14 ms·

How do police handle violence in countries where officers don’t carry guns?

75 points by ZeljkoS 10y ago

jgrahamc 10y ago
An important cultural difference is the concept of "policing by consent" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-conse... "To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect."
- PaulKeeble 10y ago
  It used to be the premise in the UK, its not anymore and hasn't been for a long time. The UK police is the army of the government deployed on UK soil, its definitely not by consent.
  - richlewis42 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure >95% of the UK population would support the existence of the police.
ihdncj849593 10y ago
Anybody remember the Battle of North Hollywood?
rodgerd 10y ago
> Of course, in all but Iceland, citizens in these countries generally don’t have access to guns. As a Kiwi I'm surprised to hear that. Perhaps the author is speaking of some parallel New Zealand, but in the one I inhabit it's not especially hard to own a shotgun or rifle: get a license, buy your firearm. Pistols, high-capacity semi-automatic rifles, automatic weapons are very hard or impossible to own, but guns themselves are not uncommon.
- Daviey 10y ago
  In the UK, it can take >6 months for the police to issue a firearm certificate. Not because of any lengthy checks.. but because they are inefficient and have large backlogs. But.. City of London averages 3-4 days... https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/10/timetogetshotguncertificate.jpg https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/up...
  - tudorw 10y ago
    interesting treatment in London, shooting 'clay pigeons' for sport is a past-time of the monied in these parts, I wonder if the fast track city licences are mostly for bankers weekend jollies?
    - evgen 10y ago
      Got it in one :) A noob investment banker who is going shooting in the country with a well-heeled client is the motivator, and you also need to understand that the "City of London" is not the London that you are thinking of. The former is a weird holdover from ancient times that is centuries older than the city of London that you visit on vacation. It has its own special laws, and for a long time it had its own police force.
      - vidarh 10y ago
        Well, quite a lot of tourists do visit City because of things like St Pauls and Museum of London. To put it differently: City is one of 33 regions of London (the other 32 are boroughs; City is not a borough), and one of the very smallest. > and for a long time it had its own police force It still does: https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/ https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/
  - rodgerd 10y ago
    > but because they are inefficient and have large backlogs. This seems to be true of many things. When I worked in the UK I never ended up with the national health number that you're supposed to get, because I was based in the Black Country and there's essentially an infinite backlog (as in, at my address they were no longer taking applications). A friend applied from the address of his workplace near the City, and had one within a few weeks.
lb1lf 10y ago
Here in Norway, a police officer is most likely to be shot by... ...a fellow police officer. Police were unarmed until quite recently (however, they did have firearms available should need arise, also compulsory training and certification at fixed intervals) When our DoJ decided to arm police due to some perceived terror threat, the number of accidental discharges (unsurprisingly) skyrocketed. The terror never materialised, but several officers today limp after quite literally shooting themselves in the foot.
- nraynaud 10y ago
  I guess they decided to arm the police after the Breivik attack?
  - marvin 10y ago
    No, it actually happened four years later, presumably due to a concrete threat of islamic extremist terrorist attacks, the details of which were never disclosed to the public. To no one's surprise, the decision, which was touted as temporary in the political debate that ensued, is still in effect.
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      See the whole premise that someone can call up some government official and go "booga booga" and actually get a real change in policy while citizens fight for years to be heard really makes me think there's a bit more to the narrative ... It's almost like governments repressing their people is like a little kid looking for an excuse to eat candy.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        Well it didn't help that the Progress Party, the right wing populists, was in government for the first time ever, and got their boy in the minister of justice chair.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
rurban 10y ago
