According to the comments, the solution here is for the police to get in a wrestling match with the man running at them with a knife.
Very reasonable thing to expect.
He is some reading material on why people hate the NYPD so much. We don’t want wrestling matches but shooting someone in the head for $2 is just plan bad. Don’t worry there are a lot more examples if you like.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Amadou_Diallo
https://apnews.com/article/subway-shooting-stray-bullet-nypd-6dceddf47afc27db128ebba98f2076b5
If train stations stocked japanese man-catcher poles (sasumata) they could easily subdue a knife wielding suspect with zero risk to themselves and bystanders. No one is saying go toe to toe with a knife wielding person.
Ya, zero risk to everything once you get 7 or 8 police wielding them at the same time, per one violent person, in a crowded subway with potentially no walls to pin them down to, with the extreme possibility of someone just pulling a gun on you when you have both your hands occupied with a stick. Mancatchers work great on gifs and videos, but suck in the actual world. Especially when you get charged by a dude wielding a knife. You’ll 100% have the time to “break the glass in an emergency” and to deal with said person. Especially when the situation turns from “let’s run after this guy that skipped the fare” into “holy shit that’s a knife and I’m going to die”.
Literally every other police force in the world could handle some untrained bloke with a pocket knife, ditto for a pair. They do it every day.
But no, the solution here is to never have a system in place where the people catching fare jumpers are the same mentally unstable domestic abusers who are given a carte blanche to kill anyone who does anything less than kiss the ground they walk on
I’m from New Zealand, our police shoot people with knives occasionally. I’m not convinced this would have ended differently here, or any other country.
A knife is an incredibly dangerous weapon, and the alternative solutions being proposed here just aren’t realistic.
The man catcher poles thing was pretty funny though.
