I'm not trying to be insulting
Yeah, it's cool, we just happen to apparantly disagree on this issue, that's all. It makes for good, healthy discussion/debate.

but you do know that teachers on occasion molest or even murder their students. It is rare, yes, but it does prove that teachers are just another large group of humans.
You're making that statement on the assumption that the majority of teachers will react that way. The truth of the matter is that while cases like these are tragic and gross abuses of power, they do not constitute what happens with the majority of teachers. You said it yourself...incidents like those only happen "on occaission", whereas teachers have to face what they face every day of the week during the school year. Students are getting more and more bold and more and more defiant, yet teachers are continually "handcuffed" because they can't physically do anything to defend themselves or other students.
If having teachers in the schoolyard during breaks and persuasion is not enough to curb bullying you don't have a discipline issue, you have a police matter.
No offense, but that's just wishful thinking. You can't rely on the police to handle issues like this as they won't deem them as serious enough to warrant their presence there. We teachers are left to fend for ourselves 99% of the time, unless someone tries to pull a "Columbine".
I actually have an anecdote for this, and yes, it really did happen. I personally know a teacher that I went to university with who had his nose broken by a 14-year old because he tried to stop a fight between this 14-year old and another student. The teacher had just separated the two of them and was holding the 14-year old back, when the 14-year old headbutted him in the face. The impact hit him square in the nose and partially drove part of his nose cartilage up into his brain. Now he can't teach because his short-term memory, speech, and fine motor control have been negatiely affected. Legal action proved pointless/useless against the boy, as our justice system against young offenders is really lacking. The worst part of it? The teacher was almost sued by the "family" (consisting of his mom and her BF, who 6 months prior happened to be under investigation themselves for apparent mail fraud) of the 14-year old because he "put his hands" on the kid. Now where's the justice in that?
If my child suffers a permanent injury because of an over-enthusiastic disciplinarian there isn’t enough money in the world sufficient to compensate me when I turn up with my lawyer and I am positive you would feel the same way about your kid.
As long as you, as a parent, do your best to be an active person in your kid's life and you take the time to explain and teach your kid/children good discipline or good behaviour and your kid/children actually follows what you as a parent teach them, then you have nothing to worry about.
I personally have always said and believed that the parents should be the ones who instill/teach their kids good discipline and good behaviour. When parents let their kids get away with everything at home, of course they're going to expect that the same thing will happen at school. More often than not this is indeed the case. Kids who are taught good discipline/behaviour at home naturally work and generally do better in situations outside the home. A lack of discipline at home invariably leads to problems at school and other situations outside the home.
It is NOT the job of the teacher to teach good discipline/behavioural skills. OUR job is to teach the subject matter (i.e. Math/Science/English/History/etc.). We are not there to be surrogate parents, yet often we're forced to be. We are not supposed to be there to be disciplinarians, yet often we're forced to be. All we want to do is teach the subject matter.