There's the old-testament revenge style of conflict resolution, and the new-testament style of conflict resolution. The new ones works better, that's why almost everyone uses it. Even in the UK and in Norway police officers are allowed to carry gun's but they rarely do, and rarely have to. There are special forces who are called when wide-reaching bullet forces are needed, and even then deadly force is rarely needed to take out an attacker. Third civilized countries have the principle of consequence of lawlessness. If a police officer oversteps his powers he has to face the consequences, otherwise he will continue to abuse his powers. A very simple but powerful principle, which is esp. needed for those who have state-granted special powers. Forth, civilized countries invest a lot into marketing of police powers. TV broadcasts crime investigations and police dramas all the time, round the clock, where police is presented to serve the people, so they are presented in a positive light. This might be useful to cover up police abuse, but is in fact more useful as a positive role model to the enforcers. Officers stepping out of line are clearly overstepping their line. Whilst in the US the lone cop hero taking down the suspect with a well-aimed shot is the patriotic hero, saving the community from crime and violence. Marketing is different there, the state powers don't invest in these kind of TV dramas.
- hardlianotion 10y ago
  To clarify your point just a little. In the UK, police officers have to be specially licensed to carry guns. There aren't that many licensed officers.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
  - Angostura 10y ago
    > and probably not nearly enough training What makes you say that? As I understand it, the training is pretty rigorous.
    - dazc 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Stanley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Stanley
ihdncj849593 10y ago
So now that there's over 300 million guns in the hands of American citizens, what are they supposed to do? We are where we are, this article doesn't help shit.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  It's a problem, definitely, and things would be much simpler if not for this problem. However, the example of Australia shows that you can roll back guns.
- vidarh 10y ago
  For starters train US police in gradual escalation rather than have them use a gun by default. E.g. one big difference between US and UK police irrespective of weapons is that US police seem far quicker to rush into a situation to end it instantly, while UK police will only do that in extreme cases (e.g. someone is actually being harmed right now). Otherwise, police will secure a perimeter and get people away if necessary, ensure they have overwhelming force, and only then approach the suspect. There was the case a while ago where some axe-wielding idiot was shot in the US after attacking a police officer. Only said police officer was only in range because they'd pointlessly rushed in to try to arrest him without trying to de-escalate from a safe distance first. When that situation had first been created, it was probably the right decision to shoot, but that situation wouldn't have existed if police weren't acting recklessly in the first case. If UK police were in the same situation, the two initial responders would likely have gotten people away, kept their distance, and waited to have a dozen or so colleagues in place and kept trying to de-escalate the situation as long as possible before intervening. The more police are careful about escalation, the less reason criminals will have to risk escalation as well.
klausjensen 10y ago
Quote: "In one of these countries, Iceland, it’s legal for citizens to carry guns—and roughly a third choose to do so." Absolute bullshit. I lived in Iceland for 4 years and still have a place there, and hundreds of Icelandic friends. Not once have I ever heard about anybody carrying a gun - unless out hunting.
- fleitz 10y ago
  It's similar in Canada lots of people have guns, we use them for hunting, not carrying around.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Same in Norway - the number of guns per capita is very high. But they're mostly hunting rifles, and they're generally (or you'll be breaking the law) locked down and inoperable except when people are actually out hunting.
- nraynaud 10y ago
  yes, be very weary of gun statistics, they tend to lump together hunting rifles and human killing devices. Given that many hunters are after small mammals and birds, many of those rifles are not really practical for criminality.
usrusr 10y ago
The short answer is that they stop not having guns when they face someone similarly armed. But this is not the most interesting question to ask. In the US, a disarmed police force would probably just carry privately, while on the job. A much more interesting question is why so many armed police forces in the world get by with a level of violence not so much different from their non-carrying peers. The U.S. traditionally condemns many nonviolent police activities (like searching, or requesting ID, which theoretically does not even exist there) as oppressive, anti-freedom, unamerican. Other countries do not have this cultural expectation, that the police should never interfere with the life of non-criminals. Thise countries therefore have a wide, nuanced range of police/citizen interaction that only involves guns as the very last level of escalation. If culture (and/or law, but I think that culture is much more important here) only acknowledges police authority stemming from a pointed gun, officers will find excuses to point guns. But the biggest reason for US police gun violence must be the high general level of gun violence. It seems very natural that when criminals are trigger-happy, the police force adapts by lowering their thresholds accordingly. Inevitably, this will also fatally affect law abiding citizens. I haven't checked the numbers, but maybe, in relation to total gun deaths (instead of in relation to total population), American police are not even as terrible as they seem?
