In Germany, a 66-year-old democracy, the police have positioned themselves as "friends and helpers," but it is a promise that young men from North Africa don't immediately understand. It is the clash of two cultures: A constitutional state that emphasises de-escalation, integration and the empathetic re-socialization of young offenders; and immigrants from authoritarian societies who misunderstand the approach and take advantage of the fact that they, even if they break the law, are neither deported nor toughly punished.The consequence is that, in some places, law and order is restricted, or doesn't exist at all.Not only falling police numbers across Europe as finance ministries seek to cut budgets, but overstretch as existing police forces are being asked to take on the duties of long-forgotten border police units in controlling and monitoring the movement of hundreds of thousands of migrants; police overtime has reached its limit, and governments across Europe are hiding the lack of police cover to their own people as they are increasingly focused on either containing migrant criminality or seeking to find Isalamist killers.
The greatest low-level risk is from North Africans - Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, almost impossible to deport as their own countries don't want them back, and Kosovans, Serbians and Albanians. Roma and Sinti gypsies have already spread across Europe and have established a base layer of street crime from which the new arrivals learn rapidly. And they all hold the police and law in contempt. Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis form the Islamist terrorist threat, killers hiding amongst economic migrants and a lower number of genuine refugees.
Swedes are currently outraged at an incident in Stockholm in which a young mum was savagely beaten by a street robber as she thwarted his attempt to steal an elderly woman's purse; everyone is avoiding calling the perpetrator a migrant, but everyone is thinking it.
UK politicians have previously scorned the notion of establishing a militia - properly armed and commanded - in England. Perhaps it will only take one more Islamist massacre, a few score more lives cut short needlessly, before they rethink.