[Itse]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

I remember being in Cochem, Germany with 3 extended family members a couple years ago, sitting on patio overlooking a parking lot drinking wine. A drunk goon comes barreling into the parking lot, stumbling into cars, yelling at tourists watching him, and generally being a disruptive arsehole. He was a large dude, very intimidating physically and looked like he was ready to rumble with whomever crossed his path.

We see 2 squad cars pull up and I start to think this is it, he's gonna get taken down hard given the damage and disturbance he was causing. Even as the cops cops got out and began to approach him, the man took an aggressive stance and tone towards them. Us being North Americans, we wouldn't have blinked an eye if the cops had taken him down hard, beat him around a bit, then dragged his ass to the car. That's what we are used to seeing this side of the pond. I was 100% expecting it.

Instead the officers mostly sat back and 2 of them came forward to talk to the guy. They de-escalated the situation and within minutes the guy sat down on the ground against a car and was talking back and forth with them. The officers weren't being aggressive. They weren't ordering him around. Not a single weapon was drawn. The other officers let the 2 'negotiators' do their job and stood back calmly and just observed.

Eventually the man got up and willingly walked with them to one of the cars. No handcuffs, no violence, no aggression. They sat there with the door open for a bit with him in the back, talking to him, then eventually they all drove away with him in the back.

It was one of the calmest and coolest things I've ever witnessed. My aunt and uncle are both German citizens and were translating to us what they were talking about. They were talking with the guy about his life, his job, his evening. No one was reading him his rights, saying what a loser he was, or any of the other jabber you would hear in NA. Just calm and collected. Eventually they asked (!) the man politely if he would come to the station so they could sort it all out.

My aunt and uncle said this was typical of the German police. Very rarely do they pull out a weapon, and it's even rarer they actually use it. They also do quite a bit of training and many positions are required to have a post-secondary degree and they have a diligent process of filtering out inadequate trainees.

New Era's description of US police are quite different. Seems quite a few literal psychopaths make it onto the force. People who enjoy asserting dominance over others and take delight in causing pain. People with ties to white supremacy groups who see it as their god-given duty to fight the ''colors and blacks'' who they think are overtaking their country. Combine that with a massive weapons industry that caters to these department to supply all the tough-guy weapons they desire, it's a recipe for a disaster.

Canada lies somewhere between the middle of the US and EU model. However IMO it's more leaned towards the US model with the militarization of the police force, even here in Calgary. I hope that changes. Things like changing all the squad cars to look like military vehicles to match their NA counterparts was a stupid move.

What you described in Germany is my experience with Finnish police too. They're pretty good at handling situations through talking. That ALSO requires training, but I'm sure it makes the life of a patrolling office massively easier.

Just the tone of voice they use is different from how a US officer opens up dialogue, and they clearly know how to phrase things to de-escalate the situation instead of escalating it. When the police show up, they're a calming presence in a situation, and I can't imagine them losing their temper as easily as you tend to see in the US videos.

There's always people who can't be reasoned with, but even my own experience says that as long as you keep your cool and choose your words, the vast majority of difficult situations and budding conflicts can be resolved peacefully.