There was a info graphic in a recent Economist that said that the police in America shoot and kill 400+ American citizens every year. By comparison in many European countries that same statistic is less than 10 per year.

In the US something like 70 police officers are killed on the job every year a fraction of those are from being shot by citizens and the majority are from car accidents.

The notion that being a police office is somehow this extraordinarily dangerous job where you might be shot and killed at any moment is I think largely a myth not substantiated by facts. Police officer doesn't even make the top 10 list of most dangerous jobs in American.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-30/fbi-report-accident...

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2013/leoka-home

The Economist article you mention was even harsher, in most European countries the statistic is ZERO.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21636033-united-states...

"American law enforcement is unusually lethal: even the partial numbers show that the police shot and killed at least 458 people last year. By comparison, those in England and Wales shot and killed no one."

I'm a HUGE proponent of nonlethal alternatives, I don't understand why there isn't massive funding for better tasers.

There are no "nonlethal" alternatives, just less lethal as the words of art put it. One of the many reasons I haven't yet invested in pepper spray is that the threshold for my using it should be the same as for my handgun.

Any time you get into physical combat things can get seriously ugly, see e.g. Eric Garner.

As for US vs. European statistics, you always need to make sure each is honest (e.g. are they counting all populations in their countries? Counterwise, remove the US south and we look rather European), and there's no question that the US is flatly more violent, e.g. remove all homicides with guns and our rate is still higher.

Wow, your first thought is that Europe might be underestimating how many people are killed by police, not the USA? The USA doesn't even count that number.

I don't automatically trust any government's statistics.

In addition, I know that you have to investigate before comparing what are ostensibly the same statistics coming from different countries.

You can not precautionary discredit statistics or studies without evidence. When you accuse someone or something of being wrong in public, show some evidence. This makes you look like you have no arguments left.

I don't understand your phrase "the threshold for my using it should be the same as for my handgun"

I'm going to buy pepper spray soon, and I understood that it was basically nonlethal. I've been mugged a few times already, and I do believe it would have helped in at least one case (in which I absolutely would not have used a gun).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray

Technically, as I say above, it's viewed as "less lethal".

It can definitely kill, and I've read people have been charged for using it in what seemed to be legit self-defense. It's definitely force and not something to be used casually.

It's theoretically possible to cause someone's death just by turning on a siren or flashing lights at them. Does that mean that the threshold for using those things should be the same as for a gun?

Even if the threshold is the same, that doesn't mean that the pepper spray isn't a much superior alternative, especially for people who are supposed to be protecting civilians, including civilians they're arresting.

Do you have a citation about the statistics becoming European if you remove the US south? This PDF breaks down police-related deaths by region:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf

And while the South is higher than other regions, the others are hardly what I'd call "low".

I was unclear in the "we look rather European" bit, that's for all violent crime and/or homicides, not just police caused ones, for which as I understand the statistics are iffy, i.e. there's no requirement to report them.

Tasers have devolved from a less-lethal gun alternative to an electro shock based compliance tool, nothing more than a cattle prod used on humans.

As far as I can tell, the number given in the Economist article, 40-something, is deaths just from shootings. A police officer hasn't been shot to death in the UK in years.

There's two things that seems to be missing here with regards to routine patrol officers being armed in the US. First, Great Britain is smaller than many US states. The population density of ~780/sqmi is higher than all but 3 of US states. The majority of US states are under ~200 persons/sqmi. Outside of major cities and suburbs the nearest backup officer can routinely be 15 or more minutes away. As well, many areas have dangerous wild animals to deal with. Bears, coyotes, wolfs, etc. that Britain has mostly eliminated.

Secondly, in the US, we have the right to keep and bear arms, which means every one the routine patrol officer encounters should be assumed to be legally armed as well. It would put officers at a severe disadvantage to be unarmed when regularly dealing with armed suspects. In many states 5-10% of the population has a concealed carry permit, and in the majority (40+) of states open carry of a rifle is legal without any permit. Whether you agree with this or not, it's a fact of life in most of the US that a large percent of the population is legally armed, so there seems no reason to arbitrarily limit police from also being armed as any individual citizen could be.

>> "...dangerous wild animals to deal with..."

I come from one of the wildest remaining areas in the lower 48, with a correspondingly high density of charismatic megafauna and apex predators.

On exactly zero occasions have I ever witnessed the police or sheriff's deputies interacting with wildlife. There are specialized (and very heavily armed) government divisions for that sort of thing, and the vanilla police would spark a turf conflict by stepping in.

For example, it is common to see Fish and Wildlife department employees tranquilize and cage a grizzly bear in someone's yard, or to find the Animal Control division running a family of moose out of town, or to see NPS Rangers on horseback herd wild bison. I have even seen crews of municipal snipers deployed to reduce mule deer populations in town.

No sane person would deny very heavy weapons to the men who come face to face with grizzly bears in their daily life. Similarly, the deer sharpshooters should undoubtedly have long and powerful rifles with fancy optics.

But that is certainly not an argument for supporting the militarization and firepower expansion of the ordinary police.

Any city of sufficient size probably has it's own animal control department. It isn't like police are in mortal danger from wildlife and need the gun for protection from it.

