Unfortunately in a society where a lot of citizens have fire arms, where gang culture exist this will not be possible at all. How many times police was shot on routine daily events? Police not carrying weapons is not realistic in USA.
Certain officers and teams absolutely should well armed, but it should be a much smaller subset of the force. A call for deadly force should be an explicit, intentional escalation.
If the police don't have any weapons, why would they patrol ANY area that might be dangerous?
Edit: I see you recognize that some should be armed. Perhaps you're right. Maybe its discretionary based on your patrol. They could deputize parking enforcement. Oh wait, that might be worse haha.
About 64 officers die per year. Not all of those are shot.
In 2013: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...
>> 76 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2013. Of these, 27 law enforcement officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 49 officers died in accidents.
Most of those felonious killings were by gun.
>> In 2013, of the 49,851 officers assaulted while performing their duties, 29.2 percent were injured. The largest percentage of victim officers (31.2 percent) were assaulted while responding to disturbance calls. Assailants used personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.) in 79.8 percent of the incidents, firearms in 4.5 percent of incidents, and knives or other cutting instruments in 1.8 percent of the incidents. Other types of dangerous weapons were used in 13.9 percent of assaults. Expanded assault details have been included in the 2013 publication. Data for assaults during which officers were injured with firearms or knives/other cutting instruments are located in new tables, figures, and selected narratives.
From this I don't know if the 4.5% of gun incidents refers to 4.5% of 49,851 officers assaulted, or to the 29.2% of those which were injured.
How many people are shot and killed by police each year? We don't know, the police don't count these numbers. How many people are shot and injured by police each year? Again, we don't know, because the police don't count these shootings.
>what makes it different from the criminal stumbling upon a postman, an unarmed private security guard, or just a regular unarmed person?
Is that police officers jobs have them actively going towards and engaging these criminals, not just accidentally stumbling upon them like the postman.
"gang culture" and "lots of firearms" are not reasons for beat cops to be armed on a daily basis.
"how many times has a police officer been shot during routine daily events?" - this is not relevant. Having a gun does not protect you from being shot. Quite the opposite, in general.
If a police officer is attempting to make an arrest and experiences armed resistance, then it is of course necessary to have a small, dedicated part of the police force that is authorized to use firearms.
I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that the ability to use lethal force with near impunity has enabled a police culture of maximum-confrontation. That culture is going to be hard to root out, and taking away the guns that enabled it (from most cops, and increasing scrutiny of who are still allowed to carry) could be a good start and do a lot of good.
Hyperbole much? I expect most arrests are done without firearms being drawn.
> plenty of people are willing to kill to avoid that outcome.
And plenty of people are willing to kill for other reasons too, which is why no one's discussing that zero police officers should carry firearms. What's being questioned is the policy of all of them doing it.
It's a given here in the US that the moment you as much as appear to draw a gun at a cop, you're getting shot. So I don't think criminals even have to think about it to know that it's a "kill first or die" situation, once you're down that route. Now, if the criminal knows that the cop is unarmed, all of that changes: his gun is just leverage. He flees (or expels the cops off his house), which is undesirable; but then's when the situation can be escalated. No more "wild West" situations of "this guy might shoot me any moment, better be prepared to kill him for my life".
I'm going to call bullshit on that. Proportionally few criminals are North Hollywood Shootout types that require lethal force to be subdued. I would think that a very large fraction of arrests can be accomplished with threats of extra legal penalties or physical man-handling.