zlacker

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+(OP)
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+t1
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.

>>chrisc+t1
Plenty of departments in other countries do not carry guns and do their jobs just fine.

>>tbabb+k2
That's not evidence that it could be done in the US.

>>chrisc+t1
Cops typically carry guns, tasers, a knife, pepper spray, and a baton. Cops in patrol cars also have additional gear in the trunk. Maybe people react poorly to heavily-armed people trying to intimidate them? If we focus only on downside risk then eventually all scenarios require Robocop.

>>mod+I2
It's not proof but it is evidence

>>mod+I2
Indeed. It might be evidence that there are simply way too many guns in the wild in the US; and that statistically, the likelihood of violent conflict is therefore higher in the US than in other countries.

>>tbabb+k2
Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. The US is saturated with firearms so it would be foolish for the police not to carry. In the UK the situation used to be different and to a certain extent still is, the police used to be unarmed (are they still?). It should be noted however that the number of knife crimes there is high - people tend to use the weapons at hand. This has led to a call for a ban on pointy kitchen knives, as if that would change much (if anything).

>>chrisc+t1
Bombs exist in society too. Should every officer be trained in defusing a bomb and walk around in a blast suit? No, because that's ridiculous and an uncommon situation. Just like the vast majority of police encounters don't require lethal weapons.

>>tbabb+k2
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.

>>Yetanf+c4
This is an argument activists have made for years in favor of gun control. The prevalence of guns in US society has made us objectively far less safe.

>>atheno+04
Overall violent crime is not much higher in the US versus other developed nations. Various prominent cities in Europe have serious violent crime problems for example, such as London and Amsterdam. The Netherlands has a higher rate of crime than the US does, and their violence is a lot less lethal. The US rate of lethal violence is higher than its peers and the very easy access to guns is the problem:

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe

>>chrisc+t1
According to 538, police interactions have been trending safer in urban areas but rural and suburban areas are becoming more dangerous. It may be the small town cop who is most dangerous, but the big city cop who is most visible.

>>camgun+06
The number of defensive instances of gun use are at least equal to the number of criminal use (some studies say it dwarfs it but that's been questioned). If defensive is even 1 greater than offensive, wouldn't guns have made us net safer?

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more I can see how the average outcome is deadlier with guns regardless of who "wins"

>>cwkoss+(OP)
It only takes one violent engagement for life to end. As long as #2A is there, you have to give cops firearms to protect themselves.

>>atheno+04
> the likelihood of violent conflict using a firearm is therefore higher

Violent conflict exists everywhere.

>>cwkoss+(OP)
I like the reference to a camera as a weapon. It should be used with some discretion, especially by police.

>>static+f2
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?

>>Yetanf+c4
I was once reading budgets for the NHS, and I had no idea why there was a line item for glass injuries. Apparently, smashing the bottom of a beer bottle and stabbing someone in the stomach is a popular activity in the UK.

>>static+f2
How many interactions do police have in a week? If the number is 20 or more then 5% becomes a common occurrence.

>>advent+75
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.

>>rodige+C8
Yeah, the situation isn't what most people would expect. Most gun deaths in the US are suicides and accidents. It's relatively rare that there's an actual gunfight.

>>mulmen+ka
OK? That doesn't matter. If the vast majority of crimes are not violent, it's not really important what the absolute numbers are. It could be 1,000 or 10, the point is that the majority of responders don't need deadly weapons.

>>sreman+A9
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.

>>cwkoss+(OP)
How about a body cam system that automatically switches to RECORD whenever a weapon or tool is removed from the belt, and cannot be switched back to STANDBY until everything is back in its place?

>>Yetanf+c4
"Saturated" is a poor description. Police definitely need guns available, but do they need them on their hip all the time? They often have shotguns in their cars because, sure, sometimes it's important. But they don't patrol with a shotgun in their hands. Guns aren't so prevalent as to need that.

>>cwkoss+(OP)
I like that idea.

