The Guardian's big scoop, and a question for you

Congrats to the Guardian on getting that video of the coppers and poor Mr Tomlinson.

Back in my days in Gotham City, I did some reporting on police brutality issues and these internal investigations and the like. In America at least, it's extremely rare that review boards like the IPCC (civilian complaint review boards, we call them, or CCRBs) find against the officer. In New York, the CCRB in my time was indeed an independent board, with offices away from Police Plaza and staffed by independent employees, but the specific case-review panels tended to be weighted toward the cops. I suppose it's the same in the UK.

I did learn, though, in looking into and writing about several cases, not to be a knee-jerk lefty and reflexively assume that the cop was guilty. I'm not going to pass judgment on the current case, having merely watched a short piece of video from 3,000 miles away (I'm not as stupid as Bill Frist). Many problems tended to involve repeat-offender cops or rookies or were reflective of poor training.

But here's something I've wondered about for several years now, which I suppose applies to America more than Britain, since as I understand it your officers, or most of them, don't carry sidearms (or has that changed?). Anyway, the question I've wondered is, why do cops carry only bullet-shooting guns? Why aren't they also armed with some kind of stun gun that puts someone down or even out for 15 minutes but doesn't kill them?

This was science fiction in the 60s ("phasers on stun, Scotty!"), but it seems to me doable now. Cops should have both the regular gun and the phaser, and if someone is trying to kill them, they should be able to kill back, but in all circumstances short of that use the phaser. It sure seems to me that a lot of killings by cops in America would be eliminated. I suppose the police unions are or would be against it. But big-city police unions spend millions of dollars a year defending wrongful shooting suits.