Gallup: 81% of Black Americans Want Police to Retain Local Presence

This has less to do with the style of shaping the response by what kind of questions are made, and more to do with what the question is. Support for a concept is not the same as support for a specific action. If you ask people to choose between multiple of bad choices in order to achieve a common good then the goal is likely to have a significant higher support than any of the bad choices.

An excellent illustration of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA&t=28s

Although in this case, it doesn't look like they had bad intentions and they seem to have dug at least a little below the surface and drawn what seem like sensible conclusions. I wonder if more detailed results and the full list of questions are available somewhere.

newbie789 6 hours ago [–]

This is fascinating because I am myself half black, lived in many communities of mixed demographics and never once heard a friend (of any race) say they want more police at all, ever.

What this tells me is that the rioters do not represent the people.

"many people?" How many? "Self awarded virtue?" Who is doing this?

I think most people still believe that we need some policing. But that policing isn't solving the longer term problems. We know that sending people to prison has a tendency to turn people into criminals even if their original crime was minor (not everyone of course). So why is that our strategy for dealing for crime rather than tackling the underlying social and economic issues? There's good reason to think that crime levels would be reduced if half the police budget was put into social programs (specifically in the US where police budgets are ridiculous).

However Detroit's PD still has bad cops even if they are miles ahead of other police departments, even though we could use more police in general - I don't think more "heavy handedness" or "aggressiveness" is useful or desired.

I've had this experience recently with a video game: played for a decade, switched to another game for a few months, moved back to first game - unlearned the controls (instinct is to use controls of second game). Interestingly now I've re-learned my ability seems to have improved.

I think it works with optical illusions too: sort term as well, if my kids are anything to go by (they might have misreported seeing the illusion - eg lady in hat|hag with big nose).

N=1~, but across various activities. I'm a bit older, so brain plasticity is not what it used to be.

I’m sorry but it is quite obvious that a whole lot of people carrying around ACAB (all cops are bad) and “defund the police” signs don’t go along with the this-is-what-they-actually-mean explanations. They mean to have their message taken at face value.

I saw myself spraypainted on a Minneapolis building “actually defund the police”. it is hard to reinterpret all cops are bad as anything but the obvious, and it is quite popular.

Unfortunately, this part is extremely vague and is missing a track record. So how it ends up in the real human world, is police funding gets cut and the funds get diverted into corrupt politicians' pockets. Like the Chicago mayor that successfully reduced police funding only to have a separate police detachment placed near her home.

Canada had an experiment of removing policing for just one day. It did not go well at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot

In this case, "Defund the Police" can mean a hundred different policy approaches from as simple as cut funding/staff/resources to as complex as redistributing that funding and resources to non-police support structures like social workers, mental health professionals, and the other roles that an omnibus police department handles.

In that sense, I don't support straight defunding of police. I do support redistributing funding/resources to new or expanded public health departments with a push for mental health and drug abuse support. But that needs to happen as part of a larger approach to decriminalization of drug possession/use (not selling/distributing, just possession/use), criminal justice reform where those convicted of such nonviolent crimes are released and record scrubbed, plus support for those to gain an education or employment without stigma. Ideally we can establish programs and tools to tackle the problems that led to a life of crime or drug abuse, focusing on reform.

That should also include immigration reform and the elimination of 'illegal' terms by expanding quotas and simplifying the process for citizenship. Cheaper education, child care, and medical care/prescriptions are also needed to reduce the burden on most working Americans so they can educate themselves, find better employment, and better care for themselves and their family. Ending food insecurity (which, by the way, it's insane the US even has) would be a solid start. People join gangs because they solve problems they face like wanting to belong, physical/financial security, etc. By working to resolve those issues for anyone in the states, immigrant or citizen, we can address the root cause not the symptoms.

Much more complicated that it seems, and that's not even getting into the various departments/programs/bills/etc required to progress that. This is also a heavily opinionated comment that clearly leans liberal and would face plenty of challenges from the current conservative side of US politics. But it would also be progress toward solving a series of issues that undermine freedom and peaceful society.

Maybe the police cruising down the street two or three times more often might've changed that. That's an interesting point.

Edit: To clarify, no person I've ever met that lived in that area ever expressed a desire for more police. It was mostly things about housing and mental health care with that particular issue. I am specifically talking about my experience in the Tenderloin in this case.

