I advocate understanding how to use a weapon to put up a good defence against a professional with a tool. I do not advocate violence. Verbal de-escalation should be the primary goal in every professional interaction. Verbal de-escalation and awareness are the first levels of self-defence. See self-defence is about fight avoidance. Combatives go out looking for that fight and focus on ending that fight.
Training physical skills makes me capable of ending physical encounters without serious harm or injury. But, my training mentality is fun, and fighting on the street is never fun. I enjoy training, I do not enjoy fighting. So, I am fortunate enough to have developed strong oral communication that has prevented some serious incidents from going badly.
Without going into too much detail, one night I crossed paths with a man who had been out robbing folks with a big knife. He had also been beating on his girlfriend, which is how we met. I had equalizers as well, a baton, nothing that is going to drop him on the spot if he wanted to use his equalizer AKA that big knife on me. Thankfully I was funny enough that night, or scary enough, that I said just the right thing to defuse a situation where he was losing, and we ended on good terms. I did not get stabbed, buddy boy left in handcuffs.
What do I mean by great equalizers? Well, for the most part, the untrained knife-wielding assailant carries a big throw-away knife because that is going to overcome resistance when brandished. Why the big knife? Because, the average tough guy that thinks they are good at fighting does not want to deal with a knife.
The average street cop walking around has the physical skills of a basic white belt student. This might be fine in an unarmed dust-up, but when we start talking weapons that is scary. So to prevent serious harm or injury we give police weapons to equalize and overcome.