It will cost more but what if we pair cops with non cop observers or participants? Like someone trained to talk with people and asses rather than just bust heads. Maybe it could even be volunteer sign a waiver and be a community observer? Or jury duty style even.

Then, if head busting is actually needed (and sadly occasionally it is, please don't be naive) the head buster is on hand. But it should be much rarer.

Something like balance of power in government to prevent one party from doing whatever it wants. That is what seems to be what is missing in police work. It's all one sided and few checks and balances.

>>atheno+04
Guns won't go away in the US during our lifetime though no matter what laws are passed or how people feel. It's too deeply embedded.

>>static+uc
This is like a turkey problem -- every day is a jolly day until thanksgiving comes, once a year.

>>chrisc+t1
If the system worked then you could argue that cops have a reasonable right to be armed. But the system is not working, and 10x people without guns are killed by cops, than are cops killed. Plus whenever a cop is actually killed, the entire system has their back, and justice is almost always served.

This is not the case for people without guns who are killed by cops. It's an acceptable loss that a few more cops are killed because we don't arm every single one of them, if it means that a lot more innocent people aren't killed by cops with an itchy trigger finger.

Sorry, cops. They've had decades of chances, and this past weekend proves that cops can't control themselves even when they're being called out by the thousands who are recording their behavior for all to see. So now they will have to earn the right to carry lethal weaponry.

>>chrisc+t1
In what percentage of police dispatches do they arrive on scene while an armed suspect is still there? I would guess it's significantly lower than 50%

Sure, send armed cops to handle situations that force is likely to needed. But cops don't need guns to take down police reports. Rape victims don't need armed officers to take down police reports. Property crime victims don't need armed officers to take down police reports. Officers do not need to be armed to write speeding tickets or DUIs.

The primary role of police is observation, recording of facts and interacting with the community. 90+% of the time they spend serving society do not require force.

We could spend much less on police and have better trained cops when force is actually needed by not even considering arming the half of cops who respond to situations where force is unnecessary. The unarmed cops can cost less because they don't need firearms training and job would be less mentally taxing so they could be paid less: then, they can call in armed cops for the minority of situations where force is necessary.

Only give guns to the best cops: the bar to become a cop is way too low to continue arming all of them. I'd love to see a tiered system where cops have to be continually tested and trained to prove they should be entrusted with various levels of force: ex. Camera -> Authorization to use force in arrests -> Pepper Spray -> Stun Gun -> Firearms

>>mythrw+9e
Maybe you are using 'head busting' metaphorically, but no one needs to have their head actually busted, unless what they need is to be dead. In which case, the cop needs to kill them, with their bodycam on, so the inquest can be clean and proper (which is another issue entirely, sadly).

This idea that beating people is acceptable law enforcement procedure is ludicrous and part of the problem.

>>rabidr+Kf
Yes metaphorically. I should have been more clear.

"Use of force" would be a more appropriate term.

>>static+f2
If violent crimes are 4% of police investigations, then it still only requires 25 investigations per week for the parent sentence to be true.

>>mythrw+9e
They don't even need to be paired. The majority of police could be unarmed and armed cops are only dispatched for calls where necessity of force seems likely or when unarmed cops call for armed backup.

Considering how much is spent on weapons training, this would likely be a net cost reduction. "Camera cops" could probably be paid less because they would have less risk of being in violent situations, don't have mental anguish of making life or death decisions daily, and less animosity from the community.

>>chrisc+t1
So should we carry guns for when cops get out of hand, and start acting like criminals? Your statement seems to suggest that the lives of cops are worth more than the lives of everyone else...

>>logfro+Wc
Important to consider privacy around record retention, but I'd love if cops badges were like taxicabs: they are only on duty and supported by the force of law when the light is on and recording is in progress. Ideally, there would be 3+ cameras on the cops body to get a more complete perspective of situations.

Needs systems to limit access to any footage that is not concerning a criminal complaint, but existing cryptographic technology can make it so only the courts have access to the encryption keys if implemented with the right process and key management systems.

>>advent+75
Amsterdam, Schiphol airport, 1998. I did not see any more until after 2001.

