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In light of some recent police shootings, there are some comparisons being made between armed American police forces and foreign ones, like British police, who are generally unarmed.

I know there's a lot of international folks in this forum, and I really am interested in your opinions and experiences, and am legitimately curious: How does a regular police officer protect law abiding citizens armed only with hand-to-hand weapons?

I guess this article got me curious:

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2353-i-was-cop-in-country-with-no-guns-6-startling-truths.html

And it's an interesting read, but nowhere, from what I could see, did the officer talk about an instance where he had to deal with an armed assailant. Not even guns, just knives, bats, or even fists. The only 'confrontation' he personally discussed was a single crazy guy who came willingly with zero force required.

And I guess that's troubling to me. What does the average police officer do when faced with an armed, violent, and noncompliant criminal in the act of committing a crime? Because from what I read, the answer, for british officers, is to call Trojan, their armed forces. And if that is the case, I have to wonder - in that circumstance, what more good is the officer in that situation than a random citizen with a phone, if all they can do is call for help?

For example: If I'm being mugged (or actively attacked) in the streets of London, and an unarmed police officer witnesses it, and the muggers decide they'd rather fight than flee, what happens? I mean, I don't expect a lone officer to chuck Norris his way against multiple armed assailants, yet I do expect them to be able to protect their citizenry, as that is their most basic and primary function as law enforcement officers, in my opinion.

I tried to look up that specific topic, but this was about all I could find:

http://thedailybanter.com/2014/08/uk-police-stop-someone-knife/

In it, it refers to an instance where a noncompliant man with a knife was threatening American police officers, who consequently shot him. The article suggested the following options for the officers: "The officers who shot Powell did have a choice. They could have moved away from him. They could have gotten back into their car to protect themselves. They could have run away."

Call me an ignorant, brutish American if you must, but to me that is beyond the pale. It's the police officer's job to protect citizens, and themselves from dangerous criminals. And to suggest that police should 'hide' or 'run' from violent criminals, and consequently leaving their citizenry vulnerable to said criminals, is more than a little disturbing.

I'm not going to claim that our police forces are perfect, and there's probably a lot we could learn from the tactics of foreign, unarmed police forces. But I find it impossible to believe that violent crime, criminals, and dangerous weapons (even of the non-firearm variety) are non-existent in other countries, even ones with strict gun regulation. This leads me to wonder how their unarmed police actually do their job, which to me, is to protect their citizens.

Anyways, that's my question. I apologize if I have come across in any way as being disrespectful of other countries police forces, it was not my intent. I would appreciate it if you responded in kind.

Two examples.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
How does a regular police officer protect law abiding citizens armed only with hand-to-hand weapons?

By deescalating potentially violent encounters.

Very few crimes involve weapons in the UK due to culture, lack of availability and heavy prison sentences for weapon use/carriage. If there is someone wandering around with a weapon then there are armed response units but they rarely shoot anyone.

Deescalation is always the first and second response. I get the impression that police in the US shoot first and ask questions later.

 feeder wrote:






Two examples.

Both fair points, but for one thing, non lethal countermeasures are not 100% reliable - for example, pepper spray, used in the first video, isn't usable in certain situations - high winds, for example. Tazers are decent, but also not guaranteed, as they generally require close range (as does pepper spray) and can be deflected by thick clothing, I believe. Regardless, british cops generally don't carry either - from my understanding.

Moreover, in both videos, the cops greatly outnumber the assailant, in the second case, 30 to 1. I assume that this is generally not the case, but maybe there are more british cops than American ones?

Brit here - our police officers get along fine without guns mainly because we hardly have any gun-wielding criminals. I've never even seen a gun other than a couple of antiques. The way I see it, if our normal police encounter armed individuals, I want them calling for experts. Quite a lot of my family went into the police force. Whilst lovely people most of the time, they are not the sharpest tools in the shed. I trust them to carve a roast, and it would make me feel actively less safe to see a gun on any of their hips.

Its really difficult to de-escalate a situation when you are pointing a gun at someone. A lot of European forces tend to go more for de-escalation and arrest rather than the whole judge/jury/executioner trip. Less of a chance to murder innocent people because you have twitchy fingers then. Of course, this would not work in the same way in America, because your civilians/police/criminals/polititians have a really weird relationship with firearms.

 feeder wrote:

Spoiler:

Two examples.

