my office resembles that statement.

Somewhat more seriously, I was thinking about a historical instance where a foreign military force was involved in policing a largely illiterate population, of multiple ethnicities living in separated communities, while also dealing with internal insurgencies, warring warlords and cross-borders incursions. Not being a student of British colonial policing, I looked for something closer to home. So, I took a time machine back to the 1700s.

During the era 1700-1750, the French-Canadian Marines garrisoned the area from Labrador to Manitoba with roughly 900 Marines and perhaps 100-200 French-Canadian voyageurs who contracted directly with company commanders. They were spread thin and had to employ more diplomacy than anything else. With a few exceptions, they left Indian justice to their traditional system; and applied French justice primarily to French nationals.

The story (36 pages) is told by Desmond H. Brown, They Do Not Submit Themselves To The King’s Law: Amerindians and Criminal Justice During the French Regime, which sums up the situation:

The early progression from participation in the North Atlantic fishery to monopoly in the fur trade and its subsequent rapid and lucrative expansion, caused French dominion in North America to evolve into an empire of trade. But it was an empire that needed few French subjects to function. The bulk of the work was done by the Aboriginal peoples. It was they who gathered the pelts and transported them to the French entrepôts, and who also became valued military allies.

This was fortunate for successive trading companies who founded and administered the first settlements, as well as for later royal governments, because the attention of French monarchs was focused on Europe and the endemic Continental warfare of the time. The French were always thin on the ground. They never had the military muscle to overawe the Amerindians and force them to submit to French sovereignty nor, in particular, to French criminal justice. Nor were they able to convince them to comply with it by argument or example.

As a result, there was no change in the legal status of Amerindians during the French regime. They continued to be governed by their own law in all intra-tribal offences and, with the rare exceptions that proved the rule, in crimes that involved Amerindians and French subjects, with restitution as the means for settlement.
The favored method for resolving collisions between French and Indian justice was reparations, particulary after a 1684 case (p.28):

It is thus evident that accepting or making restitution for offences committed by or against Amerindians in French settlements along the St. Lawrence was becoming customary in the mid-seventeenth century. This practice also came to be followed at French military posts in the pays d’en haut later in the regime. It became the rule after two Natives — a Chippewa and a Menomimee — were executed at Michilimackinic in 1684 for killing two Frenchmen.

The incident is analyzed in detail by R. White who follows the lengthy and tortuous negotiations between the French and the tribal councils. He makes clear the failure of the French to comprehend the imperatives of Amerindian justice and the purpose of restitution on the one hand and, on the other, the incredulity of the tribesmen when they were made to understand that French justice demanded a life for a life, even if the accused was an ally in an ongoing war. In short, the affair came close to sundering friendly relations between the French and the Natives of the area, even after the French made liberal restitution to the tribes when the consequences of their action became clear.

After this, and surrounded by the Native presence, post commanders who dispensed justice to their fellow subjects were not eager to observe the letter of French law in their dealings with the Natives. As White then goes on to demonstrate, French authority in the area subsequently worked to find some middle ground to settle incidents of this kind. Nevertheless, whatever compromises were negotiated invariably conformed to the Amerindian pattern of conflict resolution: restitution rather than retribution.
In chasing down details of the 1684 case, it turned out that the murders (of two French-Canadian fur traders) took place about a 1/2 mile from where I'm writing this; and an ancestor (Joseph Lemire) was one of a party of Marines who tracked down the murderers in Sault Ste. Marie (250 miles away).

The more usual case of reparations is illustrated by another incident which I found in searching for history about another ancestor. From the Michigan Historical Collection:

Letter from Vaudreuil
(October 12, 1717)
Vaudreuil, "On the Savages of Detroit" in: Michigan Historical Collections, XXXIII, pp. 590-593.

pp. 592, 593.

(page 592) .....

The trouble which prevented the principal chiefs of the Detroit tribes from coming, to Montreal, was created by an Outaouac of that post and four others from Saguinan. These five men pretended they were going to war against the Flatheads; they proceeded to the river of the Miamis and there slew an Iroquois and his wife, who was a Miami woman, and two children.

This wrongful attack concerns the Iroquois because the (page 593) man who was killed was of their tribe. It also concerns the Miamis, for the man was married and living with them. This matter must be settled, and the Iroquois and Miamis must be prevented from taking vengeance on the Outavois and the other tribes of Detroit.

The Sr. de Tonty has already begun, for his part, to take action with the Miamis through the Sr. de Vincennes to dissuade them from their intention of avenging themselves and to remove every pretext for their pursuing this course which would give rise to a war between them and the people at Detroit and Saguinan, which it would be difficult to stop. He has induced the tribes of Detroit to join him in sending to Saguinan to seize these murderers and deliver them up to the Miamis.

The Outaouacs and Poutouatamis each sent a boat of their men, to which the Sr. de Tonty added a boat of Frenchmen under the command of the Sr. de Bragelongue, a Lieutenant, who brought back the three murderers to Detroit where the Sr. de Tonty had them under guard until he received news from the Miamis, to whom he had taken care, to make known the amends, which it was proposed to make to them.

He hopes that they will be satisfied with this action and will accept as a complete reparation the presents which the tribes of Detroit, and the French also, are preparing to make them, and that this disturbance may be suppressed by this means. I hope so, too; but I shall not be able to get any news about it until next spring.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find the rest of the story. If the reparations offer were accepted, the three Indians would have been freed and a blood feud between four Indian groups would have been avoided. Etienne de Bragelongue was later promoted to capitaine and commanded his own company at Fort Chambly (near Montréal), where he was aide-major.

The lessons learned, from what was in effect a peace enforcement operation, were that a small footprint can bring results (a canoe load of men was perhaps 6 or 7); two Indian groups (the same ethnicities as the murderers) co-operated with the Marines in making the arrests; and both the Indian groups and the French (who had no role in the murders) were willing to join in offering reparations to the Miamis and Iroquois (who were generally French enemies).

Whether one should call this "asymmetric policing", I don't know.