You’re 100% correct. However, you’ve come in with your size 12 ex-policeman’s feet and annihilated any opportunity of that from the get go.
Regardless of necessity,or policy, or procedures, it would be obvious to anyone that island residents, with no information or pre-warning about this happening are going to feel unnerved by seeing armed officers in Costa.
You've had no empathy for that situation whatsoever. You’ve been scathing and supercilious in your replies and have done nothing to reassure people who will have been shocked about this monumental change to the island and about seeing armed weapons in a coffee shop of all places. That you can’t see that is seriously worrying and just reflects why so many people these days have little trust in, or respect for, the constabulary.