>>camgun+06
There are two things to this:

Compare the rate of gun-related crime in a country like Switzerland (where guns are readily available and many people have been trained to use them) with that in Germany (where guns are as rare as hens teeth among the non-criminal contingent of the population) and you'll notice that Switzerland does not suffer unduly under a wave of gun crime. Why not? What is it in Swiss society which makes it possible for people to have access to firearms, the training to use them yet the wherewithal to know when not to use them? Germany and Switzerland are neighbours, they mostly speak the same language, they're both affluent countries. What would Germany look like were firearms as widely spread as they are in Switzerland? Now compare the Swiss data to those in the USA and a clear difference shows. What is the difference between Swiss and American society which can explain this difference? Is it affluence? Switzerland is a rich country but so is the USA. Is it the fact that the difference between rich and less affluent is bigger in the USA than it is in Switzerland? Is it the amount of cultural diversity? The USA is a diverse country, Switzerland is largely homogeneous. Is is the overarching culture? Is it the difference in trust level? Switzerland is a high-trust country, the USA is not.

The other part on the gun control question is the age-old adage that in countries where guns are outlawed only outlaws have guns. They're not exactly hard to come by after all. It seems to work in a country like Japan but it probably takes Japanese culture as well as the physical lack of firearms on the island nation to pull this off.

>>static+7c
95% is not “the vast majority”.

To put 5% in more extreme terms: would you play Russian roulette with a 20 chamber revolver and one bullet?

Each interaction for police is like pulling the trigger in that hypothetical game of Russian roulette. This is why the absolute numbers are actually very important.

>>cwkoss+Ue
Unless you can tell me ahead of time which police reports are going to end in violence, I suggest you reconsider your thinking. Sometimes something as innocent as a speeding ticket turns into a shooting.

Watch some episodes of actual police incidents. Drunk people can be armed. Domestically abused people can live in dangerous neighborhoods with gangs present. Sorry, a camera is not going to defend you from the Latin Kings.

Violent criminals do not care about your unicorn ideals. If they sense police are nerfed, they will fill that power vacuum with gang violence and drive out the police.

You tell me why Ciudad Juarez is one of the most dangerous cities in the world but El Paso, directly across the U.S.-Mexico border is relatively safe. That's policing.

>>mulmen+Gj
if 95% doesn't qualify as "the vast majority" of anything then the phrase has no usefulness.

>>dpeck+Ll
Would you use a hosting provider with 95% uptime? That’s 72 minutes of downtime per day. Would you describe them as being up "the vast majority" of the time?

>>Yetanf+rj
Oh, yeah I think these comparisons actually are interesting. I'm not aware of any good studies about the root causes of gun violence in the US, but I'd be interested in reading them. My totally unsubstantiated guess would be that we have higher rates of mental illness, inequality, drug/alcohol abuse (which are mental/physical illnesses but important to call out separately) and access to firearms than almost every other western society.

> The other part on the gun control question is the age-old adage that in countries where guns are outlawed only outlaws have guns. They're not exactly hard to come by after all.

That's true, and it's also true that guns aren't the only horrible weapon you can use against someone. But that accepts the premise that a lot of gun violence is one person using a gun maliciously against another. While that does happen, in the US most gun deaths are either suicides or accidents.

And besides, while I'm sure it's not a problem for connected criminal enterprises to get guns, I'm confident we can create a system that would foil a kid amassing weapons for a school shooting. Degrees matter.

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

>>chrisc+zl
> You tell me why Ciudad Juarez is one of the most dangerous cities in the world but El Paso, directly across the U.S.-Mexico border is relatively safe. That's policing.

Lol, it's not because police are engaging in shoot-outs with the cartel. It's because we have a judicial system that will not stop going after you, and that is all done non-violently.

>>viklov+Lo
Mexico has a judicial system, too.