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  Personally I think one of the main reasons US police don't hesitate to use deadly force is that they are not held accountable for it. In the UK it s a big deal when an officer uses his weapon, there are investigations etc. In the US, as we've seen in the last couple of years, there can be start to finish video evidence of an officer using deadly force completely unnecessarily and he/she gets away with it. If you start prosecuting officers for using deadly force without proper cause I'm sure use of it would drop pretty dramatically.
  - dazc 10y ago
    In the UK there may well be investigations but the end result is the same.
  - galfarragem 10y ago
chris_wot 10y ago
Rather seems to be missing the point. In Australia, police carry guns. Unfortunately, there are police shootings but they are very rare and when it does occur there is a full and thorough investigation done. I don't think I've ever heard of a case in the last 15 years of anyone in the Australian police firing a gun at someone unless they were literally in imminent danger of serious violence from the one they were shooting at. As an Australian citizen, whilst the police here aren't perfect, I also believe they aren't as trigger happy because, quite frankly, we don't carry guns on our person in Australia. This means that when police make a routine stop because of a broken tail-light they aren't as likely to feel like their life is in danger, and this almost certainly means they hesitate to fire their weapon unless they are really in danger. They are also aware that if they do discharge their weapon then there is a full investigation done. The investigations are quite thorough and actually normally very fair, but no police officer wants to be investigated really and all police officers know what a serious thing it is to fire their sidearm. I don't expect any citizens of the U.S. to agree with me. But it occurs to me that as more people carry increasingly powerful weapons, the police have had to upgrade their own weaponry, body armour and tactics in response. From my vantage point here in Australia, it puzzles me why this isn't obvious: the more people who carry guns, the less likely law enforcement will try to negotiate and use minimal force. From my perspective, America's gun culture is bizarre.
- wrong_variable 10y ago
  You are not the only one, and its not only Australian that find American gun culture bizarre.
- darkseas 10y ago
  While deadly police incidents seem less common in Australia, don't kid yourself that our police always get it right. They could do with better de-escalation training to deal with situations in critical environments like crowds [1] or when dealing with mentally ill people [2]. I think anyone carry a deadly weapon, civilian or government officer should bear extra responsibility to safeguard the safety of all people around them. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/four-injured-as-police-shoot-man-hornsby-shopping-centre/7496102 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/four-injured-as-police... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Tyler_Cassidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Tyler_Cassidy
Havoc 10y ago
The article treats these police forces as something special when really the unusual case/outlier here is the US. The US has a bit of a culture problem on this front - everyone is armed to the teeth & violence has been made acceptable via Hollywood etc. Plus there is the old "if you have a hammer everything starts looking like a nail" issue. People will resort to what they have available. And you can't really do much about it because the gun freedom crowd will howl if you take away their guns. I guess people will just have to keep dying.
- vesinisa 10y ago
  > violence has been made acceptable via Hollywood Pretty sure Hollywood films are just as popular in all the countries mentioned in the article.
  - Havoc 10y ago
    Probably. Me mentioning firms was meant more as a shorthand for "in popular consciousness". You don't really see that same widespread fascination with guns in other countries.
mamon 10y ago
