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Years ago there was some sort of historic TV crime show which showed a police officer who had two or three hoods spreadeagled at gunpoint in the midst of a very unsympathetic crowd. This was set in the '30s in Chicago, iirc, and the point was he had no way to summon backup because his patrol car was not equipped with a radio and no crowd member dared call it in, or wished to.

After an hour or so standing holding his revolver in the hot sun, another patrol car passed, saw the commotion, and came finally to his aid. They had to pry the gun out of his log-ago-numb fingers: he couldn't have fired it if he'd tried. And, according to the show, this incident provided the impetus for persuading the Depression-era City Council to spring for car radios.