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Can you point to a single incident where that has happened?

If it happens to trained police officers, do you really believe it doesn't happen with ordinary gun "enthusiasts" who are trying to be heroes?

http://www.policemag.com/list/...

"Smart" gun means two things:
(1) it will fire when it is supposed to fire
(2) it will not fire when it is not supposed to fire.

These are the classic types of errors, type-1 error and type-2 error. The lock on your door, for example, has two failure modes: not opening when it is supposed to, or opening when it's not supposed to.

As is always true, you can make the rate of one type of error arbitrarily close to zero by making the other type of error higher. You can lower the failure rate of your door not opening when you want it to, for example, by removing the lock entirely. That increases the failure mode "will open when it's not supposed to," since it now opens to anybody who wants to enter, whether you want them to or not.

The question for "smart" guns is, can you improve the option "won't fire when it's not supposed to" without seriously increasing the probability of it failing to fire when it is supposed to?

The failure mode "gun fires when it isn't supposed to" covers cases such cases as, your 4-year old finds it and shoots somebody, or somebody grabs your gun and shoots you, or even you drop the gun and it fires.

Right now, the recommended solution to the failure mode "make sure the gun doesn't fire when it's not supposed to" is "keep the gun in a locked gun safe", and, if you want to make it even safer against that failure, "store the ammunition somewhere else." This does have the problem that when you do want to make the gun fire, you have to unlock the gun safe, take out the gun, and then go to the separate location to load the gun. This solution is so cumbersome that--surprise--a lot of people don't implement it.

It appears we agree on the intimidation factor.
We can disagree if it's purely the perception on the part of the civilian or a tactic of law enforcement.

Either way: it remains a fact. Otherwise normal people do dumb things out of fear, which can cause a situation to escalate very quickly.

Secondly, law enforcement, at least in the United States, has no extra power to "kill or imprison" others compared to each individual citizen.

False.
They may have no extra "rights" to do so; If a cop shoots someone, it's next to impossible to prove malice or incompetence on the part of the officer.
See Blue wall of silence.

You can also be detained/imprisoned/jailed/kidnapped based solely on Probable Cause. At minimum a nice way to ruin someones day.
Sounds like a lot of power to me.

I will add that I have been rather unhappy with the way it seem law enforcement has changed just over the past 5 to 7 years alone.

I'm also very sad to see this.
Think about it this way: What have we missed before cellphones became powerful and ubiquitous evidence collecting machines. I think that the only thing that has changed is that the public is able to police the police much better now.

Here are some fun numbers

"Police can't normally walk away from the scene, and they are compelled to attend in the first place."

Uhhhhh - no. The police are not obligated to come to your aid. Never have been, never will be. When you call the police, they only come if it is convenient, and when they feel like it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06...

As for walking away from the scene - I'm not aware of anything that binds any individual officer to the scene. He may walk away from a confrontation at any time.

There are some pretty good discussions going on right now about such things.

http://www.policemag.com/chann...

In short, a cop can decide to defuse a situation by just backing off, at any time he chooses to do so. And, in fact, some of the wiser heads in the various police forces say that they should do just that. Not always, but often.

How many stories have we read of, where some mentally deficient person was shot to death, simply because he wasn't cooperating? And - the cop feels "threatened". One of the most recent stories I remember involved a nut case who was on his own porch, and happened to have a screw driver in his hand. There was no indication that he intended to use that screwdriver as a weapon - the cop just "felt threatened" because of that dumbass 21 foot rule. Yet another dead nutcase - and no one answers for the killing.

No.

A landlord can't give consent for the police to search a space that you have rented for your exclusive use. They can enter without your consent in case of an emergency (fire, gas leak, water leak, etc), but a simple request by the police to search is not an emergency. Some easy to read sources.

Do note however, as a private actor, a landlord entering your unit legally (or even illegally, but then they would risk being subject to civil and/or criminal consequences for the entry), can observe that you've got a meth lab inside, go to the police and tell them this, and the police can probably easily get a warrant to search because they now have cause. Actually, even if the landlord took (i.e., stole) something of yours from your apartment (such as a gun used in a murder), they can turn it over to the police and it can be used as evidence against you (again, they would risk being subject to civil and/or criminal consequences for the theft). However, these actions on your landlord's part can not be done in coordination with the police. The Fourth Amendment only restricts law enforcement, not private actors.

Try a photo strobe of infra-red and visible light.. Vary the length between flashes. Make it difficult to get a picture in focus with the right white balance. http://www.policemag.com/chann...

Try asking anyone under 30 if they know what the phrase "Papers Please!" denotes

It's just two words... It's a lot of things.

It's when the Military place soldiers in a natural disaster area such as New Orleans after Katrina requiring you to show military ID or proof of government authorization, to avoid arrest, or having vehicles impounded

It's an attack onAmerican birthright citizenship

It's two words that succinctly describe America's dark future.

Personal and Professional Encounters with Surveillance

anti-state.com: May I See Your Papers Please?

It's what Mr. Hiibel of Nevada went to jail for refusing to comply with

It's what police do now to ordinary people minding their own business.

It's congress work on the REAL ID act

It's a name given to a section of an Arizona law upheld by the Supreme court.

It's the name of a complaint against changes the US is making starting this Fall 2013 to further restrict the free travel of Americans and greatly increase the difficulty of US citizens getting passports

It's the name of a dystopian video game about communist immigration control.

It's the name of an anti-TSA blog

It's a request you comply with when asked by the police; otherwise, you face immediate arrest.

• Texas 77 year old Grandmother arrested after refusing to show ID
• Police arrest for refusing to show ID while on private property
• Exhibit 1
• Exhibit 2: According to the Supreme Court, the police may arrest for failure to identify
• Arrested at Circuit City for refusing to show ID: "It all started when I refused to show my receipt to the loss prevention employee at Circuit City, and it ended when a police officer arrested me for refusing to provide my driver's license."
• I follow the blog of a guy who walked across the country (California to New York) last year. He was arrested in Greencastle, Indiana last summer, after a prison worker called the police to report him as a suspicious person after they exchanged words while he was walking past the prison complex.
• Florida Cops Tase man for refusing to show ID
• Refusal to show id in Georgia (arrest)
• Man in Arizona arrested for refusing to surrender firearm to officers who refused to show their own ID

I still get the snail mail issues and also the digital edition of POLICE Magazine.

Put a 10 meter scissor-lift on a boat?

I can't imagine shooting a massive fire hose directly into the water is exactly "stealthy", I'm not sure how stable the guy floating on that water jet is, making recon photos (at the least) blurry, and if you have to keep a boat and a tether with you, what are you saving versus a boat with a scissor-lift.

Or, perhaps you could use one of those "mobile surveillance towers" I've seen in some parking lots/sporting events

If you're the mayor of El Paso, your hardware vendor is Colt's Manufacturing Company, manufacturer of the M-4 carbine.