Having someone with mental health training would have been more appropriate. This kid was autistic and needed to be calmed down by someone who knows how to de-escalate a situation with an autistic person.

Instead he got a cop who only knows how to shoot people.

To a hammer every problem is a nail.

Wait, they don't?

In Germany every cop has to learn at least the basics of Jujutsu for exactly this reason. If you go to a jujutsu training as a civilian, usually more than half in the class are cops

I saw a video from the UK where a guy charged a cop with a knife and the cop just smacked it out of his hand with a baton and put him in handcuffs. Police in the UK only shoot two or three people each year, and the per capita injuries to the police are lower, seems like a better system.

Any decent martial arts instructor will tell you that if someone has a weapon, your best bet is to run. You can be a master of any art; if your opponent has a knife, you will get cut, or stabbed. It's almost impossible to disarm an aggressive attacker who has a knife without getting cut; unless you get lucky, it usually becomes a struggle to control the knife, and the person holding the handle gets cut up far less. Your martial arts training may allow you to eventually dominate the situation, disarm your attacker, and defeat your opponent -- but you're still going to get cut up in the process. If they have a gun, then all your training for is give you a slight chance of not getting shot, maybe, if everything goes perfectly. The only time things go like in the movies is in the movies. And cops aren't going to be martial arts masters; the best we could hope for for most of them is some basic submission technique, like the shit that murdered George Floyd.

Yes: cops should be getting focused time in de-escalation, but expecting cops to grapple with people, when they have no idea what weapons the person may have concealed in their bodies, or to expect them to perform some Steven Segal weapon disarming is unrealistic.

I agree with you, though; guns are not the answer, and I'm not sure I believe cops should even be armed - although, this is there US, and about 2% of the population goes around daily armed.

It's far less dangerous than a gun and ideal for melee opponents because cops can still maintain a certain amount of range. You didn't read the article, did you? The kid was approaching fast charging with the sharp end of a gardening tool over his head while being told to back off, I think there is no question that he was suffering a manic episode. There were a number of ways to deal with the situation, but before reaching for the gun they could have reached for the taser. Tasers are quite risky, yes, but less so than shooting several bullets in a residential zone at someone.