A LEO can be incredibly discourteous to you while still keeping you safe, and you might reasonably accept the former to gain a greater sense of the latter.

Harsh maybe, but also true. Ideally they would be polite, but my interactions with police (here in Aus) are exclusively when something has gone wrong.

>I have never in my life heard anyone talk about having 'more or less police'

I've personally known quite a few homeless people (and been one!) that had been repeatedly displaced by police that spoke at length about how they'd prefer fewer police, since the demolition of homeless camps are often perceived as being for show or just something that happened because officers were bored and simply had nothing to do that day.

They perceived it as being for show since they'd often be able to reconstruct the camp the very next day and largely be left alone for weeks or even months afterward.

I also know a woman that had a seriously dangerous stalker that had friends in the local police that somehow had the clout to send officers to her home on a whim. She's been arrested multiple times without ever being convicted of anything, usually not even charged at all. One time, she was 5150'd (mandatory 72 hour psychiatric evaluation) while in the middle of serving cake at her son's birthday because the stalker (who was about 300 miles away on that day) called his buddies and said she'd threatened suicide. She was able to produce proof on the scene that she hadn't contacted him at all, but was taken in anyway.

She has personally expressed on many occasions that she wished the police stuck to a more strictly defined set of duties so that there would be less opportunity for an abuser to use his connections to use them as his own personal harassment squad, which includes a reduction in total numbers of police presence.

I suppose we just know different people!

Re: My thought about posses.

>This has nothing to do with anything.

I felt as though I explained the connection in the next paragraph, but I'm more than happy to explain in more detail how a person could in some situation prefer the presence of trained police than state-funded posses that have considerably less oversight and accountability. If you could clarify why you think this is incorrect, I am more than happy to discuss this further.

> most Black communities are actually under policed, not over policed.

Can you expand on this? I'd love more data on this point. If you're referencing the poll itself, you'll see that I already am skeptical about how it should be interpreted.

I currently live in a rural area where the sheriff's office provides bullet-proof vests using county funds, and has vowed to expand the program in the coming year. I am not aware of any training necessary to volunteer for the posse (the sheriff's office doesn't publish any clear guidelines about this.) All that I am aware of is that there are roughly ~30 officers total on this half of the county, and over 380 posse members according to published numbers.

I have heard of a few cases of posse volunteers following people around in an intimidating fashion (Despite no wrongdoing occurring on the part of the of those followed. Every bit of weird behavior on their part was focused on Hispanic people and young women.) There was no news of anyone being reprimanded or ejected from the posse.

As for community policing goes, I think that term may mean different things to different people. If by community policing you mean "possibly untrained, armed and armored people doing patrols with opaque rules and structure with limited accountability to the community, all on the taxpayer dime" it sounds somewhat similar to regular policing without having to pay salaries or pensions.

I do not find that to be a meaningful difference (aside from the significant savings) , and not something that I would endorse.

I think in theory this is the idea, but I think in reality it isn’t. I know four people I grew up with who became police and all four were not people I’d want to run into. One, in high school, stated that being a cop is the only job you can have where you are paid to beat people up (I argued boxing, not realizing he’d later be a cop). Another was the middle school bully. Another was a high school drug dealer — who I’m not sure ever stopped. And the one black guy I knew who became a cop was just a jerk.

Maybe coincidence, but I have a feeling that the profession attracts exactly the mindset you don’t want as a cop. But people who don’t have that mindset probably don’t want to be cops.

Many people join the police because the pay very well, they're some of the highest paid government employees, and often make more than software developers do. They'll also get a full pension with benefits after working for only 20 years.

I've never seen an EMT or a social worker destroy homeless people's belongings, but I've seen cops do it. People who want to do the right thing typically go into other fields than law enforcement.

1.) Positions of power can attract people who have a longing for power, who may not be well-adjusted, emotionally-healthy individuals.

2.) Policing is a dangerous job, and constant personal danger can lead to regression away from the ideals we hold as a society. Something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When one of the basic needs (personal safety) is compromised, everything above it on the pyramid becomes less stable.

