In my country, there was no good option to buy or sell Bitcoin until Binance introduced local P2P transactions. I am one of the few old Bitcoiners from my country. I used to exchange with some known dealers from Facebook groups as that was the only source to get buyers/sellers at the beginning. I met a few dealers in person back in the day. the purpose was to increase the trust among dealers.
But nowadays, it's almost impossible to get someone to deal with in person. Why would they deal in person when they have many options? This increases the doubt although it's possible that they want to deal secretly so that govt doesn't track. It's very much risky.

When in my country people used to deal in person, there were dew type of scam we have heard like threatening/blackmailing as cryptocurrency is illegal here, sometimes took Bitcoin and just denied and acted like stranger.