...You only go to the station (assuming there is actually a station in your patrol zone) for business reasons. I've spent weeks without ever going to the station. Eating with the public in a public restaurant maintains a police presence.
Three stories. I'm not trying to take a sideways swipe with this, just saying how I felt when I've unexpectedly met armed police in different circumstances. The point is that in the UK, the police generally aren't armed (at least not with firearms) and I think most of them like it that way. I certainly do.
Many years ago I was heading for America on business. It wasn't long after
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_181. I walked into the terminal at Heathrow and straightaway bumped into two policemen packing MP5s. To say I was shocked would be understating things quite a bit. They looked at me and asked me if I was all right. I explained that it had been a shock to see them armed as they were and I said that I didn't like it at all. They said that they didn't like it either.
Not so long after that I was eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant, I think it was in Chicago. There was a huge round table nearby, with nobody sitting at it. Just after I ordered my breakfast, eight or ten policemen walked in and sat at the table. Well, that's not exactly what happened. First of all they stood around the table and took off all their weapons, sprays, cuffs and various other uncomfortable paraphernalia and made a huge pile of it right there in the middle of the table. Then they sat down and started drinking the coffee which had magically appeared as if they did it every day. They probably did. It put me off eating, and even open heart surgery wouldn't do that to me.
Not so long ago I was heading south through France. I stopped for a rest at one of the service stops and went to the shop to get a sandwich. When I came out my van was surrounded by armed police. I was surprised that they'd singled my van out like that but it turned out it wasn't my van that they were interested in, it was one parked a few yards away. I had my camera with me so I held it up to take a photo. Big mistake. A couple of chaps carrying G2s ran towards me shouting "no pictures". It's surprising how obedient you can be when that sort of thing happens, I remember thinking later that I could easily have just pressed the shutter release a few times without sighting the, er, shots and they'd never have known. But I didn't, I just did exactly what they said.
Anyway the point is that I'm very happy to have a high profile police presence, but a lot less happy about it if they're armed.