zlacker

>>Tomte+(OP)
I think half of the police force should be 'armed' with nothing more than cameras.

Arrests are not necessary in the vast majority of situations police are called for, and recording technology is far superior to verbal testimony for serving our courts

>>cwkoss+y4
Cops carry guns because the situation can always get out of hand. Violent criminals still exist in society.

EDIT: the ignorant people claiming average police officer does not deal with violent criminals have obviously never worked as a first responder. They deal with rape, suicide, murder, assault, domestic abuse, robbery, every week unless they're some small town cop in a gilded neighborhood.

The cops in St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, NYC, etc, see it every single day.

I hear a lot of suggestions by people have have never done the job. People making spurious claims about what police do and don't deal with on a daily basis.

I would never support female cops without firearms, for example. A grown man can easily overpower any woman, period. Especially when they are tweaked out on drugs.

Cops carry a gun because they have less than 6 seconds to respond to deadly situations that can save lives.

>>chrisc+16
Plenty of departments in other countries do not carry guns and do their jobs just fine.

>>tbabb+S6
Plenty of departments in other countries do routinely carry guns, including in Italy, Spain, France and Germany. The first time I ever saw a submachine gun was at a train station in Germany, it was shocking to see cops walking around as routine so heavily armed like it was no big deal, despite an obvious lack of threat anywhere.

You have to solve both sides of the gun equation for a disarm to work in the US, because violent criminals have very easy access to guns here. If you remove guns from the cops without doing so on the otherside, you're going to unleash hell.

>>advent+F9
Specialist cops with machine guns were deployed at train stations and airports in case of a major terrorist attack after a couple of them took place across Europe, not to deal with "regular" crime, so the situation is very different.