You are thinking of 'the police' or 'Avon and Somerset Police' though. What it really comes down to though is one particular police officer, a himan being, who may not know that. He was also in a hood and not being particularly helpful about his identity or appearance. If there is a failure here in not recognising something, it is not on the behalf of the poor bird working doing an hard job, it is on the behalf of the bloke who could easily have said 'Im not that bloke, I am the bloke who has in the past done race relations stuff'. The lass who pulled the tazer thing is only doing what she is trained to do, and that is the whole point of training. Every time she would have pulled that thing in training she will have been instructed to shout 'taser. taser!' That is the whole point of training, so that when it does for real it is second nature. So that is what she did. It is nothing to do with the colleague at all, it is just what she is told to do and in pressure situations trying to be professional she reverted to training.