The "Fuck the Police!" mindset isn't very common in the UK (so far as I know)... So the police don't get involved in many of the school and domestic issues that are commonly dealt with by US police.
This bit is quite erroneous. Most major cities will have this mindset very much (especially in the more Americanized areas), and the UK is gradually experiencing a widening gap between the classes, as well as the general mistrust of youths in sports clothes (of which they are without number) by the police, and a general hatred of the police by the youths. Police do frequently patrol troublesome schools, but on a case by case basis.
Not certain you understood me here. It is extremely common over here for people to throw coffee, scream, or spit at police when getting pulled over for running a red (stop) light, told not to walk down the center of the street, or or other trivial situations. To a very real extent, it's not simple distrust or tension. It's outright, active
hatred of the police and everything they stand for. If it's that bad over there, I freely admit ignorance. As for the rest, I wasn't referring to patrolling of problem schools or domestic violence. Police have often been called into schools because a student wrote on a desk, shouted at a teacher, was tardy, or committed some other minor rules infraction. The schools are afraid to discipline in any way because people are so quick to sue. On the domestic front. police are routinely called in to deal with unruly children. Not violently unruly, just disobedient.
They are also better trained, as Europe in general is more willing to pay for services than we are over here.
Well they are very well trained, but you should also keep in mind that countries in Europe like Great Britain have cut spending and the size of their police force, whilst still maintaining a decrease in crime.
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Your police were funded extremely highly relative to ours before you began cuts, and I don't think your current levels are down to what ours were before cuts started. I should point out that our crime rate is also dropping overall.
(US police are fairly lightly armed overall by world standards)
Over here they're the poster-boys for military like police
We had a rather famous advert on the metro a while back of a split screen showing a British policeman in his blue attire looking glum and on the other side, this bulking mass of guns and muscle (with added sunglasses) which while looking absolutely awesome, was ultimately satirical in nature and it was pretty obvious this just wouldn't work here.
One of the most convincing arguments for banning guns I've heard from a minority of Americans comes from those who want to ban guns if the police follow the same law as the civilians, leaving the guns to specialist units.
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I suspect there's a fair bit of inaccuracy here, either accidental or deliberate. In most US cities, each cop carries a pistol, and each car carries a single shotgun. Outside of SWAT teams and riot police (which are equipped with tear gas launchers), these are usually the only lethal weapons in the department. The also carry tasers and/or pepper spray. That's it. For most officers, the pistol is never used. Outside of storage, maintenance and practice, it's fairly rare for it to even leave the holster.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14443011 times)