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The most innocuous call can turn into a life or death situation within seconds. Cops always say that domestic incidents are the worst because you never know what's going to happen.
If all American cops weren't armed 100% of the time you'd see a lot more dead cops.
Watch how a simple interaction that stayed peaceful for 9 minutes suddenly turns into a shootout:
I was going to say something like this. Even a normal traffic stop can go from 'fairly routine n boring' to 'flat out balls to the wall insane n potentially fatal' in just a few seconds. Personally, I'd feel better knowing police had their guns on them. What needs to happen is a much more rigid screening process to better weed out undesirables, before the become police and become a problem.
We agree on a lot more than we disagree on, but this time I'm going to have to say "NO! Bad Pedro!"
You have modified the question of your post in contrast with the posting question itself since I even responded. By doing so, you placed my NO into a position where it would be a YES based on your original posting title.
This is disgusting and a sham.
Sorry if you answered the title and not the question.
The fact of the matter is that in terms of first world countries, we have a rate of police shootings astronomically higher than practically anyone else.
Now, I know much of this is due to culture and other factors, but I can't immediately dismiss that some of it is due to the cops dependency on guns. I'll have to Google search for a study I read at one time showing a significant decline in shootings when cops are armed with non-lethal options.
You also should consider the number of accidental shootings that are a direct result of this gun dependency.
I will also try to establish a rate of fatal dog shootings by police in other countries to compare to the 25 per day in the US. My guess is that our rate dwarfs all others, and I think it relates to this dependency.
Trust me, I'm not saying or trying to imply cops are out there intentionally killing people for kicks, I'm saying that everyone may be better off with a new approach.
I can tell you one big reason why <bold>. Lack of respect for the badge/job. In other countries, like the UK it's "bad form" to attack a bobby, forget shooting at one. Crooks in other countries have very different standards when it comes to dealing with the police, it's frowned upon because it's really bad for business.
At least this is what I've repeatedly been told when talking with people from there and cops that have been over there.
Here? There's very little respect given the police from non-criminals, forget about the actual thugs/crooks, heck it's a badge of honor to take out a cop. In other countries it'd probable that other crooks would take YOU out and drop you off in front of a station if you created such a stir.
They should always be armed. A situation can go from calm to like or death in less than a second. A cop never knows when this will happen. A cop can go 10 years and never even have to draw their gun, then a routine traffic stop...BOOM...guy high as a kite, felon, decides to shoot it out because they know they are going back to jail for the drugs and gun they have in the car.
Point is; prepare for the worst, hope for the best. A cop will never know which encounter will require deadly force, and it is not like they can jsut say "hold on, let me go get my gun."
Beneficial to who? The criminals? Ok, lets say they don't all carry and suddenly need one. Do they get on their megaphones and say wait here while I go get my gun....
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