bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
- Messages
- 34,009
- Gender
- He/Him
- Basic Beliefs
- Strong Atheist
Being armed to the teeth does nothing to protect anyone, cop or otherwise, who doesn't shoot first.<Picks up rifle, shoots Bilby-cop. You can't stop me because you can't use deadly force first. I have plenty of time to aim.>
If you want to protect against possible threats, rather than actual and demonstrable ones, your only option is to shoot on sight anyone and everyone who can possibly threaten you. Which is basically everybody.
This isn't what cops do (thankfully), because they recognise that their defence isn't their guns; It's their organisation.
You can always shoot a cop. But you can't get away with doing it, because a dead cop isn't the end of your interaction with the authorities, it's just the beginning - and you will lose.
That's why cops in the UK are highly effective at preventing crime while not being routinely armed. It's been demonstrated to work, so your hypothesis that it cannot is just wilful ignorance.
You can shoot, or stab, or taze, a cop in London, and he cannot respond with bullets, because be doesn't have a gun. This isn't a problem for the Met Police though - because they have access to vast resources in backup.
Assault a cop in London, and you will never be able to stop running. Kill one, and you will be hunted down at almost any expense and inconvenience, by a large and well equipped organisation.
This is also why it's needless to kill a fleeing suspect. Running away just delays the inevitable, it's really not likely to be a successful strategy for a suspect.
And it's better for everyone - suspects, cops, and bystanders - to let suspects flee, and then go round them up later in a controlled manner.