Outside of major cities and suburbs there's virtually no crime anyway, and law enforcement is usually handled by the Sheriff's Department. For some reason, sheriff's deputies seem a lot less antagonistic than city cops. And sure, let them carry shotguns in their trunk if you're worried about wildlife.

Sheriffs are elected in most places in the US. Depending on the local political dynamics, that can make for a more responsive police force.

>> As well, many areas have dangerous wild animals to deal with. Bears, coyotes, wolfs, etc. that Britain has mostly eliminated.

This is only true for a very small handful of remote areas where few of the US Population live.

It has been estimated as many as 100 coyotes live in San Francisco[1]. Mountain lions have been found in Palo Alto[2], Mountain View[3], greater Los Angeles[4] and other very urban areas in California.

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/outdoors/article/Coyotes-seemingly-thr...

[2] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Palo-Alto-visit-fatal-...

[3] http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Report-of-Mountain-Lion...

[4] http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/tag/mountain-lion/

This is an animal control issue, not a law enforcement issue.

I live in the second biggest city in the country and see coyotes almost every morning. And there are reports pretty much every year of bears wandering into town.

I'm not sure I buy wild animals as a reason for cops to carry guns, but there's a lot more of wild animals in a lot more places than you seem to think.

I have no problem with officers having guns safely stowed in the car, but I think carrying them all the time is excessive. This would be completely sufficient for all animal problems,and probably 99% of situations where you actually want to shoot at someone.

We have coyotes in the city limits of Atlanta, GA and black bears are regularly spotted in the nearby suburbs. (In counties with population over 500k) I would hesitate to say there's only a handful of areas with bears/coyotes/etc., as over 90% of the US land area is considered rural. To be sure, most wild animals are more afraid of us and run away rather than attack, but it's a legitimate thing that law enforcement has to be prepared for.

Coyotes are of no threat to humans

I would hesitate to say "no threat". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_attacks_on_humans#Others list several attacks, including a few where responding officers shot the coyote. To be fair, a much bigger concern is preying on pets and live stock.

Let me chime in and say that there are credible reports of coyote in Washington, DC, and that bears are spotted now and then, mostly in the close-in suburbs, but once in the city itself. But let me also say, that I don't think I'd care to take on a bear with a handgun.

I certainly wouldn't want to take on a bear with a handgun and load that's optimized for incapacitating humans!

And avoidance is generally the best policy, but it's not an option for the police. So it's better than nothing, and there have been successful stops of bear attacks with these sorts of handguns.

Hmmm, a downside of replacing the police shotgun with "patrol carbines" (AR-15 variants, generally), you could always use slugs in the former, which are effective against bears.

I've personally seen coyotes near DC, mostly in the Potomac River corridor northwest of town. The C&O Canal park is a nice long wildlife corridor and is chock full of coyote food like whitetail deer, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, etc.

That said, the idea that someone would need to carry a gun in that area to protect them from coyotes is laughable.

I live within the city limits of Austin, and I frequently hear coyotes (and nearby residents lose pets to them). When I lived on the east coast, there would occasionally be a deer encounter. People don't normally think of whitetail deer as aggressive, but during the fall rut, the bucks can be pretty territorial.

The UK and US have fundamentally opposing views of government, I think. The UK strongly believes in "good government". If the government makes mistakes or does something poorly, the press will challenge them on it with the expectation that things will improve.

In the US, we are almost self-defeatingly cynical about the idea of good government. "That government is best which governs least" is a distinctly American motto. But I think we actually can expect more from our government, we just don't because we don't think it's possible. And so ironically we are stuck with a government that governs quite a lot, actually, and not that well.

Already in the US, standard search and arrest warrants are unnecessarily performed by heavily armed SWAT teams. Depending on where you live, you better not have any pets if the police come for you because they will kill them. If we disarmed ordinary patrol cops in the US, they would just not do anything and send SWAT to do all the real work.

It does seem like a non sequitur that a country with the mindset "government is best which governs least" would routinely utilize SWAT teams. I'm curious about the social dynamic that transforms the desire for minimal government intervention to overkill in policing. I have a hard time believing that it is simply low expectations. Perhaps the low expectations exist because reform is structurally difficult (e.g., voting system, etc).

On the other hand, perhaps the situation is slow to change because it is exactly what the majority want? Only poor and minority populations interact with police regularly.

Airport police/security in the UK still does carry guns. And not small pistols at the belt. Big guns carried in both hands - it looks almost as if they really wanted them on display.

You can't miss them due to the contrast of what normal police on the street looks like.

The armed police at airports, and those at Parliament, are the only armed UK police I've ever seen. (I'm a UK person, lived here all my life).

I was once in a car that was pulled over at a speed trap in northern England, and noticed that they had guns on their hips. When asked, the officer said that they manned low-priority things like speed traps the majority of the time that they were on duty so they could rapidly respond to any firearms-related incidents. With how few of those we typically have, it sounds like an incredibly boring job.

They have them sometimes in central London, I suspect when there are specific events/threat levels are higher.

I've seen them a few times when I've been walking round London, always a bit shocked when I stumble across them.

You'll often see armed police outside court houses for high profile or gang related cases in the UK