UK has less guns in first place.
We do not need every officer loaded to kill.

Most of our cops do carry but we still see almost no fatalities. I think the real problem here is America's gun culture. Police in the USA has to work from the assumption that everyone is armed, or so it would seem to me.

How do American police protect citizens against criminals in tanks? From my understanding, in that situation they would call the army or the national guard, but then what use is an officer in that situation if the best they can do is use their cellphone like a regular citizen?

- - - - -

I'm being facetious and hyperbolic, obviously, but the principal is the same. The reason why anti-tank weaponry is not considered necessary for our LEO's to protect citizens is because we live in a society where criminals with access to tanks are rare.

Similarly, I imagine that unarmed police officers work in other parts of the world because most of their criminals don't use guns. For various reasons, in their cultures guns are not something that's even enticing to own.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
How does a regular police officer protect law abiding citizens armed only with hand-to-hand weapons?

By deescalating potentially violent encounters.

Very few crimes involve weapons in the UK due to culture, lack of availability and heavy prison sentences for weapon use/carriage. If there is someone wandering around with a weapon then there are armed response units but they rarely shoot anyone.

Deescalation is always the first and second response. I get the impression that police in the US shoot first and ask questions later.

That's interesting - armed (even non-firearm related) crimes are uncommon in the UK? And I realize it's rare, but I'm not sure how to deescalate when faced with an non compliant, armed assailant. I mean, if someone's getting knifed to death in an alley, what does a regular foot cop do to stop it, if he's unable to physically stop the attack from occurring? He can call in backup, sure, and then you get a scenario like the youtube videos posted earlier, ditto for the armed response teams.

But I'd assume that if the cop is unable to engage for fear of their own safety, than the criminal could potentially escape before backup gets on scene. And I guess that's the question - is it worse to kill someone who is killing someone else, or allow the possibility of them escaping justice, and, worse yet, repeat the offense? Maybe that's the difference, I suppose.

I had real trouble explaining this to a friend of mine from Wisconsin, that our police usually don't carry.
"How do they get people to listen?"

I'm in turn not used to a culture where a gun would be required to command attention. It's very hard for both sides to understand.

 Soladrin wrote:
Most of our cops do carry but we still see almost no fatalities. I think the real problem here is America's gun culture. Police in the USA has to work from the assumption that everyone is armed, or so it would seem to me.

Yeah, I read that Ireland also has a relatively high gun ownership rate, yet their cops don't carry guns and generally things are fine. That would be an interesting case study / comparison. I think I forgot to mention it, but my brother is a highway patrolman, and generally, you're probably right - he works alone in wide stretches of highway, so I think it's fair to say he is at least on guard. I've read highway patrolling is one of the most dangerous kinds of police jobs, because weapons are easily concealable in vehicles and backup is usually not close at hand.

Usually non-lethal response. Pepper spray, tasers, water cannons (although I think they have been banned in the UK), talking down people.

There is an armed response unit but unarmed will always respond first.

It helps that guns aren't easily available to citizens in the UK. Knife crime is more common in the UK, which, while still extremely dangerous, is safer than facing off against an assailant with a gun.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
How does a regular police officer protect law abiding citizens armed only with hand-to-hand weapons?

By deescalating potentially violent encounters.

Very few crimes involve weapons in the UK due to culture, lack of availability and heavy prison sentences for weapon use/carriage. If there is someone wandering around with a weapon then there are armed response units but they rarely shoot anyone.

Deescalation is always the first and second response. I get the impression that police in the US shoot first and ask questions later.

That's interesting - armed (even non-firearm related) crimes are uncommon in the UK? And I realize it's rare, but I'm not sure how to deescalate when faced with an non compliant, armed assailant. I mean, if someone's getting knifed to death in an alley, what does a regular foot cop do to stop it, if he's unable to physically stop the attack from occurring? He can call in backup, sure, and then you get a scenario like the youtube videos posted earlier, ditto for the armed response teams.