I agree that 19 weeks of training for police officer in US is very low, and that leaves officers poorly qualified for their job. On the other hand, the attached video of how British policeman handle a man with machette is nothing but pathetic, the kind of stuff that we regulary make fun of. As the very minimum, if the policeman does not carry a gun he should carry a taser instead. This would resolve machette man situation in seconds, and only took one policeman to do so, instead of dozen.
- jgrahamc 10y ago
  Tasers are not issued to all British police officers. They are considered to be a weapon and used by specially trained officers. http://content.met.police.uk/Article/FAQs/1400015961061/1400015961061 http://content.met.police.uk/Article/FAQs/1400015961061/1400...
- mjlee 10y ago
  British police do use tasers: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/dec/22/how-dangerous-is-the-use-of-tasers https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/dec/22/how-da... I think you may have missed the point of the video. It isn't to show the most time-efficient and effective use of force against someone. It's to show that gradual escalation of force is effective. They initially keep their distance and wait for him to tire or to make a rational decision. Then they use pepper spray. Only when it becomes clear that he won't give up they slowly escalate force, resolving the issue without major injury. Contrast that with the informal 21 foot "rule" that has been used to justify fatal action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/12/mario-woods-autopsy-san-francisco-police-fatal-shooting https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/12/mario-woods-... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639772/Suicidal-teen-shot-death-police-lunged-knife.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639772/Suicidal-tee...
- TheShark 10y ago
  Wow. I'd pay MONEY to see you roll into South Chicago armed with a Taser. Most CompSci people I meet are skinny liberals from the suburbs and have NO IDEA what it's like to live in bad neighborhoods and have ridiculously naive socialist ideas they take from group-think liberalism. The matter-fact reality is we have MILLIONS of individuals in the US that have 0 mentors, are trained to from a young age that compliancy is for punk made bitches, and will kill\hurt you if you try to enforce compliancy with a taser. Good luck with that. The real problem the US is similiar to the problems Liberia is facing with child-soldiers. You've got MILLIONS of young men with no mentors, trained from a young age to be violent, and have no career paths. Not a good combination and it's not the police who are to blame. It's a cultural\systematic issue.
franciscop 10y ago
The main problem I see is the "free flow" of legal and ilegal guns for citizens. In Japan, a disarmed society, the amount of deaths by gunfire are almost nil. They also have a really tight gun control, which arguably it's easy since it's a "small-ish" island. Of course there are many more reasons, and I think that America's youth thinking of "gangster's are cool" is way off. Hech, in Japan even a knife stabbing reaches all newspapers and makes a big fuss. But doing that in USA would make the economy slightly worse and "cut their freedom": tighter border control on imports, regulating the shit that is on TV, better education, etc.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Americans are also major gun manufacturers. If guns became illegal the supply would get a lot lower.
  - nojvek 10y ago
    Sometimes I wonder "is America too big to get anything done for its citizens". It seems they are equally opposite views for any law. Plus lobbying means big companies will usually win over citizens. Healthcare is insanely expensive, universities put you in endless debt, police killing more people than terrorists with guns. Would the solution be for the states to have more power? I.e implement the policies state by state? Just the way LGBT marriage and cannabis laws are propagating?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
GrumpyNl 10y ago
Most gun related crimes in Holland are drugs related. Regulate drugs, problem solved.
- tremon 10y ago
  Actually, they are related to organized crime. Sure, most of that is drug-related but that's because there's plenty of money to be made there. Regulate drugs, organized crime might shift to a different product or scope. It's way too simple to say that it will "solve" the problem.
- chrisbennet 10y ago
  Man, we should try that (stiff drug laws) here in the U.S. That would fix our gun problem. (Kidding, I suspect you meant deregulate drugs, problem solved.)
- c23gooey 10y ago
  Of course, a war on drugs - why hasnt anyone thought of that before /s
cm3 10y ago
Assuming tasers are effective, do US police forces carry them? If they do, why is it not the first choice? If they don't carry, what's the problem with tasers? If tasers are not effective, I'm still wondering why non-lethal weapons do not seem to be the first choice. Would all known non-lethal restraining tools be inefficient (too slow) if we assume the civilian will make use of a firearm? I mean, let's say tasers are not good enough, maybe pepper spray or something else can be used. Genuinely curious and probably missing important details.
