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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
But, not even I would send cops out without guns with the prevalence of guns in America.
This argument baffles me. Do the Second and Fifth Amendments not exist? Possessing a firearm is not grounds for summary execution.
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?
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?