Your statement assumes crazy people are also stupid and incompetent. They are neither. They are just as able and competent to use a baseball bat in lethal manner as a sane person. The only difference is their perception of necessity and motivation, i.e. they are not necessarily perceiving and responding to the same universe we are (particularly during a psychotic episode) which makes them unpredictable. The psychotic may not even be attacking you, but the demon on your shoulder that you do not see or hear. They may believe they are saving you.
But you will have no way of knowing that, will you? Assuming that you are smarter, faster and more capable may just end up with your head being a lump of mush. And assuming you can talk or reason with a psychotic is another ignorant assumption, a huge risky maybe.
The problem is not the cops, the problem is a mental health system that leaves these troubled ill people out living on their own with insufficient supervision to make sure they are taking their meds and without protection from predators.
The chronically mentally are preyed upon and suffer far more violence than they dish out but that doesn't mean we should tie the police's hands when dealing with them. We'll just end up with dead cops to go with the dead mentally ill person.
Every time a mentally ill person dies in a confrontation with the police, they get endlessly second guessed and blamed. But the blame lies with us as a society for not bothering or caring to create and fund an intelligent and comprehensive system for housing and treatment. Instead we have "community health" plans that basically sets them up to be beaten up for their disability checks and food stamps on a monthly basis.
As for what I think "protect and serve" means, it means protecting the community from the individual. Sucks, but there it is, when you present yourself as a disturbance and a threat to the community, bad things can result.
The tragedy is that we keep placing the mentally ill and the police in a conflicting and incompatible relationship and expecting it to turn out differently.
It is a rule written to protect the lowest common denominator of a policeman from his own incompetence.
"Don't pull a gun unless you are going kill someone with it." Assumes that the user is too stupid to escalate their response. Incapable of decent marksmanship. Stupid enough to wait too long to bring their gun to the ready. And not to be trusted to not shoot someone if they have a loaded weapon in their hand. When I investigate something suspicious in one of my properties I do so with my gun in my hand. It provides more time to think, not less. The same practice is true in the U.S. military when dealing with varying levels of threats (not including war). Weapons are selected, armed, and set to fire. Self-defense is always an option, but lethal force is never a must. Somehow the military is able to arm a missile against an aircraft acting in a hostile manner without feeling that they are obligated to then fire it.
The correct response to a person brandishing a knife, sane or crazy, is to pull your weapon and cover them, and assess the situation. When someone is 15-20 feet away with a knife, there is no reason for someone who considers themselves a trained professional to kill them. The police are supposed to be trained professionals, right? Supposed to be more concerned with public safety than their own, right?
Such police action is all the more inexcusable when there is more than one officer present. You're insisting that the person with the knife is going to suddenly leap 20 feet, get missed by three officers, and stab someone.
Again, you and other posters are proving why the public is less and less comfortable with police actions that have more to do with protecting themselves than serving the public.
Far too many LEO's are incompetent with their firearms and instead of providing more training, they are taught to shoot with less provocation. It makes perfect sense that a sane man with a knife might likely put it down if he has a gun pointed at him, thus there is a great reason to point guns at him (even if you don't shoot). For a person have a mental issue, you are their to serve and protect them too. Killing them should be the absolute last option. Your claim that purposely wounding someone isn't an option is silly. You can say that its not guaranteed to be nonlethal, you can say its more difficult, you can say that incompetent people shouldn't attempt it, but to say that its simply not an option for people who are supposed to be trained professionals is just nonsense.
Not at all.
1 They are neither. They are just as able and competent to use a baseball bat in lethal manner as a sane person. The only difference is their perception of necessity and motivation, i.e.
There is another very important difference. They are innocent. They are one of the people that police are supposed to serve and protect.
If the police are just going to shoot these people, like mad dogs, then people need to stop calling the police to help subdue them.