>>6gvONx+wd
Of course they need them on their person, having a gun in the trunk of the car does exactly nothing when confronted with a situation where having a gun can be the difference between life and death - that is some victim's life or that of the police officer. Do they always need to have them on their person? Probably not but there is a certain symbolic value in having armed police spread around society. The value here is that those who are intent on committing crimes can never assume that they will be safe from harm, no matter whether they are. The police is the long arm of the law whether you like it or not, the job can involve violent confrontations. It is a good thing to have police officers train in non-violent means of defusing situations and such is nearly always preferred over the violent alternative but the fact remains that sometimes violence is the only alternative - other than giving up and letting someone who is more violent take over.

In Sweden - where I live - there is a specific class of police called 'dialogpolis' (dialogue police). Their task is to use non-violent means to try to defuse situations, especially those around demonstrations and political manifestations. They are unarmed and wear civilian clothes but are recognisable by their yellow vests with the word 'dialogpolis' on the back. This part of the police corps was started after rioters and looters left large parts of the centre of Gothenburg in shambles in 2001 [1]. Dialogue police can only function in the presence of 'monologue police', i.e. the regular, uniformed and armed type. They are the carrot to the normal police's stick. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of this type of policing and they're often mentioned in a derogative way, partly due to the fact that they often seem to go too far in their attempts to ingratiate themselves with criminal gangs - grilling sausages and playing football does not seem to keep the gangs from committing violence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Summit_2001

>>chrisc+zl
> Watch some episodes of actual police incidents.

It sounds like your perspective is formed form viewing the TV show "Cops". This is not representative of reality.

106 police officers died while on duty in 2018 (of all causes, not just violence from public - 55 officers were feloniously killed while 51 died accidentally). 986 citizens were fatally shot by police in the same year.

Situations where police are able to survive only because they were able to quickdraw and shoot a criminal first like some sort of cowboy are vanishingly rare and possibly purely fantasy. Is trading the lives of a few hundred citizens worth saving the 0-2 cops in these rare situations per year?

Call in the cavalry when needed, but most cops do not need to be armed all the time.

>>mod+I2
not that it's really an argument for or against but if you try to tell cops that they can't carry guns, they'll all just carry their own personal guns.

>>chrisc+t1
They take a job to protect the community. That would seem they are accepting the danger that comes with the job, but for the low low price of a gun they are passing that danger on to you! Yay!

Right now, cops are legal bullies that we have to suffer under.

>>cwkoss+2r
No, I come from a family of first responders. Paramedics, firefighters and cops.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/12/27/police-deaths...

144 died in 2018. 96 already in 2020 and we're not half done.

https://www.odmp.org/search/year

986 citizens, of which 47 were un-armed. Twisting stats to feed your narrative won't change reality.

They're only vanishingly rare in the least dangerous neighborhoods, which incidentally need less policing than the most dangerous ones such as St. Louis, Memphis, and Baltimore.

Yes, armed people threatening innocent lives deserve to be shot and killed. You can't wait for the cavalry when someone is armed and dangerous. If you're police you are the cavalry.

>>cwkoss+2r
"It sounds like your perspective is formed form viewing the TV show "Cops". This is not representative of reality."

That's a poor and unnecessary assumption. Just in the last handful of years there has been a proliferation of good quality bodycam footage that gives unprecedented insight into police encounters. It would be more charitable to ask where the commenter's perspective is coming from.

"Situations where police are able to survive only because they were able to quickdraw and shoot a criminal first like some sort of cowboy are vanishingly rare and possibly purely fantasy."

It sounds like you may be the one who needs some experience watching body cam footage and reading about incidents. Just off the top, here is a quick refutation of your "fantasy" statement (and there are many more like it):

https://www.bitchute.com/video/obyWX8Wojk6l/

>>rabidr+Pe
Can you provide a citation for the 10x number? A quick search shows more like 0.4x, which is quite different.

>>HALthe+Qw
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office...:

> According to the FBI, which publishes the data in the Uniform Crime Reports, from 1980–2018, an average of 85 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed per year. Those killed in accidents in the line of duty are not included in that number.

