Unarmed Policing

[sexobon]

I think your police know that more is expected of armed officers than unarmed officers when they encounter violent crimes in progress and that they're not going to be compensated anything more for accepting the additional responsibility: they may as well leave it to specialized armed response teams. Those specialized teams know that by the time they arrive on scene the violence will often be over with since there are no armed routine officers to contain the perpetrators until backup arrives. Seems like a win-win situation for police officers and violent criminals at the public's expense. Government also potentially saves through avoiding possible post-intervention civil liabilities when it reduces the number of armed interventions.

I get the impression that half the public simply doesn't trust its routine police to be armed. They would rather take their chances with encountering armed criminals than face the uncertainty of arming their police. Claims that arming all police would significantly diminish civil-police relationships, when the trust is that limited anyway, would seem to be a red herring.