I understand (although do not have evidence to hand) a number of LAPD beat cops manage to go quite a long time between instances of having to draw a firearm and point it at someone's face. If this officer was doing it every day, was he simply the world's unluckiest police officer, or was he the kind of police officer who makes situations more violent rather than less? I understand that typical US police training (if there is such a think in a nation with such a large range of police forces) does contain rather less "how to make situations less violent" training than their counterparts in other countries.

You're absolutely going to need a citation for that. I don't believe US cops have to even report instances of upholstering their sidearm - It's such a common occurrence. Discharging a firearm is a different story.

Of course, my friend was a cop in the late 70s, 80s and 90s, and did all kinds of things that would land him in very deep water today. i.e. to disperse an angry crowd you just rack a round in a shotgun. He said it works extremely well without even firing it.

Here are a number of LEOs discussing how frequently they draw their weapon, but again nothing about actually pointing it at someone: https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=432377 Other such discussion seem to indicate similarly; that even drawing is not common.

On such forums, detectives seem to indicate that they have even less need to draw firearms.

The 2016 LAPD review use-of-force review indicates that in 2016 there were 40 officer-involved-shooting. I understand the LAPD employs on the order of 9000 to 10000 police officers, so on the order of 95% or more of those police officers didn't shoot at anyone. However, it looks like they don't record drawing a firearm or pointing firearms at people's faces.

I suspect citations for your hypothesis - that LAPD beat cops draw and point their weapons every day - will be similarly hard to come by, but if you have some, please do present them.

You're right I don't have hard citations, only first-hand evidence from someone with 30 years actually doing it.

So if you might need to defend yourself, but you want to avoid escalating the situation by aiming a gun at someone, it makes sense.

Once a gun is pointed at a person, there are no more steps of escalation, no more ways to express how much you want them to do something; the only next step is to pull the trigger. The situation has suddenly become extremely dangerous and very volatile.

Police in the US are trained heavily in de-escalation, but sometimes overwhelming show of force lets everybody go home alive (yes, the offender as well), rather than allowing a situation to escalate to a point where deadly force has to be used.

Maybe sometimes, but I suspect in the vast majority of cases, a show of force is what causes the situation to escalate to the point where deadly force has to be used.

Who are you more likely to shoot? A policeman pointing a loaded gun at you, or one with gun holstered talking calmly (but maybe firmly) to you. Pulling a gun out automatically leads to a "shoot first or risk getting shot" situation.

[0] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/05/05/police-de-escala...