negative results in specific circumstances like these.
Ah the 70's, that time that everyone looks back at fondly, where half the police were in the palms of (or at the very least ignoring) serious crime, when rape was laughed off by them, sexual assault and groping was just part of the daily routine and nothing you should bother the police with, when if they didn't like the looks of you and there had been a crime they were under pressure to clear it wasn't unknown for them make sure the evidence fitted the story they wanted to tell*, and to hell with getting the actual criminal, after all if the criminal struck again they could just get someone else they didn't like to confess in an interview without a lawyer present, if that person was of "diminished responsibility" or a bit different all the better.
The differences between now and those oh, so halcyon days of yore was that an unacceptable number of the police tended to use too much force, didn't bother with evidence or were horrendously sloppy a lot of the time, and the main one, there were far, far more of them, and they were often "local" so likely knew may of the people they saw (unlike now where you're lucky if a town of 50-100k has an actual police station, let alone officers who know the area, it used to be virtually every town had a station/officers who knew it really well).
It's weird, I tend to like police who don't use massive amounts of force as their one and only option, who are chosen at least as much for their intelligence and ability to think/learn as their size, and can actually do their job in a manner that's usually effective.
The old thing about "they had to be 6 foot" was because of intimidation, in reality it's been shown time and time again that having smaller people can actually work better in a lot of situations, as oddly enough if you can train someone to de-escalate a situation (and in this it helps to be smaller or know body language**), you can use force a lot less often, and reduce the risks of injury not just to the suspect, but the officers involved.
Same with general self defence and similar training for the officers, you don't have to a roid'd up 6 foot body builder to be able to subdue someone, you're better off having more or better training, which is oddly enough what they do now.
I always find it telling the people who think the police should be shooting people, and using levels of force that are if not highly likely to be lethal, at the very least are highly likely to maim, including people whose worst crime might be to have not cleared out the way, or got behind a wall fast enough.
*Hence all the cases that got quashed on appeals when it turned out the police had ignored/destroyed evidence that didn't fit the story, or simply didn't bother looking for anything else once they'd got a suspect that a bit of evidence suggested might have been near the scene.
**From memory the police now get training in what sort of body language looks less threatening, which helps relax suspects on an unconscious level so they are less likely to kick off, and more likely to calm down.