But I'd assume that if the cop is unable to engage for fear of their own safety, than the criminal could potentially escape before backup gets on scene. And I guess that's the question - is it worse to kill someone who is killing someone else, or allow the possibility of them escaping justice, and, worse yet, repeat the offense? Maybe that's the difference, I suppose.

I think that scenarios where cops happen upon a crime in progress are relatively rare. Cops rarely just stumble upon something like a knifing in progress, almost never really. Most shootings occur when officers are either called to a scene (and know that something rough may occur already) or when someone theyre detaining turns hostile.

Police in the US generally do seek de-escalation. They want to go home just like anyone else without either being shot or having to shoot. Tasers and physical compliance are used when force becomes necessary and firearms only in the most dangerous circumstances. Which, even if they are only a small fraction of the time, will still be more common in the US than in Britain, just based on population.

Don't forget that the US population is roughly 320 million versus 64 million in Britain, so part of what you are seeing is just raw numbers. Much of this is just media portrayal- most US police never shoot anyone. The number of homicides by police is a tiny fraction of all homicides, and the vast majority involve an armed suspect. Worse, the data is generally pretty shoddy, so it's hard to draw many conclusions, yet it is being used to fuel a very real perception of racial persecution.

Attempts to approach the issue a more sound data based approach don't seem to match the narrative (see http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399) and don't indicate a racial disparity in shootings. Indeed, Mr. Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black!

Disarming US police seems a very bad idea when you consider how widespread gun violence is in our country. And violent and habitual criminals don't seem likely to stop carrying. Heck, anyone remember the North Hollywood Shootout?

The better approach is not tolerate abuse of force and aggressively and consistently deal with criminals, in uniform or out. However, catering to incendiary rhetoric will only exacerbate problems.

 Frozocrone wrote:
Usually non-lethal response. Pepper spray, tasers, water cannons (although I think they have been banned in the UK), talking down people.

There is an armed response unit but unarmed will always respond first.

It helps that guns aren't easily available to citizens in the UK. Knife crime is more common in the UK, which, while still extremely dangerous, is safer than facing off against an assailant with a gun.

If we need armed. We have them. There highly trained SWAT style units about as required.
We also can if terrorist bring in SAS troops if too tough or bad. They just shoot to kill though. Full military.

 jhe90 wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
Usually non-lethal response. Pepper spray, tasers, water cannons (although I think they have been banned in the UK), talking down people.

There is an armed response unit but unarmed will always respond first.

It helps that guns aren't easily available to citizens in the UK. Knife crime is more common in the UK, which, while still extremely dangerous, is safer than facing off against an assailant with a gun.

If we need armed. We have them. There highly trained SWAT style units about as required.
We also can if terrorist bring in SAS troops if too tough or bad. They just shoot to kill though. Full military.

Exactly. The Armed Response unit is extremely well trained. In the case of the Lee Rigby murder, the response unit shot at the suspects (who were firing back at police), neutralized them and started giving first aid within 6 seconds.

Spoiler ed video because of content (and also Piers Morgan for those that dislike him).



If the SAS have been brought in, then the situation really has hit in the fan. But those guys are one of, if not the best in the world.

If there is one thing I love about living in the UK, it's a relatively safe environment from guns.

 jhe90 wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
Usually non-lethal response. Pepper spray, tasers, water cannons (although I think they have been banned in the UK), talking down people.

There is an armed response unit but unarmed will always respond first.

It helps that guns aren't easily available to citizens in the UK. Knife crime is more common in the UK, which, while still extremely dangerous, is safer than facing off against an assailant with a gun.

If we need armed. We have them. There highly trained SWAT style units about as required.
We also can if terrorist bring in SAS troops if too tough or bad. They just shoot to kill though. Full military.

the latter part is something that the US would find very hard to do. Bringing in the military would rub just about everyone wrong in the US. Additionally In mainland Europe, seeing soldiers armed with automatic weapons patrolling streets in large cities isnt rare. In the US, calling in the SEALs to deal with a domestic event, or having combat equipped US soldiers or Marines patrol streets, would result in almost universal and bipartisan backlash from all spectrums of society.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

 Frozocrone wrote:
Usually non-lethal response. Pepper spray, tasers, water cannons (although I think they have been banned in the UK), talking down people.

