Well said. In addition to what you've listed, it's also why we give them a monopoly on the use of force. The belief that they will protect is why we don't have vigilantes and mercenaries roaming the streets (for the most part). These cops were worse than useless. If they weren't present, there's no way the parents and the rest of the community would have let the shooter stay in that school with their children for so long.

> The belief that they will protect is why we don't have vigilantes and mercenaries roaming the streets (for the most part).

I agree, but that has always been a perception, and it has never been a reality.

Yes, it's expected that first responders may do things that are generally dangerous but they're not on kamikaze missions, it's completely normal for them to back out when they believe their own life is in danger.

This is not any different for any first responder. Firefighters will run right back out of your house if they think it's required to save their own lives.

19 cops (in the hallway alone; more outside!) with rifles, armor, and complete control of the scene against one shooter is not a "kamikaze mission".

What's the point of militarizing the police if they can't handle 19-on-1 situations?

Having a large number of police doesn't decrease the risk to the first person to jump through the door. And most police body armor is only effective against handgun rounds, across part of the body.

Police militarization helps the police protect themselves when a situation gets out of control. I don't think there's much evidence to show that it ever helps police protect others. Although, there's a lot of reasons why people might be misled to believe so.

Don't soldiers have to undertake such dangerous actions? What's the point of militarizing all of these police departments with actual War on Terror surplus if they're not going to make use of it? So that weaponry can be misused in disproportionate responses in less dangerous situations?

They do make use of it, to protect themselves. I've never seen evidence of police using that equipment to swoop in and save anyone.

Soldiers use that equipment in a very different way, are way better trained and compensated, and have a very different set of rules to work with. And very rarely is it their mission to swoop in and save innocent people.

> I've never seen evidence of police using that equipment to swoop in and save anyone.

What about all of the times heavy-armed police teams burst into residences during Swatting incidents?

Most of the time those are not happening with military equipment. These things happened before police started getting surplus military equipment.

Fine. But seeing as how SWAT teams have at least police-grade tactical equipment and training, and are expected to burst through doors, and this town had a SWAT team, you would think this was their moment to act.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdwgn/uvalde-swat-team-brag...

Saving a house is not the same thing as saving children.

People risk or sacrifice themselves to save others with some frequency. Just a week before Ulvade, Dr. John Chang gave his life to tackle the shooter at his church in Orange County. Bravery exists. The belief in bravery is why we give special privileges to law enforcement. If we knew that police would never put themselves in harm's way to save children, we would never tolerate law enforcement as it currently exists.

Bravery is why you give people medals, it makes no sense to give Police Officers privileges on the guess that maybe some of them will be brave.

In the Commonwealth a police officer would likely get a George Cross for extraordinary bravery (the Victoria Cross is the medal for extraordinary bravery in the face of the enemy and so accordingly it is awarded to the military). New Zealand police officer Stewart Guthrie was awarded (posthumously) in 1990 for confronting a gunman who'd killed a dozen people. Guthrie warned him, "Stop or I shoot" but the gunman shot him first.

But of course such awards are rare because such events are rare in Commonwealth countries.

Dr. John Chang is a one-in-a-million hero.

If we hired every one-in-a-million hero as a police officer in the US, we'd have 165 police officers.

There's about 700,000 police officers in the US, and we can barely hire them as it is.

firefighters routinely walk through burning buildings to find and save people, they have safety rules, but this is never a safe action.