investigation, forensics, traffic control, etc etc dont need weapons and tactical training. Let the armed police be like fire fighters and be specifically called in when needed.
This has some interesting consequences. The police effectively can’t position themselves in opposition to “the people of the street”. Two police officers against a rowdy pub is poor chances for the law.
As a result, the training emphasises deescalation, talking people down from stupid ideas etc. This part seems particularly effective.
Most days I still think it’s crazy the police here are effectively unarmed, but it does seem to work.
I know from a police officer friend of mine that on badly-staffed nights, Oxford (an affluent city of about 180k people) only had 2-4 officers on call. For anything from a bar fight to murder. You don’t get these American-style 10 police car buildups, unless it is literally a national emergency.
This is in reference to American standards of care, other countries may be different.
You would just have to answer for what percentage of those call did the responding parties (dispatch, the officer responding and the person calling it in) thought there was a need for armed police.
I am willing to be that while only 5% turn out to need armed police, most of those 5% where uncertain, and a % far greater than that where armed police weren't needed, where very uncertain.
It's just not possible to predict when you need to be armed.
However, if you go down this line it is also not possible to predict when having a gun on your hip is going to make it more difficult to resolve the issue.
There is a tradeoff here that is very hard to make policy around. Something that is being tried is for there to be unarmed medical oriented mental health response units available for calls that don't seem uncertain. I think the data coming out of these changes will change the way big cities operate their departments one day.
> This is in reference to American standards of care, other countries may be different.