I'm trained in light kendo, aikido, karate, and martial arts myself, but... Still.
Tachibana was inching toward midlife, but he had muscles tempered like steel. A police officer's work required suppressing criminals, and no amount of training or skill would ever be enough.

Of course, gunning criminals down would be the easiest solution, but that was awfully problematic considering the sort of nation Japan was. Even a warning shot into the air could cause scandals from the press and human rights organizations.

And of course, the police bureaucracy cared little for the hardships of officers on the scene, pushing all the responsibility onto them. The handling of situations where the use of such force was put into question was never handled consistently across all such cases.

True, judgments on the scene aren't always correct ones, but that didn't mean those who weren't on the scene were able to provide valid critique of such judgments either.

Of course, there were some cases where using firearms was unavoidable, but it could take months or even years to reach that conclusion officially.

An officer wouldn't be able to work if the legitimacy of how they prevented a single crime was constantly called into question with months squandered on trying to discern whether it was the right course of action.

There was no doubt that firearms were excessively powerful for the purpose of maintaining public order, but the near-endless trouble using them could drag one into meant they weren't usable except in the most dire of situations.

They were weapons permissible to have, but not permissible to use. They may as well have forbidden the use of live ammunition, instead giving the officers non-lethal practice rounds, but stun guns were more practical than that.

Of course, these sorts of complaints from the scene never transmitted to the upper echelons, and in the end the only true weapons officers had were their own trained bodies, collapsible batons, and their colleagues. And this left them with no choice but to practice martial arts.

They did it not for the sport, but out of necessity, for a practical weapon to defend their own lives, as well as life and property of the common man, from criminals.

As such, officers and other such professions involving danger, such as Self-Defense Forces personnel, trained up to black belt level, and then trained beyond even that, placing them well above civilian practitioners of that rank.

They had greater combat experience, and a difference in resolve and disposition. It was easy to claim that violence was evil, and in a manner of speaking, that appraisal wasn't wrong. But people like Tachibana and others like him knew for a fact that justice without power was its own brand of evil.

The answer is he was saying he felt something was different about the guy sitting in front of him. Are you wondering what the heck that long rant had to do with that? Me too.