There is an armed response unit but unarmed will always respond first.

It helps that guns aren't easily available to citizens in the UK. Knife crime is more common in the UK, which, while still extremely dangerous, is safer than facing off against an assailant with a gun.

If we need armed. We have them. There highly trained SWAT style units about as required.
We also can if terrorist bring in SAS troops if too tough or bad. They just shoot to kill though. Full military.

the latter part is something that the US would find very hard to do. Bringing in the military would rub just about everyone wrong in the US. Additionally In mainland Europe, seeing soldiers armed with automatic weapons patrolling streets in large cities isnt rare. In the US, calling in the SEALs to deal with a domestic event, or having combat equipped US soldiers or Marines patrol streets, would result in almost universal and bipartisan backlash from all spectrums of society.

Its rare. But events like Iranian embassy years ago do trigger that level of response. It has t be very serious but if say nightmare like ISIS hostages. You probbly would see black clad very lethal reply..

Talking more specalist response. They are the very best we have in kicking down doors and direct close qauter assault.
Threat alone of them is ernough to scare the gak out of anyone with a degree of sanity

That's kind of just a matter of scale though, isn't it?

The USA being so much bigger of a place has the national guard as an additional layer in between. And then, effectively the Marines as a layer above that before you start reaching "posse commitatus" levels, if my years watching 24 and the West Wing has taught me anything.

Right, I understand that. It's just one of those weird cultural things, the US has tons of heebie jeebies about directly employing the military for anything in domestic borders.

Its also part of why many domestic law enforcement agencies are so heavily armed, as calling in something like the SAS or SEALs would be almodt unthinkable and they must provide for themselves.

The title of this thread seems to make a presumption. That a fully armed and combative police force is normal and that unarmed, or less prone to an escalation of violence, is abnormal.

Perhaps the reverse is true. How does an armed and adversarial police force ever hope to protect its citizens?

In most big equivalent events though, for or example, the various FBI special tactical units would rock up, right, you wouldn't expect SWAT to solely deal with a Michael Bay level situation. - Neither would the UK

I think the OP's question is really interesting, and it has got me thinking.

I am British. The British police famously have never been routinely armed, and do not want to be armed, and the people don't want to arm them. Yet the UK is not a hotbed of violent crime. Why not?

Part of it is gun control on a legal and a social basis. Apparently UK criminals do actually find it fairly hard to get hold of guns. British people on the whole don't feel a need to have guns. If they want a gun, it's fairly easy to get one if you have a good reason, and most people don't seem to have that reason.

How many other countries have unarmed police? I think most of the European police are armed, though as another member noted above, the rate of shootings by police is still very low in European countries. In truth, it seems as if the USA is the outlier, rather than the UK.

However, violent crime statistics are notoriously difficult to compare due to different standards in different countries. For example, in the UK, all sex crimes are recorded in the violent crime statistics, so goosing a nurse will earn you a criminal record if he or she complains. In the USA, only violent crimes committed with a weapon are recorded, so a mass punch up of 18 men in the pub car park goes unnoticed.

Why do US police find it necessary to shoot so many people to protect the public? If the US police are protecting the public, why do so many US people feel a need to carry a gun around with them? Do black people in the US feel they are protected by the police?

Is the USA actually simply a more violent society than most of the rest of the first world? Is it more violent in its imagination then in reality? Why would this be the case? The UK has seen its share of violence. As the Advice to US Servicemen in WW2 says, the reason that English is spoken all over the world isn't because the British are pantywaists.

To answer the hypothetical question of the British policeman coming across someone being knifed in an alley, I would guess first he would call for help, then he would lay into the assailant with his truncheon. Of course if the assailant has already been stabbing the poor victim, it's a bit late for the police to arrive and save him. They have to hope he will live long enough for the ambulance to arrive.

In the USA I presume the policeman would shoot the knife wielder, then call for help. The ambulance will have two casualties to deal with. But presumably the US policemen is likely to face a gun wielding assailant, so the victim probably is already dead or dying, and the policeman faces a choice of trying to talk down the assailant or just shooting him.

However this is a very unusual situation in any country. The police of most nations are not constantly interrupting violent crime in progress. Most criminals complete their crime and have to be detected afterwards.