3.) Policing is an adversarial job. This leads to a us vs them mentality and also contributes to the next problem

4.) Racism. Racism has been part of our culture for a long time. This means... a.) some officers certainly will be coming into the force with racial biases to varying degrees, and b.) the fact that the jobs pits them as adversaries against certain races of people more than others will makes these biases worse.

Take the following - think about every single one of the human beings taking turns beating a completely subdued, incapacitated and probably unconscious person:

https://twitter.com/abelinasabrina/status/128144812054337126...

I could've picked from a few hundred similar clips, there's so many. And yet nothing will come of this. This conflict won’t ever be resolved until the police take responsibility for this sort of brutality. And they won’t, so it’ll periodically die down and simmer until another atrocity is committed and it’ll boil over again and again ad infinitum.

We can empathise with the police all we want, but this will just keep happening until someone steps in and puts an end to it. I have NO idea what that would look like, I know that when Georgia (i.e. former USSR country) had problems with their police they completely disbanded it and set it up again. Hopefully there's a less disruptive route than that but I honestly do not know.

Definitely agree that body cameras can help to clarify a lot.

Would you mind sharing a bit about what sorts of lies you may've been referencing? Or how "Donut Operator" on YouTube may've been helpful?

I'm not sure if I fully understood what you were trying to say, but it sounds like you may have some neat perspective on the topic.

The result of that experiment seems to imply even random people being "promoted" to have power over others with little demonstrable accountability is a recipe for disaster.

From the dim recesses of my memory what I took away from Plato's Republic is that you never want those who seek power to receive it and only those who don't care about it "deserve" it. (Clearly a bit of an oxymoron)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosopher-king

> On this view, philosophers are the last people who should or would want to rule. The Republic turns this claim upside down, arguing that it is precisely the fact that philosophers are the last people who would want to rule that qualifies them to do so. Only those who do not wish for political power can be trusted with it.

> Thus, the key to the notion of the “philosopher king” is that the philosopher is the only person who can be trusted to rule well. Philosophers are both morally and intellectually suited to rule: morally because it is in their nature to love truth and learning so much that they are free from the greed and lust that tempts others to abuse power and intellectually because they alone can gain full knowledge of reality, which in Books V through VII of the Republic is argued to culminate in knowledge of the forms of Virtue, Beauty, and, above all, the Good. The city can foster such knowledge by putting aspiring philosophers through a demanding education, and the philosophers will use their knowledge of goodness and virtue to help other citizens achieve these so far as possible.

I am a fairly optimistic person and believe people are mostly good. I agree some and perhaps many people that become police officers do it because they wish to do good. However, at a minimum I think the job attracts a lot of bullies and people that enjoy having power over others. And I think there is such a code of support of the "thin blue line" that ostensibly "good cops" can't be good cops because they allow "bad cop" behavior by their inaction.

This is a powerful article on that topic: https://www.theroot.com/maybe-there-are-no-good-cops-1790856...

I'd fix it all tomorrow by making a law that all wrongful violence/death/etc. judgements come out of the police pension and fraternal order of police funds instead of a city's budget. I bet that code of "omerta" would end in a heartbeat.

We do need some kind of forces for dealing with the occasional insane situation, but those happen rarely and public policy can be tailored to prevent many problems instead of being merely reactive and punitive. For example, poverty and lack of options cause social conflict, what if we did something about that instead of punishing people?

I find it very easy to blame people who are not willing to spend 10 seconds researching what a movement stands for. We can't say that it's okay to read three words on a sign, interpret it in your own context, and then blame the movement when you don't "understand" it. It's a slogan! What do you expect for a less-than-five-word sentence that people can unite under?

It's a pretty sad realization that perhaps the reason we have such violent police is, in part, because we have such a violent society.

It's hard to genuinely respect someone when there's a gun-related power dynamic forcing you to. That's not respect, that's just the threat of force. It's probably too late for America to adopt Peel's principles of policing but it's not done us much harm.

It's ironic that this is exactly how many feel about the police themselves.

My town just had the sheriff for example. The sheriff had a small crew of 1-2 deputies and a secretary. When something really rough would happen, the sheriff would round up a crew. It was a really light group of people. Lots of differences between that, a militia, community policing, etc. Even today some rural communities are “policed” very differently. Now that same town has a standing police force of 40 officers, a K-9 unit, and they have fancy military vehicles. This is with a change from 5000->10000 in population.