- yodsanklai 10y ago
  > Assuming tasers are effective, do US police forces carry them? I remember watching the Cops documentary/show [1]. You can see cops regularly using their tasers. Actually, it's amazing to see how easily they may "tase" non violent people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cops_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cops_(TV_series)
dogma1138 10y ago
"Don't show up with a knife to a gunfight" is what most people would say, but in many occasions the opposite holds true too. When the officers are implicitly armed it by default escalates the situation. That said the US always had a problem with "gun violence" and even some level of "utter lawlessness", the wild west, the prohibition era, and now the more modern gang violence. You think of 1930's you think of tommy guns, you think of bonnie and clyde you think of the hails of bullets shot at them by the FBI, somehow the US has been always that extreme. I don't know if that's actually was the case or that turn of the century popular culture is too American centric especially due to hollywood, but at least to me that always seemed the case.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  My history may be faulty, but i seem to recall that the designer of the Tommy Gun meant it for military use during WW1, but could not get army attention before the war was over. To recoup costs he then started selling it to the general public. Mix that with the prohibition, and things escalated quickly.
ljosa 10y ago
My father was a cop in Norway. He told me that they once tickled a belligerent drunk to get him to surrender.
jdub 10y ago
It was fairly controversial when the Australian Government recently decided to have submachine gun-armed Federal Police provide security at our national Parliament House. It was rationalised by claims of terrorist threats, of course. To an Australian, it's very weird to see submachine guns at all, let alone around our national buildings. (Another thing to consider about different attitudes: There's a bunch of interesting politicisation about the terms "Police Force" vs. "Police Service" in some jurisdictions around the world, to the point that, in general, conservatives prefer "force", progressives prefer "service".)
- 0xADEADBEE 10y ago
  Is this correct? I lived in Australia last year and frequently saw police with firearms. I'm guessing it varies from state to state, but isn't a sidearm predominantly standard issue?
  - jdub 10y ago
    Yes, state cops on the beat have pistols. The special AFP officers who guard parliament house (who replaced private security contractors) have submachine guns.
rmk2 10y ago
I think lots of people here have made excellent points about the UK etc., so I would like to add something else, which is the representation of gun usage in the media. Let's compare a show like Flashpoint with, say, NCIS Los Angeles. A Canadian series, Flashpoint shows you in its very first episode a SWAT situation (that's what the show is about) in which one team member acts as a sniper and kills a man who is holding somebody hostage. The first thing you see is that, as the sniper emerges from the building he was positioned on, his gun is taken away and he is led away by internal investigation to be interviewed. In the same episode, a proper investigation is launched, all team members are questioned and a judge ultimately has to decide whether the killing was warranted or not. The usual approach in all of the episodes is a gradual escalation from negotiation to non-lethal to lethal methods, highlighting specifically that the least amount of violence possible is always to be preferred. In NCIS Los Angeles, between the four main investigators, they probably shoot on average one or two people per episode, and nothing ever seems to come of it. Not just do the characters not seem to mind or care, but nobody else seems to be concerned either. If an investigation ever happens, it happens as a plot device or conspiracy, not as a routine investigation of law enforcement conduct or the lawfulness of a police killing. Of course, all of these events are fictional, but they nevertheless show a very different approach to gun usage as well as general escalation/deescalation strategies employed. Furthermore, they have an impact on how people conceive of law enforcement, setting expectations but also showing examples. Is every show like NCIS Los Angeles? Certainly not, and not every Canadian show is like Flashpoint, either. However, I do think that these shows emblemise very different understandings of law enforcement and what is appropriate conduct as well as what constitutes reasonable violence.
tzs 10y ago