Ummm, what? The Marines and Navy both have regulations via DoD and are generally construed to fall under the Act. The National Guard exception is for mobilization by state governors. Which is another issue- the US has state based law enforcement. So disarming police would mean all 50 states agree to such a thing. Never happening.
Federalizing police, especially under the guise of military being the only armed intervention would likely cause a tremendous backlash- basically every gun loving preppers dream.

Blame 24 for any inaccuracies. :-P

But yeah the point I was more making is due to the larger population, there's more hierarchy and levels of abstraction.

Being a small island having so many layers and differences in powers in the store of emergency response hierarchy doesn't make sense.

EG, the SAS being the best the country can offer, can also quite literally get anywhere in the country in a couple of hours. So going from firearms officers, if you take them as our SWAT equivalents to SAS isn't that gigantic a response scale wise.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
How do American police protect citizens against criminals in tanks? From my understanding, in that situation they would call the army or the national guard, but then what use is an officer in that situation if the best they can do is use their cellphone like a regular citizen?

- - - - -

I'm being facetious and hyperbolic, obviously, but the principal is the same. The reason why anti-tank weaponry is not considered necessary for our LEO's to protect citizens is because we live in a society where criminals with access to tanks are rare.

Similarly, I imagine that unarmed police officers work in other parts of the world because most of their criminals don't use guns. For various reasons, in their cultures guns are not something that's even enticing to own.

Actually they usually just clear the path and let the tank run its course until it runs out of fuel or gets stuck on something..


its also happened at least twice.

once in a stolen tank off an army base and once in a home made bulldozer tank which ripped the crap out of a neighborhood.

To add to all the above comments and perhaps the best lesson for the OP is that the Uk police know how and when to escalate. For the most part.

Outside The Troubles the UK police are very rarely regularlyarmed. There are exceptions, diplomatic security is permanently armed as is airport security and security at some events. Those police openly carry assault rifles or other automatic long arms.

Lesson 1.

Dont have a cop with a gun.
Have a cop with a taser and baton only, but back him up with 24/7 SWAT coverage.


This is the kicker every deployment of the police force will normally be accompanied by the Armed Response unit. Normally this is a marked van filled with guns. The police operate normally but if they have to carry. Such as a gun is reported, then the unarmed police are replaced with snipers and police with long arms. The only people who should be carrying pistols concealed or otherwise are diplomatic protection. Yes US police faocers can call SWAT support, but in the Uk SWAT equivalent is always very close when there are any large numbers of police deployed, even for a simple policing action as a football game or late night town centre drinking. Its also the same police performing both roles usually, got a problem those with special training get to the armaments van and tool up.
SWAT is normally called in for a major problem. To the Uk if a gun is present at all, that means SWAT equivalent takes over, automatically. There is no halfway house beyond scene officers trying to talk out problems or get people away from a scene with known shooter.



Lesson 2.

Bring no firepower, until you really need firepower, then bring a lot of it.
There is no use in a halfway house approach of casual armed police coverage.


Next you have too look at what happens if there is a shooting. If your police have to enter a gunfight give them a gun for the fight. There have been many notorious cases of cops or FBI agents with sidearms being outgunned but one or two suspects armed with longarms. Also even if you dont end up needing to outgun the bad guys, an armed suspect facing down cops with immediately available personal sidearms is not as good as having a police van in the immediate vicinity with assault rifles and sniper rifles.

A good example about why limited number of specialist heavily armed police is better than universal carriage of light armament.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout


Lesson 3.

Know the exceptions.

- Diplomatic protection will need concealed carry, are normally ex soldiers and perform the job of the US secret service. The Monarch, and only the monarch has soldiers to guard her, the guards at the palaces are not just for tourists to look at, ceremonial or not, those are armed elite troops. Even so the actual personal bodyguards fro the royals are normally police officers from the diplomatic protection service.
- High risk events and targets like airports will have mostly unarmed police with some police at the back openly carrying long arms. So if immeidate responce is needed the correct tools are used for the job. For so many idfferent ways it would be better to have one SWAT team openly deployed and a hundred unarmed cops at a demonstration than the same number of cops all with handguns.


