They also have a pretty decent rep for brutality themselves, particularly if you're indigenous.
So you are presenting a very misleading view.
No they don't have a 'decent rep' for brutality, whatever that means. Comparing AU police to US police is insane. Every encounter with police like a traffic stop in the US is a nonzero chance of getting killed. That's not at all comparable to Australia where there are no tasers and the use of lethal force is in the single digits per year nationally.
The view you're presenting is significantly more divorced from reality than the GP. Just like GP said, calling the police in the states even if you need their aid, is a gamble. In Australia I would not hesitate to call or interact with the police under any circumstances. Even in the immediate vicinity the Bourke St incident, I felt safe approaching and interacting with the SRG guys decked out in their military gear and automatic rifles. They went out of their way to make sure me and people with me got a safe corridor to leave the area. In the states, that'd be about a 100% chance of getting shot.
"Noor was convicted of third degree murder and second degree manslaughter for killing Ms Damond Ruszczyk just minutes after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her Minneapolis home in July 2017."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-08/mohamed-noor-sentence...
> The risk is not to the caller
Just yesterday there was news coverage of a store owner who called police for aid against looters and was attacked and handcuffed by those same police when they arrived on the scene.
Also, incidents like this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/26/kazeem-oyen...
Any single one of these stories would provoke a national outcry here. They're unthinkable here. But it's everyday life in the US.
> But you don’t make a mental “death chance calculation” when you call the cops.
Yeah I do. When I was visiting the states my friend was instructing me to do things like turn on my interior car light and slowly put my hands on the steering wheel and do absolutely nothing that could possibly provoke the cop. That sounded fucking insane to me, coming from Australia.
Because domestic calls are so unpredictable in a gun-owning society, callers can expect to see a drawn gun pointing at you.
The police often do no-knock residential intrusions, while throwing a grenade into the house.
(For non-US readers: I'm not exaggerating. "Dirty Harry" movies are documentaries about living in the US.)
US 30.4 vs Australia 1.7
So yeah, there are are issues with police in Australia, but the issues are far more extreme in the US.
Don't just judge the police on your experiences as an innocent bystander, but by how they treat those they think are less innocent. Police in Australia are far more likely to use violence and intimidation than Kiwi cops, in a large part because they are armed. Carrying a firearm creates an inherent power imbalance and a willingness to use violence and force to resolve an incident than deescalation techniques. NZ cops are much more likely to attempt to defuse the situation, or avoid the situation becoming (potentially) violent in the first place, using force is seen as a last resort than a first option (although it's a different story if you're Maori or Polynesian).
https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-does-happen-here-calls-to...
> “The family of an Aboriginal man who died in custody says protests against police brutality in the US should be a wake-up call about the plight of Indigenous Australians in the justice system.
> Speaking in the wake of video footage of an Aboriginal teenager being kicked to the ground by a NSW policeman, Paul Francis-Silva, whose uncle died in a Sydney prison in 2015, said: "It does happen here in Australia - the brutality, and the injustice against the First Nations people.”
You could also agree Australians are full of racist, evil cops as well, yes? Or is picking a few extreme examples not allowed for your country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFaPooJBDSg
Imagine this situation playing out in the states. Guy would be riddled with bullets in seconds.
Not nonzero but... well, you can do the math.
This sort of thing add to the perception of American police.
It is true American cops do shoot more people than their counterparts in non gun owning countries. And they can get a bit jumpy until they see what a person is about, which is somewhat understandable given the environment.
The advice to keep your hands in plain sight and don't make quick movements is good. It's very unlikely you'll get shot (as per the stats above) but to help keep everyone calm and happy. It's not really a big imposition.
This probably sounds like weird advice coming from another place. But every place has it's strange things. You have to understand, America is not far removed from it's frontier days. It's always been a fairly violent country. That doesn't mean it's not in general safe, it is for the most part, it's just there are a lot of guns and a fair amount of violence compared to Sweden or some place like that.