[Blarg]

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It is unfair to think that officers should put their bodies in harms way in order to subdue an individual if a reasonable alternative exists, especially since the other techniques can escalate a situation.


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Extremely strongly disagree. It is the most essential and characteristic part of their job that they do exactly that. You cannot remove judgment from policing without totalitarianism. When police become robotic, they become no better than thugs. Taking the easy way out to avoid potential bodily harm is the exact opposite of what police are hired for. Anyone, or it should probably be stated, any ass, can be hired simply to apply maximum force to every situation in order to keep his own arse maximally safe. But we are not hiring room cleaners and search and destroy technicians when we hire police. Entirely the opposite.

We are paying police -- and many of them get paid very well -- precisely to put themselves in harm's way so we don't have to, and to eliminate the threat of violence from daily life for civil society. If it is the police themselves who comprise any part of the threat of violence, they are no better than thugs and have completely failed in their mission. As well, those delimiting the scope of their duties would be responsible for the sick, dangerous turning of the police mission from protecting and serving to being a quasi-military force arrayed against a country's own citizens.

This is not a fascistic state. Not yet, anyway. Police are still here to protect us, not punish us, or arbitrarily decide what level of safety is appropriate to us. Police are merely the tools of an orderly society, not the decadent rulers of it.