[jfengel]

I think you've put your finger on it. Because guns are ubiquitous in the US, the police are afraid every single time they interact. This leads to mistakes, sometimes deadly ones. "Almost zero chance" times millions of interactions means a few very, very bad outcomes.

Those outcomes may be clustered around certain people who already have a tenuous relationship with the police. Again, a small amount of racism times a lot of interactions leads to some very visible issues. And now that people have cameras all the time, those very visible issues are obvious to everybody.

There doesn't seem to be any solution to this. The US has committed to its guns. Police must assume that you are armed, and agitated by having to deal with police (even if they've pulled you over for a genuine but minor infraction such as a moving violation or equipment failure). In this circumstance, people are going to die. It's simply a thing we have tacitly accepted.

There will also be people who won't tacitly accept it, and their outrage is also a thing we have to accept. They live in fear of an armed police force the same way the armed police force is afraid of them. That's going to lead to escalating violence, and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about that.

[jariel]

The TV show 'COPS' would demonstrate very vividly how insane some people can be and of course they are 'selected clips' - but when they film in Canada ... almost nothing happens.

In LA, there used to be (still are?) news items on the 'Helicoptor following the chase' which, as a Canadian, was dumbfounding to me.

Youtube vides of 2 police arresting a man, 4 hands on him, they're putting on the cuffs and them bam he goes for his gun (!!!) - literally right has 2 officers have him under control, the assailant tries to kill the cops.

Traffic cops have people 'take off' on them far too often.

So combine this with the very real availability of guns, and you have quite dangerous situations.

Again, I would repeat that the cops are still overzealous, but unless you're antagonizing you have little to worry about other than maybe a cop in a bad mood.

It's not populist for people to have to deal with the fact that Americans themselves are statistically poorly behaved when confronting cops.

Americans often see a funny bit of behaviour on the news and think 'Oh, that's so Florida' - but for people outside the US the entire country looks like 'Florida'.