Can you trust the police with your life?

On the way home from the gym last night, we were asked for directions from some guys from London. After giving them the directions we walked off as one of them made a strange comment, "watch out for the guy on the wall" he said.
I couldn't see anything at that point so I was some weird joke that I didn't get and just walked on. We were most the way along Dale Street and Yolanda was the first one to spot him, clinging to the side of a building about two stories up! He seemed to be in distress. It didn't look to me like he was trying to kill himself but more that he had been trying to do something he clearly wasn't able to do. Maybe he was trying to break into the building? He was a particularly useless cat-burglar if that was his aim.
Anyway... I went over along with another guy who had just walked out of a pub. There was an old woman there who was calling the police on her mobile. The guy was telling us all to go away and kind of crying. She kept trying to talk to him but that jus seemed to aggravate him. So the guy and I said nothing to him.
Next thing the police arrived. We described how he had been there for 5 or 6 mins and I asked the police woman if they had any kind of sheet that we could pull out so he could jump into it. They didn't. Another guy in a suit appeared on the scene around this time and the second police officer went inside the building to try and talk to him from a nearby window. All he got from him was "Go away, Fuck off!".
Next thing another police car arrived and then two other police cars blocked off Dale street. The two new officers just started trying to move us away from the scene. One of them was a big guy who was a bit strange. He told the guy from the pub, “please move along, we are just cleaning up the area”. I thought this was a strange thing to say.
Anyway, before leaving I noticed that inside the building being climbed there was a huge pile of green transparent bags full of paper for recycling. I suggested to the second female police officer that they should get the bags and pile them up under the guy in case he falls so that they might break his fall a little. By this stage he’s climbed up even further and is now about 2.5/3 stories high clinging to the front of the building.
The police women do what I suggested and pile the bags under him. Just after they finished piling the bags and as the fire engine is just arriving the guy either slips or makes a jump for it! He lands on the bags and they break his fall a bit but it was still a long way down. He’s lying on the ground but appears to be conscious and the police women are talking to him. The guy in the suit tells me that my idea might just have saved the guys life. I can see that he’s going to be alright so I leave.
Now I’m not telling the story as though I’m some kind of hero. I’m telling this because I was shocked at the way there was four trained police officers on the scene and not one of them seemed to have a clue of what they were doing. All they were focusing on was making sure that the people that were on the scene were moved back from the area. Other than that they didn’t seem concerned about the possibility that this guy could fall at any second, or make any effort to try and think how to get him down or break his fall. Let’s put it this way…I don’t think I’d fancy leaving my life in the hands of these guys.
If I hear anything about the guy in the local paper on whether he was ok or not, or what the hell he was doing there in the first place. I’ll post it in the coming days.