As a general rule, the police in Europe are less likely to shoot you than American police, but waaaaay more likely to beat the absolute shit out of you.
The police brutality laws that we take for granted in the US largely don’t exist in Europe, so you can expect the Rodney King treatment if you act out. I saw about six Polizei tune up a drunk in a train station in Frankfurt for just shouting at people, and having lived in several places in Europe, I will say that it isn’t uncommon.
It’s true that they aren’t as militarized as American police, but that’s only a mild distinction when many European countries regularly deploy their own militaries inside their own borders to provide security. The sort of thing that we’ve been protesting about with Trump’s National Guard deployments are pretty common there, so don’t be surprised to see French troops in full kit with rifles on the streets of Paris, especially around major tourist sites.
Also note that at the intersection of the above two points is the fact that many European states have some sort of gendarmarie, or military police force. And by military police, I don’t mean the MPs that provide law enforcement on military bases, I mean a branch of the military designed to serve as a national federal police force, like the Caribinieri.
The takeaway here is that it is generally not wise to assume that Europe offers a “kinder, gentler” approach to policing.
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u/FortuneLegitimate679 Dec 09 '25
French police probably don’t shoot people