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On a peace team--unarmed civilian protection or vibeswatching event crew or unarmed professionals sent to 9-1-1 call emergencies with no weaponry in view and no violent felonies in progress--the overarching goal is for every human on the scene to exit safely, uninjured, and in a calmer state than before.
When police practice their version of deëscalation, the overriding goal is voluntary compliance.[1]
Understanding the difference and bringing that discussion into police training can help improve the effectiveness of that in practice. Confronting the seeming übergoal of mandatory compliance--by any "realistic" means--may lead to better community policing practice. If, for example, a police officer feels it is professionally required that he achieve compliance with some command, it can alter the approach and the ensuing circumstances. He may feel urgency to get that command issued and urgency to close out the encounter. This default setting can prevent deëscalation in some cases, leading to unnecessary use of violent compliance techniques by officers acting in what they feel is best professional practice.
If instead police were trained to seek public safety for all, without the mandate to achieve compliance, they would more likely be willing to simply establish the goal that nobody hurt anyone else, and everyone has the opportunity to simply leave, or remain, without physically harming or threatening others.
This is not to claim that all situations will legally or even legitimately end with a nonviolent outcome. A police chief told me many years ago that police will continue to carry guns and use them as long as the US has a Second Amendment and guns are ubiquitous. He is of course correct, in realistic societal norms. We on peace teams do not attempt to train anyone in nonviolent responses to active shooters or even drawn guns, even if some peace team members have dealt with such scenarios in real life. Such training would be only for the most advanced practitioners and would need to be conducted in a highly informed, clear-eyed fashion with disclaimers around likely dangers.
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