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I disagree that there's no way around this so-called trade-off. You constantly equivocate between intimidation and actual effectivenesss. But the fact that police officers fight crime simply means that police officers have to be effective at fighting crime. Intimidation doesn't have to come into it. Even if you insist on viewing deterrence as a major role of the police, the promise of swift and reliable response to wrongdoing - leading to arrest and sentencing - could provide that all on its own, without the cops needing to individually come across as scary mofos who'll beat you to a pulp at their own discretion. If you know he's indestructible and omniscient, Superman can deter crime just as well as Batman.
The ideal police force, IMO, should aspire to work like a magic spell that teleports you before a judge as soon as you commit a crime. The process should be smooth, it should be quick, but it should be inescapable. Simple as that. The punishment that deters crime is what happens after you are brought before the judge and found guilty; the process that gets you to that point should be as painless as possible, for the sake of the innocent-until-proven-guilty.
(Before someone brings it up, I am aware that we're currently far away from this system partly because judges are too soft, not just because cops are too tough. This certainly needs to be fixed at both ends of the process. But the current vicious cycle, where cops get ever tougher to make up the deterrence deficit from slap-on-the-wrist-prone courts, while courts get softer and softer because how can you not sympathize with criminals abused by such needlessly violent cops?, has to be stopped.)
No, sorry, it does.
Imagine you're a criminal who's just stabbed someone. A police officer shows up, levels his gun at you and tells you to drop the knife and put your hands on your head, or he'll shoot you. In order for this threat to be effective, you must believe that the police officer will do as he says - if you don't, you'll try to make a run for it, or even try and stab the police officer yourself. In order for the threat to be effective, the police officer must seem like the kind of person who would fulfil his threat, which means he must be at least scary and intimidating enough that a hardened criminal who's just stabbed someone will believe that he will act on his threat. (In game-theoretic terms, the police officer must make a pre-commit to a certain course of action if certain conditions are met.) This is true even if the police officer has never discharged his weapon in the line of duty, would greatly prefer not to, and actually would hesitate to fire if you decided to make a run for it.
All of this is equally true even for unarmed police forces: the police officer must seem like the kind of person who actually would Tase you, mace you, or smack you with a nightstick. If he doesn't seem like the kind of person who would follow through on his threat, no criminal will pay any attention to his instructions.
Imagine the alternate scenario, where you've just stabbed someone, a police officer shows up, and his response is to say "well, golly gosh, you've gotten yourself into a right pickle haven't you? Why don't you drop the weapon and come down with me to the station and we'll talk about this? But if you don't want to, that's alright with me too." All without so much as unholstering his weapon. Does that sound like a police officer who would be effective at fighting crime?
This has precisely nothing to do with deterrence. As argued above, if someone has committed a crime and is facing arrest, they would most likely prefer not to be arrested if they can help it. The worst-case scenario is getting shot dead by the police; the second-worst case scenario is getting arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced; the best-case scenario is getting away with it scot-free. In order to come quietly, the criminal must believe that if he doesn't, the police will shoot him dead - if he doesn't believe that, he'll ignore them and make a run for it. In order for the criminal to believe that the police will shoot him dead if he doesn't come quietly, the arresting officer does unfortunately have to be scarier and more intimidating than the average person.
It's so telling that, when illustrating how you think police officers ought to behave, you keep falling back on examples from fictional escapist media aimed at teenagers, rather than, say, examples of real police officers in the real world. (Because the trade-off I'm discussing is equally true everywhere, not just in the US.) But even this example doesn't illustrate the point you're trying to make: comics depicting Superman as an intimidating figure who scares criminals shitless are so common there's a trope about them. You're right in one sense, though: Superman can afford to be polite and courteous to everyone he meets, up to and including violent criminals with sub-machine guns, because he's a superhuman alien who is functionally invulnerable to harm from virtually everyone he meets. This description, you'll note, is not true of police officers, who are only marginally less vulnerable to harm than anyone else (even if you're wearing a bulletproof vest, getting shot in the torso will probably break a rib or two, and getting shot in the head will probably kill you). Because they are vulnerable to harm and would prefer not to expose themselves to unnecessary risks, they must instead rely on threats and intimidation which, once again, means that violent criminals must find them intimidating.
Well, no. But one who remains level-headed - who points the gun and without flinching, delivers the "you're under arrest. I don't want to hurt you, I will if I have to" spiel - seems like a better incarnation of justice, a better keeper of the peace, than one who cultivates the image of a capricious, violent bully. Not even just because that's better for the wrongfully-accused innocent. Consider that where black criminals are concerned, the perception is that cops won't give you a fair shake and will look for any excuse to beat you up or worse, however you behave. I think this incentivizes fight-or-flight over cooperation, while if cops took greater care to cultivate the image of reasonable authority figures who'll play fair if you play fair, petty criminals might be more inclined to surrender peacefully.
It's not true of individual cops, but it's true of The State. Again, cops in my view should come across as gears in a machinery of justice which is transparent, reliable, and inescapable. You should know that shooting a police officer to escape is pointless, not because that particular cop is invulnerable, but because another cop will just get you instead one housing block away. (Though also because that cop will shoot you if he can and you give him reason to. Again, I just don't think that "hair-trigger-tempered bully" vs "ineffectual pussy" is a binary. There are other options here. Would it sound completely ridiculous to say I want cops to be chivalrous?)