This was all up until pretty recently (1940s-1950s) too.

While that sounds great on paper, nothing the schools do is going to make a difference if the family support at home isn't there. You can't just throw money at the problem to make it better.

Anecdotal, but my sister used to work as a teacher & reading specialist in poorer areas. Per my last conversation with her on this topic, she said maybe 20% of the kids have a solid backing from family for education. The rest she had interacted with for one reason or another were a mix of parents who told her it was her job to teach and they wouldn't do that at home; another group of parents that were too drunk/drugged out to even answer the phone or call back; and another that would just swear at her for bothering them at home. All of her co-workers had similar accounts of this happening.

Kids that did want to learn in class were bullied for "acting white" and there were physical fights occurring weekly. She didn't teach high school, she taught 4/5th grade.

For us to make any progress with poorer schools there needs to be a community focus on education, having respect for each other, and having respect for the law. If you grow up for 18 years in an environment without those then nothing matters long term and we end up in the vicious cycle of poverty, crime, imprisonment, broken families and even more kids going through the same thing.

If the movement were "Demilitarize the police", then yes, that is absolutely something I could be in favor of.

As it stands, "Defund the police" is to me a weasel word version of "Abolish the police" and I honestly do think people are just being coy when they claim not to see that.

The level of "defund" people are advocating for varies pretty wildly.

Yes, reallocating budget is perhaps a reasonable thing.

A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though.

Oddly enough, I'd expect the widespread riots that have continued all summer long will have the exact opposite effect in the medium to long term.

they clearly mean defund when they say defund. Many other activists feel the same. why say defund when you mean something else.

Your comment is based on a false assumption. Demilitarizing the police would be a great idea! But the idea of defunding presumes excess funds.

Data on funding amounts are a bit harder to come by but they generally show the US has less police funding than Europe per capita.

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

Basically, with your suggestion, nothing will change, other than police garages. That's clearly not what the protestors want, and as such, we can immediately discard your assertion.

Most people's interpretation of "human rationality" is little more than a religion of its own.

Where the system is weakest is in the questions asked, as explained by Yes Prime Minister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

I can't see the tables gallup produced to make their claim, without those I can't see why it's of any interest.

I've even heard of police forces declining equipment because even though it's free, they don't have the budget to maintain it.

Keep in mind the total transfer of military surplus equipment to police departments is just $5.1B over the entire lifetime of the program, since 1997 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Offi...). The scale of this program has been completely blown out of proportion by activists.

Here in Seattle, protesters/rioters have been calling for a 50% defunding despite 96% of police budget being spent on people expenses, and not “military weapons” like Twitter claims. See https://sccinsight.com/2020/06/30/understanding-the-seattle-...

Could be correlation rather than causation, of course.

Police only pay for shipping. If those costs are swelling their expenses, they have a tiny budget.

The 1988 National Defense Authorization Act created a temporary program within the DoD to funnel surplus equipment to state law enforcement agencies involved in anti-drug activities at no cost other than shipping. The 1997 National Defense Authorization Act added anti-terrorism activities and made the program permanent.

(Hint: barely anything)

By which metric?

The other thing I have seen talked about in this context, and which I agree with, is that in the military you are trained as part of a larger unit and loyal to an even larger cause/organization.

Police, on the other hand, are given a partner who they might serve with primarily for years almost-exclusivity. They become loyal to a very small group of people over their career and don't have the same esprit de corps as the military.

To some degree I think they both attract dangerous/violent people who are joining for the wrong reasons. (The desire to hold power over others or just flat-out hurt people). But the Military is more likely to drum these people out, especially before the worst happens, where police don't.

Most people in the military rarely if ever touch a firearm for their entire time in the military after they qualify with it in bootcamp - some don't even do that. De-escalation training? That's diametrically opposite of how an infantryman is trained, and totally irrelevant to anyone outside those combat arms fields. Most people in the military would never receive a single moment of training relevant to police work in their entire time in the military.

What you might be seeing is that most veterans tend to be a bit older, a bit more mature, and perhaps tend to view a badge less as a power trip and more of a responsibility due to the experiences they've had. I can't say that for sure, but it makes a bit more sense than saying military are better trained than police, when the vast majority of military members get absolutely no relevant training in anything related to police work.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/bellevue-police-chief-says-...

