I don’t like them getting any FLEO status. I don’t like the fact that it would be voluntary - I don’t particularly want to participate in their “safety” lottery. I also don’t like the fact that the main people pushing it, at least the only ones I have heard, are a group of labor unions and the political lackeys they can control and influence.
And to top it off, I’d bet money that simulations have been conducted that show an armed pilot can be picked clean just as quickly and easily as an unarmed one.
I don’t particularly care if they are armed but they need to conform to the same rules as everyone else. They pop some old lady by mistake and they face the music just as you would have to if you were shooting at an attacker and missed and hit a bystander by accident. They have a little too much to drink or get in an altercation and have an “accidental discharge” and they face the music just like you would under the same circumstances.
Which, IMO, would NOT be the case as currently proposed. They’d end up with a wrist slap just like all the other LEOs that discharge rounds in lounge parking lots and PD locker rooms or have a Lon Horiuchi type incident. I personally think we need a little less of that sort of thing.