The "problem" with studying other countries is that US citizens are armed to their teeth compared to citizens of most of the rest of the civilised world. Police in the US pretty much always have to approach a situation fearing for their lives.
Not that this excuses their actions -- just pointing out that it's a systematic problem that's hard to weed out by looking at countries where police often leave their weapons in the car when they go to confront suspects of non-violent crimes.
I said I didn't have all the answers, but I think that's part of the problem here -
"Police in the US pretty much always have to approach a situation fearing for their lives."
Do they? Really? Or is that an overreaction even in the US? Couldn't a different approach and an emphasis on peaceful de-escalation before paranoid use of deadly force be better?
Again, I don't have all the answers, but I bet there are lesons to be learned from elsewhere.
I'm sure statistically even the US police are relatively safe (as in they might well be more likely to die or be injured from car crashes, like the rest of us.)
But when the stakes are that high, being statistically safe on average does not take into account what the gamblers' call the individuals risk of ruin.
So yes, I think they have to consider that an armed citizen could incapacitate them for life at a distance with nearly no warning. And this risk is many times greater in the US than elsewhere.
Which is then why police see it as OK to semi-arbitrarily incapacitate random people for life (by hitting them with rubber bullets, for which there are ridiculously many stories of people losing eyes or having internal organ damage--think about how you don't even want to be hit in your lower back with a fist for fear of it damaging your kidney--with studies showing like a 15% rate of permanent disability of some form from being hit by the things) and then tell sob stories about how a protestor threw something at them, which of course barely hit/hurt the officer because throwing things is really difficult? Yeah, no: I have absolutely zero sympathy for police officers taking this position.
> So yes, I think they have to consider that an armed citizen could incapacitate them for life at a distance with nearly no warning
That's different, and a valid consideration of risk, as compared to what you said before - "pretty much always have to approach a situation fearing for their lives."
Approaching a situation in a state of mortal fear, every time, rather than with a calm understanding of real risks, and this fear mindset feeds into their behaviour, this might be part of the problem.
The absolute last thing you would want to do to someone armed with a lethal weapon would be to antagonize them with a weapon that won't consistently eliminate them as a threat.
These "less lethal" weapons aren't being used to defend against actual threats, they are being used to terrorize unarmed protestors.
> The "problem" with studying other countries is that US citizens are armed to their teeth compared to citizens of most of the rest of the civilised world.
I don't see that as a problem. Police are at least as heavily armed. I'm not aware of any instances where armed protesters created a dangerous situation.
The overwhelming majority of violence has been perpetrated by armed police on unarmed civilians. "Less lethal" weapons are used as an excuse to continue this pattern.
Well, it obviously is a problem, since the default threat level all around is insanely high in the US, where this problem is greater than in other civilised countries where the default threat level is lower.
With the justification of “We need the power to resist against a government who turns on its citizens” - now that that’s clearly BS, maybe time to tighten the gun laws and de-escalate the whole country? :P
So maybe if We The People give up the paltry remnants of our right to self-defense, the cops won't attack us so severely? This is such a tired argument, and it's completely refuted by the lack of police riots against the tacticool protestors a few weeks prior.
The police are supposed to be civilians, and the government is supposed to be subservient to the People. If the police have access to a type of weapon, the general population should as well. If someone cannot handle being a police officer in this society, the answer is simple - find another job.
I don't have all the answers, but perhaps studying other countries with lesser police violence problems might help.