@Miller,
Not surprised since so many of them are overweight, which just proves they are essentially Average Joes and not hardened, elite warriors. But then they don't need to be warriors and they should be, essentially, just Average Joes with the proper amount of training to properly perform a difficult job.
There was nothing particularly heroic about the actions of the police, but heroism wasn't required. Professionalism was, and it appears that wasn't uniformly present. They have a very tough job though and I won't take pot shots at them (no pun intended).
They weren't asked to respond to a 9/11. They had the Boston Marathon Bombing. I doubt that pre-9/11 the NYC police would have behaved much differently than the Boston police did, but I'm sure that now they would. They learned from 9/11 the way London police learned from bombings in their city.
Boston police will learn too.