How the british police make do without guns:

[DetlefK]

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2353-i-was-cop-in-country-with-no-guns-6-startling-truths.html



6. Guns are rare and being friendly can defuse a situation.



5. The british law-enforcement model is called "Policing by Consent".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
Be nice. Make sure that people trust and respect you. Only use force when necessary. The more they respect you, the less use of force becomes necessary.

Make sure that police officers have a connection to the area they police.



4. British police is armed with clubs and pepperspray. There are calls for getting tasers. And apart from the rookies, there is pretty much consent among british cops that guns are unnecessary, except for instances of mass-shootings and terror-attacks.

What happens if they run into an armed suspect? Remember: Guns are rare.
Option 1: Close-combat.
Option 2: Talk him down.
And most of the time it works.



3. The british cops are held accountable for everything.

Wave your club at somebody in a threatening manner? You have to mention that in your report and you better have a good justification for threatening that person.

The article gives an example of an altercation:
They were called to do a welfare-check on a huge, violent, anti-police guy with mental-health issues. When he saw the cops, he dropped his pants in public with children nearby and started shouting at them. They talked him down and were able to take him to hospital.
The cops who handled him the time after that had a more authoritarian approach. One cop got a broken arm and almost got a finger bitten off.

Lesson: It pays to be nice.



2. So what if a criminal has a gun?

The british police call one of their many task forces. These guys are heavily armed, professionally trained, and their whole job is handling criminals with firearms.



1. The cops don't need guns because there are no guns.

Confrontations are solved either with talking or by letting your fists do the talking.

Have I been injured? Sure, a few times. Nothing that left me with more than a few stitches or a bit of a concussion, though. Nearly got tipped over a seventh-story balcony once when our area car driver baited a very excitable chap who, as we found out, didn't have a sense of humor.

But the vast majority of injuries on duty are from fists, feet, impacts with pavement, and, very occasionally, knives and improvised weapons. There is a certain dark joy in having a tussle for street police. Since no one is going to get shot, both cop and criminal can get into a good, healthy fight, and a hell of a lot of these will not get reported as assault on police (there's no specific crime called "resisting arrest" here).

I love the job and think I always will, and I love the fact that I never strapped on a gun and never had to make that kind of decision in the heat of the moment. Guns make every decision binary -- shoot or don't shoot. They leave no room for doubt or other options, other points of view. Guns reduce very complicated decisions to the simplest of choices, and that is something I am eternally glad I didn't have to be a part of.

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2353-i-was-cop-in-country-with-no-guns-6-startling-truths.html




--------------------------------

Germany has a system that is somewhat similar. There is "police" (with guns) and there is "code enforcement" (no guns).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_enforcement
The officers of the code enforcement handle all the minor, non-violent stuff: public disturbances, code-violations (building-, safety-, traffic- ...), minor non-violent crimes, panhandlers, social conflicts...
IIRC day-time street patrols are mostly done by code enforcement. Cops are rarely seen and normally only come when shit is actually going down or is expected to go down. Night-time street patrols are done by cops.

[onehandle]

1. 'Guns are rare'

Best anti-violence method out there.

[Hoyt]

2. I would never expect police to walk around without guns when so many of our citizens are armed up.

[DetlefK]

5. It would be a gesture of diplomacy and de-escalation. But only a half-solution.

The problem (as so often) is lack of trust. The cops don't trust the citizens and the citizens don't trust the cops.

It would a great sign of respect from the cops towards the citizens if the cops were unarmed. But that in itself would mean nothing. What the US actually needs is a large-scale police-reform:

1. Set a nation-wide quality-standard of what constitues a proper cop and every single cop must adhere to that standard. (How many police-forces does the US have? 18,000?)

2. Found a second law-enforcement agency that is unarmed and is responsible for all the low-profile stuff where guns are unnecessary because it's a non-violent crime. Why would cops need guns to investigate a noise-complaint? Or handle drunk people? Or do a wellfare-check? Or keep an eye on traffic?

[CanSocDem]

3. Good article.

I liked this:

"Guns make every decision binary -- shoot or don't shoot. They leave no room for doubt or other options, other points of view. Guns reduce very complicated decisions to the simplest of choices, and that is something I am eternally glad I didn't have to be a part of."


.

[BooScout]

4. I'd be happy if they showed up when called...

Around here....either they don't show up or they take their sweet time.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. there's no specific crime called "resisting arrest" here ...

and yet they manage to function effectively.

[TipTok]

7. Cracked used to be funny...

... but at some point they made a shift to the political and social issues of the day and that all went away.

[DetlefK]

8. Oh, about 80% of their stuff still is funny.

There are one or two of their writers who have moved on to writing novels... Their stuff sucks ass. Big-time. But the rest is pretty funny.

And Cracked gets a bit repetitive after a while, because they always use the same hook for their satire: "Hey, you know this mistake or shortcoming in this work of art? Lets build a whole conspiracy-theory on the thesis that it's an intentional part of this work of art."



Since a year or so, they have started incorporating more and more articles where unusual people talk about their lives: people who survived something horrible, people who live in weird places, people with weird jobs...