> Another week, another police shooting in the United States. So far this year, 569 people have be killed by US police, according to The Guardian’s count. Police brutality is a horrific normality and, in more ways than one, black men being shot by police has become the modern-day equivalent of lynching. This is greatly exaggerated. It makes it sound like black men are being gunned down by police left and right, usually without justification, and it makes it sound like the majority of people shot by police are black. Black men are being shot at a higher rate than other groups (except for Native Americans), but they are only about 1/4 of the police shootings. Here are numbers as of a few days ago: Number shot in 2016: • 10 Asian/Pacific Islanders • 13 Native Americans • 40 Other/Unknown • 88 Hispanic/Latino • 136 Black • 279 White Here are the rates per one million group population: • 0.56 Asian/Pacific Islander • 1.41 White • 1.59 Hispanic/Latino • 3.23 Black • 3.4 Native American Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... To try to get a better idea of what is actually going on, I used a random number generator to pick 10 entries from the list of 2016 police killings at http://www.killedbypolice.net/ http://www.killedbypolice.net/ and looked at each and classified it as either "Justified" or "Not Justified". KilledByPolice.net tries to keep a running list of all police killings in the US, and for each they give race/ethnicity, gender, age, state, and links to the news report on the killing and to the KilledByPolice Facebook post on the killing (which usually duplicates that news link, but also includes followup news stories). Here were the 10 that I looked at, my summary of the facts as gleaned from the news reports, and my verdict as to whether it was justified or not justified. Keep in mind that this was only a sample of ten. I'd be curious to see other people's sampling results (or even better, the results of someone with the time and interest to go through them all and classify them as justified or not). The numbering in this list matches the numbering at KilledByPolice.net. #94, black male. He was fleeing from an arrest attempt, slipped and fell, and a gun that had been concealed fell out. The officer told him not to reach for the gun. The suspect reached for the gun, and was shot. (It later turned out the gun was just a BB gun, but the officer did not know that). My verdict: Justified. #110, white female. She was the wife of a reserve office. He was cleaning his gun in their home and it accidentally fired, shooting her. My verdict: Not Justified (although also not criminal). #263, white male. Former officer, fell on hard times and turned to robbery. Killed 2 people during a robbery, and then was killed by police who arrived in response to that. My verdict: Justified. #272, white male. Suspect was driving/parking suspiciously. Officer talked to him, then headed back to patrol car. Suspect started shooting at the officer, officer shot back. My verdict: Justified. #328, latino male. Burglar, with knife holding a hostage when police arrived and shot him. My verdict: Justified. #398, black male. Armed robber, shot at officers several times and hit one. They shot back. My verdict: Justified. #446, white male. Man walking down the center of the street, bare chested, complaining of chest pains. Police and paramedics arrived to help and/or take him to the hospital. Man became combative and police handcuffed him. He then went into medical distress. CPR was given, but he dies on the scene. I'm unsure how to score this one...it is not clear it should even count as a police killing. However, if I'm going to rate every item as either "justified" or "not justified", then I'll give it: Not Justified. #475, latino male. Shot a customer in an auto detail shop, then shot at responding officers who shot him. My verdict: Justified. #505, white male. Police responding to a 911 call about gunshots and a woman yelling for help got the wrong address. The man who answered at that address had a gun, and ignored police orders to drop it. It's unclear whether or not the police identified themselves sufficiently, and there had been a home invasion next door not too long before, so I'm going to tentatively call this one Not Justified. #535, white male. Reports of a drunk driver causing damage. Police find the car, but the driver is gone. While the officer was working on paperwork, the driver returned and pulled a gun out of his car. The officer struggled with him for control of the gun, and another officer arrived and jumped in to help. After over a minute of struggling, and dozens of commands to drop the weapon, one of the officers finally shot the suspect. (It later turned out the gun was just a BB pistol, but it looked like a regular gun). My verdict: Justified. So...that's 7 justified, 3 not justified. Of the three that I classified as not justified, only one remotely fits into the trigger-happy police narrative. This is quite different from the impression I would have if I had relied solely on what the press is telling me about US police shootings.
simbalion 10y ago
The 2nd amendment applies to police officers as well as non-police officers, so even if their job did not demand they carry, they would be allowed to carry. Asking this question shows one significant way that people do not understand our 2nd amendment freedom. I use 'how people' rather than 'the author' because this is the 2nd time in 24 hours that I've seen this topic raised.

