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
How much of our police force deals with legitimate violent crime?

The vast majority of police do not need guns.

edit:

> hey deal with rape, suicide, murder, assault, domestic abuse, robbery, every week unless they're some small town cop in a gilded neighborhood.

Can you back this up? Statistics I've seen do not support your claim, and put violent crimes under 5% of police investigations.

>>static+N6
How do you know before hand if a domestic violence case does not escalate out of hand? How would you access the danger or lack there of in a particular situation before walking into it?

>>sreman+8e
Let's go with this. Every domestic violence case may turn violent - and, again just for the sake of argument, we'll assume that this requires the use of deadly force by the police, so we arm them with deadly weapons.

If those cases are extremely rare, and stats I've seen show they are, there is still no need for the weapon in the other cases. We can go ahead and disarm the other officers, and have a small portion maintain arms for potentially violent cases in your given scenario

Of course, I'd argue that you don't need deadly force even to deal with the majority of potentially violent crimes, but that's a separate matter.

>>static+2h
DV cases are rare? On what planet? Police deal with DV cases continually.