I’ll start with easy one:  The police have automatic weapons.  (Or are the just semi?  Can’t tell.   Doesn’t matter anyway.)  In the civilized world riot police carry shields and truncheons.  Sending in a heavily-armed paramilitary force is not how responsible people act to de-escalate a tense situation.

A friend of mine once said, “There are a lot of assholes in the world.  The police are who we hire to be assholes back to them.”   While I don’t disagree with the sentiment in general, the devil is in the details. The militarization of the police is bad news.