zlacker

It appears that officer is not talking to a mob, but to dozens of calm people. Different situation. If people are already screaming and shouting, or worse, breaking things, and there are hundreds of them, that wont work.

>Imagine if the police were trained to remain passive even when struck.

Tell me how much it would cost to train a police force to that level of self control, and to be able identify, in a split second, if the person is attempting to do serious harm to you or is just blowing off steam. Once a person is close enough, there are plenty of blind spots to pull a knife out of.

>the crowd would turn on the violent protesters and protect the cops

Crowd psychology overrides individual identity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence

>>eezurr+(OP)
It's interesting to compare the present issues with policing with those of about a month ago:

https://twitter.com/TyreeBP/status/1256813343764918272

Granted, the number of people is ~100x different. Still, examples like the tweet above illustrate that the needed 'self control' has existed within about a pay-period or two.