aptly points out, the police in the USA have to be a swiss army knife, attending to an unexpectedly large variety of law-enforcement related tasks.
Like Swiss-army knife, NONE of the variety of tools are really that good at the task except for the one knife and maybe the toothpick. The rest are “barely adequate”.
If you’re in a dire situation, you’re grateful for that multi-tool knife. It’s not perfect but it’s something and it can be a lifesaver in desperate times in wilderness situations.
But…
look at a community.
Stable geography. Stable population. Stable traffic flow. Stable range of general human behaviors that are more or less regular and predictable.
It’s not a desperate environment. You can put together a WORKSHOP with proper TOOLS. A REAL set of saws. A nice box of disposable toothpicks. An actual fileting knife for your fish. A corkscrew wine opener (on a Boy Scout knife? I won’t go into that) that doesn’t break off.
IN short, public services adequate for the needs of the community, not nine months training, a badge and a gun, tasked with enforcing an impossible array of laws that bewilders court systems with split second accuracy and with a main tool, a pistol, training to kill if feelings are fear and that’s it.
How does that apply to this case specifically? I’m not on that yet. But I did want to iterate and amplify the problem we who argue see about the police: They are tasked with far too many things and are not very good at many of those tasks.