Buzzfeed, Vox and even Snopes are a bit partisan on this.

Now they just shoot out their eyes.[1]

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/06/19/pol...

To everyone who views individual events out of context and condemns an entire system, I say you are actively harming society with your hubris.

Have you looked at any of the videos of police beating up peaceful protesters from the last few months?

Sure, there are cases where protests escalate into riots, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the many, many, documented cases of peaceful protests where police initiated violence.

How do you reconcile behaviour like this https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/20/christopher... with your view that "Polices are always either just there, or they escort specifically"? In this case they actively escalate violence against a peaceful and unarmed protester (who also happens to be a Navy vet).

How about Buffalo police assaulting this old man, leaving him with blood pouring from his ears? (https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/06/05/buffalo-police-push...) Are the riot police "wanting to do the right thing" here? Especially when they walk past him and leave him lying as his blood pools on the sidewalk? Can you honestly watch that video and feel fine with how the police handled that situation?

> but it's insane to think the majority of them are psychos.

This is a strawman. The post you replied to was not claiming anything close to this.

> I think most of them are fine with people just protesting.

This can be true at the same time as the viewpoint you're arguing against being true. A couple bad actors escalating things can result in a peaceful protest turning into an uncontrollable riot. Also, use of force orders vary by county, as do the orders handed down to the cops on the ground. Read https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro... for some evidence-based discussion around varying use-of-force policies and how they affect the outcomes during protests.

> There was a time when local police would turn fire hoses on peaceful protestors and release dogs.

We've made progress since then, but to claim we've fixed the problem is like claiming that racism in the USA ended with the victory of the civil rights movement.

Pretty sure police officers nightly beating of protestors, pulling off masks and pepper spraying their eyes and assaulting reporters is a very direct attempt at quelling descent.

- police pulling down mask to pepper spray protestor in the eyes while pinned to the ground: https://twitter.com/_WhatRiot/status/1292012255714787330

- police randomly puncturing a support vans tires, they have done this on multiple occasions for no real reason: https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1291711270903844867

- police beating and kicking an unresisting protestor: https://twitter.com/1misanthrophile/status/12959623991035453...

- more police jabbing protestor with batons: https://twitter.com/danielvmedia/status/1292228819588452359

That's not really true. There is an area between "lawful protesting" and "rioting" that's usually called civil disobedience. Civil disobedience as usually understood is peaceful, but it's also by design inherently disruptive.

In Austin, TX protestors blocked the main highway through the city. That was obviously incredibly disruptive, but many people believe the city police's forceful response of shooting less-lethal rounds relatively indiscriminately into the crowd was the exact type of response people were protesting against. A large group of trauma doctors in Austin wrote a paper arguing against using these types of rounds for crowd control due to the horrific injuries they treated: https://www.statesman.com/news/20200816/beanbag-rounds-cause...

If you followed the nightly protests in Portland OR with any closeness it'd be abundantly clear. Examples just in the past 20 days:

- police pulling down mask to pepper spray protestor in the eyes while pinned to the ground: https://twitter.com/_WhatRiot/status/1292012255714787330

- police randomly puncturing a support vans tires, they have done this on multiple occasions for no real reason: https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1291711270903844867

- police beating and kicking an unresisting protestor: https://twitter.com/1misanthrophile/status/12959623991035453...

- more police jabbing protestor with batons: https://twitter.com/danielvmedia/status/1292228819588452359

You see enough of these videos and you appreciate the cops and just vindictive and angry at the prospect of losing "power". It doesn't matter what protestors do (and they most they've done to directly threaten officers is thrown water bottles and apples and flares into an empty police building), police will use any reason (or none) to beat protestors.

* As far as I know these videos have resulted in NO reprimands to officers, might as well be standard operating procedure as it continues to happen nightly

In the same vein, I saw store owners starting to shoot at protestors.

I suspect, generally, all parties would rather have police keeping the peace. No one wants a gun battle in the streets as people try to protect their property from looters.

I'm not 100% sure what I'd do in this case, but these are not friendly protests. I'm finding the police remarkably restrained. Even in some of these videos we are seeing, people are taking police officers weapons and / or assaulting a police officer before they open fire.