From https://www.theroot.com/here-s-how-many-people-police-killed...:

> In all, there were 1,112 non-suicide-related deaths at the hands of police in 2019

>>Yetanf+rj
According to this, 25% of privately owned firearms are due to previous or active military service. Switzerland also has compulsory military service and you can't carry in public.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/switzerlan...

>>chrisc+t1
> suicide

Is this supposed to be a violent crime now? Cops should not even deal with the police.

>>Yetanf+Ip
> Do they always need to have them on their person? Probably not but there is a certain symbolic value in having armed police spread around society.

I’d argue the opposite. There’s negative symbolic value.

>>jki275+po
Relatively rare.

>>mulmen+Gj
Again, this is not absolute numbers. With the number 95% we can say that 95% of the time they do not need to bring a deadly weapon. It doesn't matter if that's still every day, it means 95% of the time it is not necessary.

>>static+rI
> With the number 95% we can say that 95% of the time they do not need to bring a deadly weapon.

Well, no. 5% of interactions is frequent, especially for police. They need to be prepared for violent situations. That's a pretty core part of the job.

We can talk about deadly weapons being unnecessary for dealing with violent situations but your quoted numbers just don't support the conclusion you seem to be drawing.

>>cwkoss+Ue
If you see some of my earlier responses. I’m definitely not pro-police and I don’t trust the “justice” system at all when it comes to minorities.

But, not even I would send cops out without guns with the prevalence of guns in America.

>>Yetanf+rj
Isn’t most crime caused by poverty? I would suspect that a country that both has a functioning government and a reliable social safety net wouldn’t have as much crime as one that doesn’t.

>>chrisc+Uu
> 986 citizens, of which 47 were un-armed. Twisting stats to feed your narrative won't change reality.

This argument baffles me. Do the Second and Fifth Amendments not exist? Possessing a firearm is not grounds for summary execution.

>>scarfa+oP1
Take a look at Sweden for an example of a country where poverty is more or less absent due to a wide social safety net while crime is on the rise. It is not poverty which causes gangs to go out and rob teenagers of their expensive branded jackets, iPhones and sneakers. Some turn to crime to get luxury items, some do it to dominate others (Denmark has created a specific category of 'dominance crime' for this phenomenon), some do it to gain street cred etc.

>>chrisc+t1
> 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.

Uhhhhh, damn dude. Words kinda fail me here. As a male Marine, with several years practice in BJJ, I find your comment either offensive, or just plain stupid. I've had my ass kicked many, many times by female Marines. I had several MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Art Program) trainers who were female. For that job, you are required to win at full contact hand to hand combat with people bigger and stronger than you. Your comment is sexist for one, and ignorant for another. I have a few female friends who've read your comment, and would like to have a friendly roll with you, if you are game.

>>depend+zB
> Cops should not even deal with the police.

Sorry, I meant that this should not be something that the police deals with.

>>jakela+NW1
Come on, don't twist the facts. We can do better than that.

Today I received an email from Coursera advocating for a black transgender man who was "executed". Or, as it turned out, he killed a person and then pointed a gun at the police. Before that, he also posted his intentions on Facebook. Is that your hero?

Second amendment allows you to carry a weapon. You will be shot immediately when you point a gun at the police. Both statements are true and are not going to change. They do not contradict each other.

Which part of that do you disagree with?

>>hkai+GX3
You think that in every single one of the 939 remaining cases in which the victims were armed, they were using their weapons to threaten the police? I find it far more likely that in many of those cases, officers were unwilling to accept the risk that ostensibly comes with the job and simply opened fire when they realized the victim was armed. We know this happens; see for example Philando Castile.

By black trans man, I assume you’re referring to Tony McDade. The only account of his killing so far has come from the police themselves, who avoid accountability like the plague, so let’s begin by taking that with a massive shaker of salt.

But even if their account is true, the ideal outcome would have been for him to be arrested alive. Why is it too much to ask police to attempt to deescalate the situation before resorting to lethal force?

>>chrisc+Ap
One that is very susceptible to bribery and threats. If you threaten a judge in the US, you're in for a world of hurt.