> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?

I'm from the southern US, which is historically more conservative than the rest of the country. I'm not in any way claiming that the following viewpoints are universal and accepted in this region, but a large enough portion of the population holds these viewpoints, preventing further progress:

1) Anyone who gets shot by cops must have done something to warrant being shot. Even for people who get shot during traffic stops, that person did something to get pulled over in the first place. If they had a criminal record in the past, even if they didn't commit an offense during the situation where they were killed, there's a good chance they would have offended again, and this preemptive killing probably prevented a future crime.

2) In the case of this swatting incident, the blame lies 100% on the person who made the false police report. No false report, no shooting. The cop had reason to believe based on the report that the man who emerged from the door claimed to have a gun and had killed in the last hour, so it was plausible to believe he may try to retaliate and the appropriate force was used. No time for fact checking during an active shooter situation. "Shoot first, ask questions later" is considered an appropriate way for the police to deal with criminals.

Obviously there are numerous refutations, and that isn't lost on people. Many people will justify it by saying that regardless of the circumstances, the police put their lives on the line every day, so that gives them a pass when they make mistakes. Many people would view your suggestions as weakening the police, and the militarization of US police is viewed by many as making us safer, not less safe.

> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does

Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but a more direct measure might be number of officers killed. The first source I find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service) says that 10 Norwegian police officers have been killed since 1945, or something like 0.14 per year. The US figure (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297) is something like 50 per year, though that's actually way down since the 80's. Running with those numbers and dividing by population today, the US has almost six times as many officer deaths per capita. And that's an average; there are many places where it's as safe as Norway, and some places where it's a hundred times more dangerous.

> Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice

Actually, they don't spend a lot of time doing gun practice which is a problem. Police firearms training budgets are lacking in most states. They also don't do a lot (if at all) training to deal with dogs unless their has been public outrage. A growing separation from the community they police is also a factor.

SWAT is a whole different problem. The overuse of SWAT to do the simple things like serve warrants and the whole war on drugs has been a disaster. Its isn't the populace with guns, its the lack of real training, a cover everyone's butt attitude, and a percentage of people on a power trip. Look at the incident with the nurse in Utah. No guns just CYA[1].

1) http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/health/nurse-arrested-police-p...

Just a side note, because you’re from Norway, that may be surprising to some. The US is #1 with 1.01 guns per capita, and Norway is #9 with .31 guns per capita.

In any case, i don’t think the number of guns per capita explains the difference in gun crime rates between the two.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per...

> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?

Keep in mind that most people in the U.S. care about issues like this in an abstract way. They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. If you ask people who they voted for the day after a primary, most will have a hard time even recalling the names in the downballot races, let alone what the positions were. The people who do tend to vote for these positions tend to be extremely focused on particular policies - they only care if the politician supports or opposes some obscure regulation that benefits them personally.

So in the end you really are talking about a very small number of activists and groups that are trying to bring about change, and they're fighting against entrenched groups opposed to said change - or more often than not, just general political inertia (why rock the boat if most voters don't care?).

There has been traction in the effort to get more body cameras, though, so there have been some improvements. But there doesn't yet seem to be enough people who care and act accordingly to bring about the big changes that are needed.

Non US'ers should understand that Europe, and Scandinavian countries in particular, is a different world than the US. No social safety net, lack of public transportation, exorbitant health care costs, tragically ineffective 'war on drugs', guns, violent crime, poverty. Honestly, the US really kinda sucks now, for most people living here.

There is no viable feedback loop at this time. The FBI will get involved if there is a consent decree. This provides oversight, but that requires a Justice department that will investigate police departments. You see this happen after a litany of civil rights violations. But Sessions and Trump have made it clear that that won't happen. Maybe Congress will get involved after the midterms if things change or if there are mass protests. However, since police departments are local you might be able to put pressure on city councils and the mayor / maybe governor to make some progress.

But there should be better training but that will probably only happen if juries start to decide that "being fearful for your life" is not a sufficient defense.

To your point about non-lethal weapons: it seems to me that we haven't yet claimed the low-hanging fruit in the US when it comes to this problem. Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons?

It will probably introduce new problems, such as even more unnecessary use of force. It addresses absolutely none of the cultural or institutional problems. But it may also save lives and better maintain justice. A family of a person wrongly tazed has been afforded more justice than a family of a person wrongly shot and killed.

People who hold out for either a panacea or nothing will be unsatisfied. But if we can at least separate incapacitation from lethality, we may be able to save lives while still satisfying the cultural and institutional lust for violence.

At one time, police in the U.S. were trained that to shoot to kill-- only. If the officer discharged the weapon at all, she emptied the magazine and aimed to kill. No warning shots, no shots to disable, that would be against training.

Thus confusion, inattention, or misunderstanding in the face of commands from a self-identified officer easily can be a lethal situation.

> is there any significant push It'll be business as per usual: "shit happens", "thoughts & prayers" etc. Just another one of the "periodic plagues from the gods" [paraphrased] that you can't do anything about.

All good points except for the last one even if you could even theoretically develop practical armor that could stop cal. 50 round it would still be able to kill a person through the impact force damaging internal organs.

I don't think it's reasonable or effective to entirely expect police to solve this problem. Here is the account from the article:

    Livingston said when the door opened, officers gave Finch commands to put his hands up and walk toward them. He complied for a "very short time" and put his hands back down. He raised them again, and then lowered them for a second time, Livingston said.

    "The male then turned towards the officers on the east side of the residence, lowered his hands to the waistband again, then suddenly pulled them back up towards those officers at the east," he said. "The officers on the north side of the street feared the male pulled a weapon from his waistband, retrieved a gun and was in the process of pointing it at the officers to the east. Fearing for those officers’ safety, the officer on the north side fired one round."

From my perspective, they are describing a very threatening movement. Stuff that looks like that is how officers die. Asking them to not react when someone does that puts them in pretty serious danger. A sudden movement like that is how gunfights start.

It's tragic that it's also something a panicked innocent citizen might do! But that doesn't change the fact that it's a genuinely threatening thing to do.

I think probably the most effective way to solve the problem would be to make people better aware of what makes you appear threatening and non-threatening in a confrontation.

Some of us have been insulated from violence for so long that we don't know what it looks like. We have no reason to know that innocent sudden movements can just like dangerous sudden movements.

I'm not saying the guy's death is his fault. The whole thing is a tragic misunderstanding between good people. But I am saying he could have been educated to prevent it. I don't think it's realistic to ask police to solve the problem at great risk to themselves when regular people can solve it by learning that the best way to avoid misunderstandings and snap reactions is to move slowly and deliberately in any confrontation.