True and so, but I would expect a cop encountering the axe murderer (a question whose answer is impossible to know beforehand) to go for their gun rather than trying to overcome an axe with a baton. It certainly does not help that guns are more common in the US (or so I believe; I do not know the German regs on private citizen gun ownership, but would expect them to be more strict) and killing is far easier with a gun, but the same principle applies generally. Cops cannot afford to "leave the extreme cases," because, however uncommon and unlikely in a particular instance, they do exist, so a cop who disregards them puts his life at risk, especially patrolmen without partners.

That is pretty much my view of it: Like I say, I am very ambivalent, because I appreciate the priority they MUST place on caution, but know too well that many cops act aggressively rather than cautiously, which is never excusable. Some cops think their badge and gun make them unaccountable gods, but that is a wholly separate issue from cops exercising due caution when approaching an uncertain encounter. I think part of the reason small town cops and rural sheriffs are more prone to aggression is that such behavior is unwelcome in big city police forces; sometimes it is the REASON former metropolitan officers find themselves writing speeding tickets to motorists in the middle of nowhere, and knowing that only makes them more bitter and vindictive.

You may recall me citing this notorious case a few times, but I cannot help thinking there was a reason Jimmy Fennell went to police academy in Dallas but wound up an officer in tiny towns like Giddings and Georgetown that lack the revenue for police academies of their own. Maybe that police academy graduated him because they were unaware of him telling a classmate that if a woman cheated on him he would strangle her with his belt to avoid leaving finger prints, but there were surely other red flags that encouraged places like Dallas and Houston to reject him. Georgetown, on the other hand, is the place where city police (twice) found the Williamson County sheriff drunk and urinating on the side of the road but simply picked him up and drove him home, so I can see why Fennell might be more acceptable there. However, even Georgetown was not willing to overlook him responding to a domestic disturbance call where he subsequently kidnapped a woman at gunpoint and sexually assualted her. Take away his gun, however, and he probably does the same thing with his baton, confident his badge will deflect any negative consequences (after all, it let him get away with murder.)

In general, I think it depends on your location and circumstances, and often on which law enforcement agency is involved. On one of our many road trips from WI to TX and back, moondog and I found ourselves in the foothills of the TN mountains around 3AM on a clear night, and took advantage of the opportunity for some stargazing at relatively high altitude away from light pollution. While we were parked beside the road a TN state trooper drove by and noticed two guys parked by the road in the middle of nowhere staring at the sky at 3AM, so he pulled over to ask why. He ran our ID through the computer, saw we were not behaving erratically, then told us to have a nice night and drove off to catch criminals.

Had it been a rural county sheriff or small town peace officer things it might have gone more like the night when my parents were driving home from Houston at 3AM and a cop turned on his flashing lights as he pulled onto the highway, then wrote my father a ticket for failing to dim his lights to oncoming traffic (i.e. the cop.) My father had not received a ticket for about 20 years, which the TX Dept. of Public Safety rewarded by MAILING him renewed licenses without even the need to come in and retake the eyetest. The cop responded to that by informing him "that's not a license" to which my father replied, "well, it's what DPS gave me." Since we were in a rental, the cop then demanded the rental companys phone number so he could call and verify the car was not stolen. At 3AM. On Saturday night. In the end, my father was cited for failing to dim his lights (carrying a fine of nearly $200 in the late eighties, which was still the second least expensive citation they had) and my mother and I drive an alternate route between Houston and Austin to this very day; they got their pound of flesh, and it is the last they will ever see from us.

Whether US cops are aggressive depends on the police force and circumstances; most of them match courtesy with courtesy, but the farther you get from the cities the less oversight they get, and the more incestuous their relationship with it becomes. That opens the door for bad apples, but the inherent danger of law enforcement in a nation of 310 million is always present. Say there is a one in a million chance of running into the axe-wielding Hells Angel: That means there are 310 of them roaming America at any given time, and they rarely slow to 20 mph for school zones, so the odds a cop pulls one over for speeding are greater than the odds of meeting one any other time. In places where a liquor store robbery is the crime of the century, a lot of cops have a more cavalier attitude; in places that average several dozen murders annually cops are less inclined to look for trouble. The one constant is that caution is advisable everywhere but, once again, it is critical to distinguish between a cop exercising due caution because he is entering an unknown situation in an inherently dangerous job versus a cop behaving with aggressive disregard because he thinks his office entitles him to do so.