If you're attacking someone who's armed (police officer or not) you should be prepared to suffer the consequences. (I'm not saying all cases are like this, just mentioning that there's a clear tilt to the coverage here).

I have no idea how people have fallen for the misleading narrative that violence was caused by police. It’s a textbook example of either the naivety of an emotionally charged mob, or incredible social media marketing, or both.

Unfortunately many well-meaning protesters were also swept up in events that were subsumed by antifa/far left groups whose aim was confrontation and violence. For them, the coming backlash against their movement (due to violence) is going to sting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

Many articles from BLM leaders making this unambiguous statement.

Anecdotes aside, there doesn't seem to be a significant difference between races on their opinions of police (and whether they want more or less of them in their neighborhoods).

There's a ton of problems I have law enforcement in the US, and the bulk of it boils down to terrible screening of personnel and inappropriate training. Fixing both of those issues will require more funding, not less. Better psychological screening (to eliminate sociopaths), higher pay (to retain quality personnel, and be able to rotate people off the streets more frequently), longer training and with different curriculum (stop learning tactics from Israeli counter-insurgency personnel), etc...

Yes. I'd aim for 100%.

Obviously that's hard to reach, but I think it's certainly possible to do better than 50%. (Though note that it was presumed 50%, not actual measured 50%, so it's more about perception than necessarily about reality).

As you allude to, many interactions with the police are not in the context of getting arrested. You might be the one to call the police if you need them for whatever reason, you might be just an onlooker, you might randomly see police moving around your city for whatever reason.

But even in cases like speeding tickets, there's no reason for the police not to be courteous and respectful, so long as you behave that way.

Traffic stops are the only pleasant interactions I’ve had with on-the-clock officers (but of course not all of those have been respectful).

Since fewer than 52% of Americans have been convicted of a crime, I assume this is a fairly common perspective.

This is what Camden did when they "defunded": dissolve the city police, bringing the city under county sheriff jurisdiction, then pay for new staffing at the county level. They may have been able to save some money because they broke the police union, but in the long term funding increased.

Do you actually consider it prudent to ignore situations of danger and not respond to them with the proper context?

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Everybody always remembers that last part, but take a look at the very beginning. Three branches—Executive, Legislative, and Judicial—deal in the world of law and are supposed to keep each other in check and balance. Three branches—Militia, Police, and Military—deal in the world of force and are supposed to keep each other in check and balance. Except now in 2020 we're being told nobody in the first group should ever need a tool to defend themselves, and the other two groups resemble each other more and more every day.

I strongly disagree, and submit that a big part of the problem is this exact mentality.

Police should get gobs of training, they have to take the high road, they have to learn to not let their buttons get pushed, etc., etc. - all of those things are true. But the primary responsibility has always rested and should always rest on the shoulders of individual citizens that the police are interacting with. People need to be accountable for their actions.

I'm very sorry when anyone loses their life due to an altercation with the police, but the elephant in the room is that pretty much all of these are completely and easily preventable if people show even a smidgen of accountability for their actions. The common factors across victims of police shooting is not race, but (a) commission of a crime and (b) resisting arrest. Remove either from the equation and the death rate drops dramatically; remove both and it's virtually zero.

Yes, let's continue to figure out how to improve law enforcement. If we find actual instances of racism, let's work to eradicate them. Whatever problems exist in policing, let's study them and fix them. But let's not pretend for a moment that any real progress will be made while there is a pervasive attitude that crime and/or belligerence towards cops isn't a massive part of the problem.

Why does this study show that so many black people want the same or more police presence? Because the overwhelming majority of them (and everyone else) obey the law and, in the event they do interact with the police, refrain from punching them, fleeing the scene, etc.

it is of course the officer's job to deal with the situation. --

here is an analogy of a pedestrian crossing. It is the job of the motorist to pay attention, but it helps to train the pedestrian as well. While the responsibility for the accident is put on the motorist, wont the pedestrian be better off with the training?

This is an absolutely naive position to take. Police have no such obligation, and citizens should absolutely be educated and informed on their rights.

Does that apply if a suspect pulls a gun or a knife on them? De-escalation clearly failed, must be their fault.

It's not the job of any individual citizen to fix the police, but it sure is the job of the democratic society as a whole to fix it (because if you make it the police's job, they're certainly not going to actually do it).