As for the topic, it's one I am very interested in and one that I have thought quite a bit about. Now, I am a police officer in Germany as well and I have never been to the US in my adult life, so my experiences come entirely from interactions with US citizens in person or online, as well as reading about the topic. This of course means you might want to take them with a grain of salt. Anyway, here are my thoughts on it:
Germany and the USA, while on the surface quite similar (both western, christian, wealthy industrial nations), are in fact vastly different culturally.
The USA is a very young nation and it was literally born out of revolution and war. The fight against an oppressive government and oppressive people has shaped and defined your nation and a distrust of government is one of the big pillars of your culture. Additionally the USA, in my opinion, has a somewhat violent and aggressive culture, some might call it a 'Wild West spirit'. I think most US citizens would generally agree with the sentiment that a 'real American' does not take any ****, stands up for himself and would rather take someone's life or give up his own than have someone tread on him or his rights ('My home is my castle', 'From my cold, dead hands').
I have found that American citizens are much more prone to support vigilante justice, even if that 'justice' comes in the form of deadly force. A while ago, I posted an article on /r/ProtectAndServe[1] about a shooting at a courthouse in my city. A man shot and stabbed two people to death who were accused of seriously injuring the man and killing his brother in a rather shady car trafficking deal gone wrong.
I expected most people to react with the same disgust I felt at someone taking the law in his own hands like that. Instead, everyone supported the man and congratulated him on killing those two men.
I feel this comes down to the 'Wild West spirit' I mentioned before, which is also evident in your outrageous prison sentences and insane monetary compensation for suing people.
I feel like many Americans have a 'If they **** up, **** em' attitude. Did you know that the media in Germany are not allowed to show pictures of people arrested or accused of crimes, not even after they have been convicted? They aren't even allowed to print their full names. Why? Because our society feels that even someone who has commited crimes still has a right to privacy. How is someone going to reintegrate into society after their sentence is served if everyone in their city knows they have been arrested?
'If they **** up, **** em'. 'If they **** up, fire em' 'If they **** up, plaster their picture all over the evening news'. 'If they **** up, put em in prison for the rest of their life'. 'If they **** up, sue them for all they got (or more)'.
And of course the US' fascination with guns plays a role in your violent society, but it is not the cause. To say that would be to simplify the problem.
The guns only enhance the problem, they exponentiate it. Give a violent society the means to be even more violent and you'll end up with murder rates like in Africa's failed states or South American dictatorships.
Every US cop knows about this culture of violence, they all know about the inherent distrust of the government. They all know that the threat to their life a real one. You join the Academy and suddenly that threat seems even more real. You are more aware of stories like those officers getting shot in the head while eating lunch. You watch the video of Deputy Dinkheller dying a lonely death behind his patrol car because he hesitated instead of shooting. Your brothers are getting killed out there, every week it seems. It could be you, next time.
When I go on patrol, sure I worry about being confronted with a gun. But it's a theoretical fear. I have never even seen a live gun on the streets, even though I work in a city with one of the highest crime rates in this country. I do get confronted with violence, don't get me wrong. I've been threatened with razor blades, knives, bottles. I have been assaulted, I've been injured. I was recently on three weeks of sick leave from an injury I got during a resist.
But I do not have to assume that there is a realistic chance that a good part of the people I'll meet today are armed with firearms and that a part of those are actually willing to kill me to get away.
Another reason for that is the difference in prison sentences. If I was a drug dealer in the US and I had 20 pounds of coke in my trunk when a cop stops me for a broken taillight, I'd seriously calculate my chances of killing him and getting away. There is simply no reason for me to do that in Germany. The prison sentences are laughable here. It's just not worth it. If they arrest me with the coke here, I do two, maybe three years. If I kill a cop, I get 15 years minimum. It's just not worth it. And while I, just as many other officers in Germany, get frustrated with the lax prison sentences, I do realize that they are a big part of what makes my job so safe compared to the US. Almost all of the people that do get shot by the Police in Germany are mentally unstable, hardly any of them are real criminals.
Any US officer grew up in this culture. In Germany, if I was searching for someone who I was told had a gun and I'd find someone matching the description and he started reaching in his waistband, I wouldn't shoot him. I'd wait until I actually saw the gun. Simply because the chance that he actually has a real gun is so, so low. If I was an officer in the US and I had grown up there, that guy'd be dead as soon as he reached.
Another thing is that officers here always ride in pairs, everywhere. If I was in rural bum****, Alabama and I had to stop a car in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere, you can bet your ass I'd have my gun out as soon as I left my car.
I do think that our mental healthcare system here is better. Police officers can forcibly commit anyone to a psychiatric facility for 24 hours if they feel he is a threat to himself or others. And free healthcare makes it easy for people to go see a doctor if they feel they have mental problems. Plus if they do lose it, it's much harder for them to get a gun. But of course some of them do slip through the cracks, as I mentioned above, most people who do get shot by the police here are mentally unstable.
And I'm not entirely sure why (it probably has to do with WWII, as does almost anything in the modern German society), but police officers here will do most anything to avoid shooting someone. A few years ago on new years eve, there was a guy trying to commit suicide by cop in my city. He pulled a gun on an officer and yelled that he'd kill her. What did she do? She withdrew behind a car, tried to convince him to put the gun down, fired a warning shot and only when he actually aimed the gun at her did she shoot. One shot, in the leg. And they arrested him alive.
I am not trying to make the officers here look more heroic or the one's in the US look like bloodthirsty killers. It is different societies.
Remember: Everyone is shaped by their enviroment and the culture and society they grow up in. And it's easy to blame the violent and militant US cops for the amount of shootings, but I'm sure most of you American citizens would react exactly the same in their position.
tl;dr: No tl;dr, this took me a lot of time to write, you can take a bit of time to read it goddamnit!
