Leveraging heavy handed government response by providing false information has a long history.

Tangentially related:

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2023/how-a-volkskrant...

It happened in Germany: https://www.vice.com/de/article/9aqy9y/erstes-deutsches-swat...

But much more prevalent are 'legal' search and seizure actions against political opponents and activists.

I case someone is interested in some search and seizure actions that happend in germany: https://www.xn--pimmelgate-sd-7ob.de/en/

US police can and are frequently shot and killed. US citizens can legally carry guns. That's the difference.

US policing is different because the risks are different.

Moreover, if there's a report of a hostage situation or gun violence, there is a chance that the situation is real and unfolding live.

These are two very different lists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer...

Keep in mind this doesn't include non-fatal injuries.

It’s time to have tough gun control, because blue lives matter, said literally no one in America.

Except for the police, who call for gun control all the time, because of the obvious self interest.

You can see the policy paper of the International Association of Chiefs of Police:

https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/IACP%20F...

The IACP has been a strong supporter of the assault weapons ban since 1992, and our membership has approved several reauthorizations of support in the years since. The membership took this action because we, as law enforcement executives, understand that the criminal use of semiautomatic assault weapons pose a grave risk to our officers and the communities they are sworn to protect.

or

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/16/politics/police-organizations...

Nice try but the assault weapons ban is almost the weakest form of gun control, right behind “no guns for the clinically insane.” Handguns are involved in vastly more death and crime, yet no one tries to stop them.

Concealed firearms are what terrify police, so why not strictly license concealable firearms?

What’s the strongest form?

no guns 4 u.

Obviously there’s a continuum here, and this end includes “likely to be eaten by a bear” in some parts of America.

* * *

Biden has been using something like 'you can't be pro cop and anti gun control' on social media

> US police can and are frequently shot and killed.

Feels a bit disingenuous when more cops died of C19 in 2022 than from gunfire - 60 deaths in 2022 compared with 74 for C19. Also US cops killed almost 1100 people in 2022 - I think they have the better side of the 18-1 ratio here.

(Also taking the first 10 as a sample - 2 were off-duty and 1 was shot by his own colleagues which isn't really "policing is risky", more "free roaming guns are generically risky".)

It's possible for some cops to die of Covid while others die of gunfire. These facts are not at odds with each other.

It's obvious that US cops kill way more people than in other countries, but also that they get killed more often. They are more likely to kill because the US is designed to be a much more dangerous country than most, but also because they receive a lot less training, and training more focused on shooting, than in most countries.

I see what you're saying, but if you look at on the job death rates, police don't break into the top 20. And of those that die, half of it is things like automobile accidents.

Note also that police have significant incentives to falsify line of duty fatality statistics.

If your friend dies in the line of duty their family gets significant financial support, and all it takes is a bit of paperwork no one will ever question.

That's 74 COVID deaths in the line of duty, not 74 COVID deaths for any reason. But cops are humans, if one of them dies from the third leading cause of mortality in the US our default assumption shouldn't be there's something special is going on. And they didn't do any specific testing to prove how those cops got COVID. Meanwhile your average police officer is in a higher risk group for COVID related adverse effects.

> frequently shot and killed

I'm struggling to find statistics more recent than 2019, but perhaps skipping the anomalous COVID years is for the best. Anyway, in 2019 [0], 89 officers died in the line of duty, of which just under half (44) were due to gun violence. The number of full time police officers in 2019 was in the region of 700k [1]. That's a fatality rate of under 13 per 100,000 - certainly higher than the national average of 3.6, but far less than jobs highlighted as "occupations with high fatal work injury rates" [2] (who are mostly tradespeople or people that operate heavy machinery).

[0] https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-st...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju...

It is well-known that policing is not among the absolute highest-fatality occupations. However, that's beside the point. Airplanes are not the highest-fatality form of transportation (in fact they are quite safe) yet plane crashes grab attention and headlines, as do police fatalities, solidifying the perception of danger and sympathy among the public.

In the US, governmental power is supposed to flow from the People - police are standard US citizens. If US citizens do not have a right to firearms, then neither do the police. If police are able to carry firearms, then so should non-police citizens. One possible answer is across the board gun control - with law enforcement most certainly not excepted. Or, police can proactively desscalate and disarm their routine positions - very few people shoot parking attendants.

It does happen outside as well.

It also requires good chances the person accused is armed, it's the two sides of the equation that makes it happen more often badly in America.

If the police have much better weapons than the suspect they can go with more care. This with a culture of de-escalation helps to convert swatting into just an annoyance.

It can happen, but that would just mean some lost the from the police

> If the US police force uniquely has these qualities, it seems prudent to reorganise it.

Part of the problem is that there is no "US police force" to overhaul. There are federal police (FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE, TSA, etc), state police, county police, local police, sheriffs, military police, special task forces and more. Reforming any one group is a big job, reforming the whole system is borderline impossible without a revolution or something.

Specifically, there are 18,000 police jurisdictions in the USA. Each “police force” has completely separate management and reports to a different authority body (most are “ruled” by the government of a city).

No one body oversees these 18,000 different police forces.

The sheer number of autonomous jurisdictions in the US is a Bad Thing. It's ended up as meth labs of democracy.

The best way i can explain it is if the handhaving was a step stupider and had free access to military assault gear. :/

How is it complicated? Does the EU have a national police force? No of course not. America is best looked at as a collection of mini countries with a federal government representing them.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Looks like your comment was edited ᕙ ( • ‿ • ) ᕗ

It doesn't. The Dutch "Dienst Speciale Interventies" as the SWAT team is called aren't trigger-happy cowboys that jump into the first call they get. They're only used against identified criminals that are known to be armed and dangerous. Common sense is still a thing in the Netherlands. :) They're often trained in the US though.

They'll just send it out a pair of cops to check out the situation with care.