Barrel Strength

Hotel staff everywhere should stand in awe of their colleagues at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, who were so imbued with the concept that their primary duty was to look after guests that many risked their lives to lead guests to safety when the terrorists attacked last Wednesday. Tales of heroism are beginning to emerge that amaze – including one maintenance man who stepped between a terrorist taking aim and some guests, and may have paid with his life (his condition is not yet publicly known).

Contrast these instances of courage under fire with the abject cowardice and dereliction of duty of Mumbai police officers at the city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji station, where one local reporter observed them hiding in fear and refusing to return fire or even attempt to secure the station and prevent any more trains from entering a shooting gallery, “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything,” he said. “At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.” He added, “I wish I’d had a gun not a camera.”

Did these men understand anything about what is expected from someone who puts on a police uniform? Or did they attend the same quality of training academy as their colleagues in New Orleans – where as many as 500 of the 1,600 officers are thought to have fled in advance of Hurricane Katrina , leaving the citizens they were sworn to protect more vulnerable to looters, muggers and murderers in the devastation and chaos that followed?