75 points by ZeljkoS 10y ago

An important cultural difference is the concept of "policing by consent" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-conse... "To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect."

PaulKeeble 10y ago
It used to be the premise in the UK, its not anymore and hasn't been for a long time. The UK police is the army of the government deployed on UK soil, its definitely not by consent.
- richlewis42 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure >95% of the UK population would support the existence of the police.

ihdncj849593 10y ago

Anybody remember the Battle of North Hollywood?

rodgerd 10y ago

> Of course, in all but Iceland, citizens in these countries generally don’t have access to guns. As a Kiwi I'm surprised to hear that. Perhaps the author is speaking of some parallel New Zealand, but in the one I inhabit it's not especially hard to own a shotgun or rifle: get a license, buy your firearm. Pistols, high-capacity semi-automatic rifles, automatic weapons are very hard or impossible to own, but guns themselves are not uncommon.

Daviey 10y ago
In the UK, it can take >6 months for the police to issue a firearm certificate. Not because of any lengthy checks.. but because they are inefficient and have large backlogs. But.. City of London averages 3-4 days... https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/10/timetogetshotguncertificate.jpg https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/up...
- tudorw 10y ago
  interesting treatment in London, shooting 'clay pigeons' for sport is a past-time of the monied in these parts, I wonder if the fast track city licences are mostly for bankers weekend jollies?
  - evgen 10y ago
    Got it in one :) A noob investment banker who is going shooting in the country with a well-heeled client is the motivator, and you also need to understand that the "City of London" is not the London that you are thinking of. The former is a weird holdover from ancient times that is centuries older than the city of London that you visit on vacation. It has its own special laws, and for a long time it had its own police force.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Well, quite a lot of tourists do visit City because of things like St Pauls and Museum of London. To put it differently: City is one of 33 regions of London (the other 32 are boroughs; City is not a borough), and one of the very smallest. > and for a long time it had its own police force It still does: https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/ https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > but because they are inefficient and have large backlogs. This seems to be true of many things. When I worked in the UK I never ended up with the national health number that you're supposed to get, because I was based in the Black Country and there's essentially an infinite backlog (as in, at my address they were no longer taking applications). A friend applied from the address of his workplace near the City, and had one within a few weeks.

lb1lf 10y ago

Here in Norway, a police officer is most likely to be shot by... ...a fellow police officer. Police were unarmed until quite recently (however, they did have firearms available should need arise, also compulsory training and certification at fixed intervals) When our DoJ decided to arm police due to some perceived terror threat, the number of accidental discharges (unsurprisingly) skyrocketed. The terror never materialised, but several officers today limp after quite literally shooting themselves in the foot.

nraynaud 10y ago
I guess they decided to arm the police after the Breivik attack?
- marvin 10y ago
  No, it actually happened four years later, presumably due to a concrete threat of islamic extremist terrorist attacks, the details of which were never disclosed to the public. To no one's surprise, the decision, which was touted as temporary in the political debate that ensued, is still in effect.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    See the whole premise that someone can call up some government official and go "booga booga" and actually get a real change in policy while citizens fight for years to be heard really makes me think there's a bit more to the narrative ... It's almost like governments repressing their people is like a little kid looking for an excuse to eat candy.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Well it didn't help that the Progress Party, the right wing populists, was in government for the first time ever, and got their boy in the minister of justice chair.
  - digi_owl 10y ago

rurban 10y ago

There's the old-testament revenge style of conflict resolution, and the new-testament style of conflict resolution. The new ones works better, that's why almost everyone uses it. Even in the UK and in Norway police officers are allowed to carry gun's but they rarely do, and rarely have to. There are special forces who are called when wide-reaching bullet forces are needed, and even then deadly force is rarely needed to take out an attacker. Third civilized countries have the principle of consequence of lawlessness. If a police officer oversteps his powers he has to face the consequences, otherwise he will continue to abuse his powers. A very simple but powerful principle, which is esp. needed for those who have state-granted special powers. Forth, civilized countries invest a lot into marketing of police powers. TV broadcasts crime investigations and police dramas all the time, round the clock, where police is presented to serve the people, so they are presented in a positive light. This might be useful to cover up police abuse, but is in fact more useful as a positive role model to the enforcers. Officers stepping out of line are clearly overstepping their line. Whilst in the US the lone cop hero taking down the suspect with a well-aimed shot is the patriotic hero, saving the community from crime and violence. Marketing is different there, the state powers don't invest in these kind of TV dramas.

