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Tasers are also quite risky.
What they should have is some proper martial arts training so they can deal with most problems in closer encounters. Fucking shit, they have better equipment and bigger numbers. There should be zero reason to pull a gun unless the other party also has one.
Then maybe escalate to tasers if the other party has a knife and seems to actually starting to attack. If they are just standing there (in a defensive stance or whatever), they should still not be tasered.
Having someone with mental health training would have been more appropriate. This kid was autistic and needed to be calmed down by someone who knows how to de-escalate a situation with an autistic person.
Instead he got a cop who only knows how to shoot people.
To a hammer every problem is a nail.
Any decent martial arts instructor will tell you that if someone has a weapon, your best bet is to run. You can be a master of any art; if your opponent has a knife, you will get cut, or stabbed. It's almost impossible to disarm an aggressive attacker who has a knife without getting cut; unless you get lucky, it usually becomes a struggle to control the knife, and the person holding the handle gets cut up far less. Your martial arts training may allow you to eventually dominate the situation, disarm your attacker, and defeat your opponent -- but you're still going to get cut up in the process. If they have a gun, then all your training for is give you a slight chance of not getting shot, maybe, if everything goes perfectly. The only time things go like in the movies is in the movies. And cops aren't going to be martial arts masters; the best we could hope for for most of them is some basic submission technique, like the shit that murdered George Floyd.
Yes: cops should be getting focused time in de-escalation, but expecting cops to grapple with people, when they have no idea what weapons the person may have concealed in their bodies, or to expect them to perform some Steven Segal weapon disarming is unrealistic.
I agree with you, though; guns are not the answer, and I'm not sure I believe cops should even be armed - although, this is there US, and about 2% of the population goes around daily armed.
Random martial arts in plain cloths against a knife... yeah, bad. But cops have equipment and numbers. They don't have to do this alone, they can have shields in their car, they can wear tonfas, etc.
If the primary goal was to deal with attackers non-lethally, I am sure that would be possible. At least to a certain degree.
The kid had a stick, for Pete's sake
I saw a video from the UK where a guy charged a cop with a knife and the cop just smacked it out of his hand with a baton and put him in handcuffs. Police in the UK only shoot two or three people each year, and the per capita injuries to the police are lower, seems like a better system.
It's far less dangerous than a gun and ideal for melee opponents because cops can still maintain a certain amount of range. You didn't read the article, did you? The kid was approaching fast charging with the sharp end of a gardening tool over his head while being told to back off, I think there is no question that he was suffering a manic episode. There were a number of ways to deal with the situation, but before reaching for the gun they could have reached for the taser. Tasers are quite risky, yes, but less so than shooting several bullets in a residential zone at someone.
The comment I answered to was quite generic. If tasers get sold as safer guns, they will also be over-used.
That's why I explicitly told about escalations and the taser was still part of that escalation chain. And yes, in this particular case, a taser could have been a good approach. Although cops with shield and tonfas might have done the job as well. But to be fair: I don't expect cops to pull out a shield everytime they leave their car and I don't think they anticipated such a quick escalation here. If a tonfa alone (by two cops, however) would have done the trick ... hard to say. Against a knife: yes. Against that large-ass gardening tool ... maybe not.
So yes: in this case, a taser would have been good. In general: I would still prefer first going with far far less risky approaches.
So basically, in the case the thread is about, a taser or insert less risky option here would have been good, got it.
In general anything less than killing or maiming someone should be the utmost priority.
But as I said: also a taser can kill and also tackling someone and pinning them to the ground can. So I would put less focus on the methods and more on the intention. Cops should neither have to act out of fear (that's what training is for) nor out of pleasure. And some cops just seem to get off on being in control. If cops generally would want the best not just for themselves and other civilians but also for the perpetrators, a lot of the problems would solve themself.