>They don't know if the person is armed or not, so better safe than sorry when it comes to the lives of agents.

I wonder if there are any actual statistics on this. We always hear the arguments about the number of accidental firearms deaths in favor of gun control, is there any reason to suspect the situation to be orders of magnitude different with a group of cowboy cops? If anything it could be worse in a group, because it turns the situation into a powder keg such that one shot fired by anyone (or anything that sounds like one) and you immediately have a massive firefight in an area populated by numerous friendlies and nearby civilians.

It is well documented that deaths increase with more forceful arrests. Interestingly not only among arrestees and innocent bystanders but the police as well.