> You can't have major police tactics reform without a reform of gun laws to go around with it. Police have to assume that there is a possibility that anyone that they interact with is armed to the teeth.

Alternatively, you can treat extraordinary claims with some level of skepticism.

I've had the joy of being swatted. I got a knock on the door, a few M4's in my face, cuffed and pinned against a wall, and then later an apology from the officers. All told, it was handled reasonably well in that I wasn't shot...

Still, you'd think having a few cops knock on the door and go "Hey, so funny story..." and assessing the situation from there, hell even with a few storm troopers behind 'em, would be a reasonable enough approach. Unfortunately the officers were fully keyed up and ready for a fight, so I had to deal with a bunch of adrenaline junkies playing Operator for an evening. It kills me how many combat vets I know who had to work under stricter ROEs than street cops in a country that supposedly has a distrust of government and a hatred of tyranny.

>> Police have to assume that there is a possibility that anyone that they interact with is armed to the teeth.

They should be trained to interact professionally and as calmly as possible with people who are armed to the teeth. If it's such a regular occurrence, why are they dealing with it with the same panicked exaggerated responses as an untrained civilian would?

I think we need a discussion as a society around how much risk we expect police to take on. Similar to how astronauts or military personnel take on calculated risks.

Human spaceflight is REALLY expensive if you want only 1 death per 10,000 launches.

Having police is REALLY expensive in terms of innocent civilian casualties if you want 1 death per 10,000 interactions with "believed to be armed" (but maybe not actually armed) civilians. How many deaths of innocent people equal the death of one police officer? What is the proper ratio? 10 to 1? 100 to 1?

It should be less than 1:1. The police officer should be asked to take on more risk than the general public if they are to claim that they are "brave."

In some ways the problem is just the opposite. SWAT teams adopt tactics of rushing in without recon or attempts to negotiate because they spend their days serving no-knock warrants for suspected drug dealers. If they had experience dealing with violent people they'd behave a lot more like, e.g., the US army in Iraq and knock down a lot less doors.

This is perhaps the most important comment in this thread. It's obvious once you think about it, but I don't think most of us have.

> Police have to assume that there is a possibility that anyone that they interact with is armed to the teeth.

I've never understood this argument. I assume that some 10-30% (depending on where I am in the country) of people around me are carrying a concealed weapon, and yet I don't react with such recklessness.

We are all surrounded by guns all the time; in what way are police disproportionately vulnerable as a result?

The police are -- more or less by definition -- interacting with people in an adversarial way. Add on top of that the fact that if the police are being called to intercede then the situation is one in which social mores have broken down.

If we put police in the circumstances you describe, the number of people randomly walking down the street who were shot by a police officer also randomly walking down the street was 0 last year.