sockwithaticket wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 10:17 am
weegie01 wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 9:17 am
sockwithaticket wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 8:54 am
Maybe not hiring people who won't try and stop someone who's shooting kids is what the police should be doing over there? Their society has a particular set of circumstances which means their law enforcement need to be willing to stand up to an active shooter. Not every state has a border patrol who can swing in and take care of things if the police are too scared.
Most cops have some kind of rifle and a shotgun in their squad car, so there's no need to go in with just the pistol. It's going to be very rare that they're 1 v 1, they'll typically have a partner.
Without going into details, my father was a failure as a parent and as a human being. An all round thoroughly unpleasant human being.
He was also a Scottish policeman. There is no doubt that we are talking different worlds, but despite my loathing of him, one thing I am sure about is that if it was a question of him, or his colleagues, putting their lives at risk to stop children dying, they would have done something.
Sorry about your dad.
That's the point really, there a certain character qualities that should be a requirement for jobs like police officer and one of those surely has to be a willingness to assist vulnerable members of the public even at personal safety risk. It's fine if a person isn't cut out for that, but that also means they can't do the job.
When I joined the job a significant minority were ex-forces, lots of Falklands and NI vets. Many others were bizarrely ex-miners. The main requirement was being able to keep a police hat 5'10 off the ground. There were some real, big hard bastards, for a reason, we were a force to keep society safe.
There were no armed response vehicles but all ex-forces were authorised to draw handguns from a local private armoury.
It is totally changed days and the vast majority of cops now are young, university educated kids who have no concept or ability about how to deal with truly violent situations. Also handicapped by the fact that the few that can know they will get no backing at all to deal with the aftermath.
Oddly when the first armed response vehicle were muted, the majority of ex-forces refused to apply and the general consensus was that those that did volunteer were the wrong type.