But, once again, a police officer who can point his gun at someone and say "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to" is already at least a standard deviation more scary and intimidating than the average person. The "I will if I have to" part of the threat must seem credible - it must be spoken by someone who seems like the kind of person who actually will do what they say if their conditions aren't met. And while a law-abiding citizen might be more easily fooled - if the threat doesn't come off as credible to a hardened criminal who is himself no stranger to violence (and hence is intimately familiar with the difference between people who are actually willing to do violence and those who aren't), then it's useless. If hardened criminals don't consider police officers a credible threat, you might as well not bother having a police force at all.
All of this means that, once again, even a police officer who is polite and courteous and who clearly views violence as a matter of last resort must be found intimidating by hardened criminals to have any hope of doing his job properly. If a police officer says "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to", and a hardened criminal doesn't believe that he'll follow through on the threat, the hardened criminal will ignore the instructions. If hardened criminals, collectively, don't believe that police officers will collectively follow through on their threats, hardened criminals will ignore the police and act with impunity. I'm sorry, but this trade-off is unavoidable.
I kinda feel like I'm being motte-and-baileyed here. (I'm not accusing you of doing it on purpose, I just think we're deep enough in the weeds that we're losing sight of the goalposts.)
When we got onto the topic of whether cops need to be "intimidating", we were debating the usefulness of things like balaclavas and the imperious, short-tempered, bully-like demeanor that cops typically adopt when dealing with suspects. You now seem to be redefining "intimidating" such that by definition, a cop who can make a credible threat of following through on a threat of violence is "intimidating". Which, fair enough, but in that sense it's trivially true that they need to be "intimidating"; that's not the question. The question is what traits and behaviors make cops' threats seem believable, and whether that necessarily includes dressing up like Stormtroopers or a generally unpleasant attitude. I don't think it does.
And as I said in one of my previous comments, how threatening and intimidating a police officer needs to be is heavily dependent on the community being policed, the concentration of criminals within that community, what kind of crimes said criminals are committing and how violent said criminals are. It would be overkill for a cop in the Hamptons to walk around with a bulletproof vest and an AR-15, but if some stockbroker shoots his wife in their summer home in a drunken rage, when a police officer shows up, he must be intimidating enough that the stockbroker agrees to come quietly. But when you're dealing with MS-13, a violent gang who feel no qualms about beheading their enemies with machetes, one guy in a squad car with a Beretta isn't going to cut it - yes, you actually do need facemasks, assault rifles and a "generally unpleasant attitude". Nothing else is likely to be effective.
Now, is the nature of the problem ICE is ostensibly addressing closer to the former scenario or the latter? I don't know, probably the former - maybe they really can enforce immigration law with Berettas and a smile. But we were discussing the question of whether cops, in general, need to be at least somewhat scary and intimidating in order to be effective in their jobs, and you were quite explicitly arguing that they don't. That's the point I was addressing, not the question of how intimidating ICE specifically needs to be in order to be effective.
I think what I meant to say is that I don't think there's a better royal road to being "scary and intimidating" in the necessary sense than simply reliably following through on threats when called to do so, thus creating common knowledge that police threats are credible. Trying to make cops appear threatening in ways not directly related to spreading factual knowledge of "if you commit a crime they will inevitably arrest you; if you resist arrest they will reliably shoot you" will fall on a spectrum from gilding the lily to actively counterproductive.
(I will also add that I don't particularly object to big guns and bulletproof vests, per se. What I object to is law enforcement leaning into the image that they're trigger-happy and unaccountable, as the imagery of masked goons and unmarked vans does. Visible proof that you have real firepower to bring to bear as needed - I think that kind of "intimidation" can be very much appropriate. Notably the latter is about showing that lawful threats can and will be carried out if needed; while the former is about giving a menacing impression that if you cross these guys, you might end up on the receiving end of extrajudicial violence, so don't test our patience.)
As to the second half of your comment: I don't really have a problem with police officers "leaning in" to the image that they're trigger-happy and unaccountable. I have a problem with them actually being trigger-happy and unaccountable. If police officers aren't trigger-happy and unaccountable, but hardened criminals think they are, that might motivate criminals to behave better when the police show up. A great deal of effective police work involves strategic deception of this type: polygraph tests do not actually detect when someone's lying, but police officers are in no hurry to disabuse the widespread misconception that they do, as it demonstrably makes people more honest if they believe they'll be caught out if they lie. Likewise, there's a widespread misconception that undercover cops are legally required to identify themselves if directly asked if they are police officers: there is no such legal requirement, but it can only help the police if criminals think there is.
I understand the point you're making, that if a criminal thinks that the police will gun him down even if he drops his weapon and agrees to come quietly, then there's no incentive for him to surrender, so he might as well go out guns blazing. I agree that conveying that impression would be counterproductive. But on the margin, if criminals think that police officers can punch them in the face or Tase them (but not kill them) and face no professional repercussions, that might well incentivise them to be on their best behaviour when the police do show up. Even if, in point of fact, police officers will face repercussions for unwarranted use of force.
My impression is that hardened criminals have a wider range of interactions with the police than pretty much anyone else. So the only way to convince a hardened criminal that you're trigger-happy and unaccountable is to actually be so.
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