Nevertheless, a large percentage of situations can be de-escalated by police forces. What is even less acceptable, is that in many cases the escalation is originating from police officers. Which is why, to me, de-escalation and conflict management training is lacking among these officers.
Going back to your point, it is a really complex issue and I am not going to claim a deep understanding of US society.
There is a huge percentage of GDP spent on welfare in most EU countries, the welfare and safety nets put in place are (mostly) accepted in the EU because of a sense of solidarity and dignity and a mutual understanding that _anyone_ can be caught in a situation where they are facing social/family/health/finacial issues. Being misfortunate should not be punished with falling through the cracks of society. I get the impression that in the US this type of belief would be an outlier.
However, putting aside the humanitarian values, there is a very practical and utilitarian aspect to EU welfare and social benefits programs, they actually detract people from marginal behaviour because it stops them from being pushed into a corner.
There is a lot of evidence that social welfare safety nets reduce crime. Equally, there is evidence that insufficient welfare correlates with crime rise. [0]
And this I think, is a huge cultural shift. The outrage in the US would be huge if we tried to rationalize that we have to take tax money from everyone, to give free-money to people on the fringes of society, in order to reduce gun violence. However, all the EU policies for the past 40 years confirm this reasoning.
[0] Social determinants of health in relation to firearm-related homicides in the United States: A nationwide multilevel cross-sectional study, D. Kim, 2019 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Hiring and firing by this metric is also lacking.