> you can imagine their opinion of French police isn't too dissimilar of yours about US police.

I was talking about the soldiers though, and how they are actually harmless to civilians.

Police is of course a different matter, even though they still are far less lethal than in the US. As far as I know, in the US soldiers don't patrol the streets and their role is taken by the police force however, so that's why I compared them. My wife is not from Europe and I live in the "Arab district" of my city, so I have a reasonably good understanding of how our police force works.