Lesson 4.

Please dont mind the assault rifle.

Because UK police don't normally carry guns the policeman holding the long arm doesn't cause concern. Its also the way they hold it, very visible, nothing concealed but also in a passive position. Unless there is an active inciodent going on the guns will not be waved around, hands will be off triggers. Sometimes the gun is cradled in both arms and supported by an arm strap. In almost all cases the armed visible policemen will be outnumbers by unarmed policemen who will also be the ones closest to the public.




The bottom line is that UK police have a rep for being restrained (mostly) and unarmed (mostly), yet you wont have to go too far to find a policemen standing around with an assault rifle. The 'unarmed bobby ethos' is largely a myth, Uk police are very quick to thoroughly outgun anyone looking for trouble, but normally all you get to see in the community regular patrol police are the stick, pepper spray and tasers and even most of those weapons are concealed in pouches.

I think it boils down to the training and tools available. When you have a hammer, a lot of problems look like nails.

I spent a two and a half year stint working as an SIA approved security guard at various events across the UK, which inevitably involved a certain amount of police collaboration. In both their cases and ours, there was a small amount of cross-training and security briefings on certain events (it makes no sense to do these things separately when you're all watching for the same stuff). So I got to see the inner security workings from Royal Ascot where they're wheeling out the Queen, all the way down to small music festivals.

Most events tend to involve large quantities of booze, so I got to see the police enact several takedowns, and deal with a few myself. In every case, the priority is de-escalation and conflict resolution. Is there a bloke swinging a bottle around threateningly at people? Offer to take him to another location for another drink. Agree with him that the other guy was a fether first. Make soothing noises at him. Heck, if you're a woman, flirt with him slightly. Whatever it takes to get close without suspicion and lead him somewhere to cool off, or worst case, let you slap cuffs on quickly. I've lost count of the number of times I saw it done or did a variant of it myself.

What you find, is that most people calm down relatively easily if you can give them a hope that it can all be somehow worked out, and that you're not their enemy. I daresay that translates to the streets. And even if it fails, it tends to put the people involved off guard enough that you and someone else can immobilise them with no real risk involved. Not once in that that two and a half years did I ever see a knife or gun used in anger. It's just not that common.

Probably the most hair-raising it ever got was when there were a bunch of skinhead protestors trying to disassemble the security wall around the back of the stage during the Pope's visit to the UK, as they were 'armed' with the various tools they were using to try and take the walls apart. But even there, it was just a case of holding the wall in place, nobody was trying to belt you with a crowbar (of which several were present).

In a situation where a citizen is being attacked by another citizen with a knife, it is rare a policeman would spot it on their own, they usually patrol in pairs. They're equipped with stab proof vests (heavy bloody things), and truncheons blunt enough to lay out any moron daft enough to try and engage. It's possible they'd get hurt, but they wouldn't stand back and watch unless it was obvious suicide.

Meanwhile, if someone has a gun, we have specialists for rapid deployment. Alright, it might not be as fast a help as a bobby pulling a sidearm on the spot, but judging by the number of cops with sidearms killed by people with semi-automatics in the US, I'm not sure the alternative is necessarily better. The only gun related killings here tend to be gang killings, and if the police have spotted someone in a car with a gun, you can bet your wage packet there'll be a police helicopter on it within fifteen minutes, the number plate will be being traced, and a specialist team en route in pursuit immediately.

 Ketara wrote:

Most events tend to involve large quantities of booze, so I got to see the police enact several takedowns, and deal with a few myself. In every case, the priority is de-escalation and conflict resolution. Is there a bloke swinging a bottle around threateningly at people? Offer to take him to another location for another drink. Agree with him that the other guy was a fether first. Make soothing noises at him. Heck, if you're a woman, flirt with him slightly. Whatever it takes to get close without suspicion and lead him somewhere to cool off, or worst case, let you slap cuffs on quickly. I've lost count of the number of times I saw it done or did a variant of it myself.

Not gonna lie

a hand full of those sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

which is actually IIRC is a reason to not shoot to wound or be extra physical, as IIRC those lawsuits get nuts and money keep getting payed out to those injured vs one straight payoff to the family or what not (not saying its right or anything)