Incidentally, this was not a situation where there were a half-dozen officers on hand to swarm the guy. Should officers always move in groups of six or more, so that any sudden violence can be handled with grappling? Seems expensive, at the very least. How do you propose that a single officer being actively beaten about the head with a chain de-escalate the situation? I'm deeply curious how you think that could be reasonably accomplished. Maybe saying please?
What would an officer in the UK do in the situation I described when being actively beat about the head with a chain? How would it be totally different and reliably yield an ideal outcome?
Another detail of relevance: the incident did not provide the officer with an opportunity to speak to the victim of mental illness in a time of distress. The victim attacked immediately upon the officer exiting her vehicle. If any and all forms of violence are ruled out, with de-escalation and negotiation being the order of the day, how should this officer have reacted to being beaten with a chain? What peaceful, non-violent, resolution skills are available to someone subject to such immediate violence?
It's easy to assume for me because I've seen the vast amounts of work currently happening around "behaviour seen as challenging" in people with mental illness or learning disability[1] or brain injury.
Here shooting people is absolutely not possible in the vast majority of cases of behaviour seen as challenging. Tasering people is also absolutely not acceptable.
Rapid tranquillisation is common, but not acceptable because of the amount of restraint needed immediately prior to the injection.
Various methods of restraint are common, but are not acceptable because of the risk of injury or death.
A lot of money is being spent on better training on de-escalation, diversion, prevention, etc.
It's fucking baffling to me that people think it's okay to kill someone in distress just because the people doing the shooting are so lacking in skills that they have no other option. To me it's clearly a failure of everyone involved (and the departments they work for).
In your example with the chain: you seem to think this is a situation where a violent response is undeniably the right thing. I see that and I think how fucking clueless the woman was, and how fucking clueless the people who shot the man were. There are plenty of Youtube videos comparing UK and US police responses to these situations.
[1] UK definition.