hardlianotion 10y ago
To clarify your point just a little. In the UK, police officers have to be specially licensed to carry guns. There aren't that many licensed officers.
deleted 10y ago
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- Angostura 10y ago
  > and probably not nearly enough training What makes you say that? As I understand it, the training is pretty rigorous.
  - dazc 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Stanley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Stanley

ihdncj849593 10y ago

So now that there's over 300 million guns in the hands of American citizens, what are they supposed to do? We are where we are, this article doesn't help shit.

mpweiher 10y ago
It's a problem, definitely, and things would be much simpler if not for this problem. However, the example of Australia shows that you can roll back guns.
vidarh 10y ago
For starters train US police in gradual escalation rather than have them use a gun by default. E.g. one big difference between US and UK police irrespective of weapons is that US police seem far quicker to rush into a situation to end it instantly, while UK police will only do that in extreme cases (e.g. someone is actually being harmed right now). Otherwise, police will secure a perimeter and get people away if necessary, ensure they have overwhelming force, and only then approach the suspect. There was the case a while ago where some axe-wielding idiot was shot in the US after attacking a police officer. Only said police officer was only in range because they'd pointlessly rushed in to try to arrest him without trying to de-escalate from a safe distance first. When that situation had first been created, it was probably the right decision to shoot, but that situation wouldn't have existed if police weren't acting recklessly in the first case. If UK police were in the same situation, the two initial responders would likely have gotten people away, kept their distance, and waited to have a dozen or so colleagues in place and kept trying to de-escalate the situation as long as possible before intervening. The more police are careful about escalation, the less reason criminals will have to risk escalation as well.

klausjensen 10y ago

Quote: "In one of these countries, Iceland, it’s legal for citizens to carry guns—and roughly a third choose to do so." Absolute bullshit. I lived in Iceland for 4 years and still have a place there, and hundreds of Icelandic friends. Not once have I ever heard about anybody carrying a gun - unless out hunting.

fleitz 10y ago
It's similar in Canada lots of people have guns, we use them for hunting, not carrying around.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Same in Norway - the number of guns per capita is very high. But they're mostly hunting rifles, and they're generally (or you'll be breaking the law) locked down and inoperable except when people are actually out hunting.
nraynaud 10y ago
yes, be very weary of gun statistics, they tend to lump together hunting rifles and human killing devices. Given that many hunters are after small mammals and birds, many of those rifles are not really practical for criminality.

usrusr 10y ago

The short answer is that they stop not having guns when they face someone similarly armed. But this is not the most interesting question to ask. In the US, a disarmed police force would probably just carry privately, while on the job. A much more interesting question is why so many armed police forces in the world get by with a level of violence not so much different from their non-carrying peers. The U.S. traditionally condemns many nonviolent police activities (like searching, or requesting ID, which theoretically does not even exist there) as oppressive, anti-freedom, unamerican. Other countries do not have this cultural expectation, that the police should never interfere with the life of non-criminals. Thise countries therefore have a wide, nuanced range of police/citizen interaction that only involves guns as the very last level of escalation. If culture (and/or law, but I think that culture is much more important here) only acknowledges police authority stemming from a pointed gun, officers will find excuses to point guns. But the biggest reason for US police gun violence must be the high general level of gun violence. It seems very natural that when criminals are trigger-happy, the police force adapts by lowering their thresholds accordingly. Inevitably, this will also fatally affect law abiding citizens. I haven't checked the numbers, but maybe, in relation to total gun deaths (instead of in relation to total population), American police are not even as terrible as they seem?

k-mcgrady 10y ago
Personally I think one of the main reasons US police don't hesitate to use deadly force is that they are not held accountable for it. In the UK it s a big deal when an officer uses his weapon, there are investigations etc. In the US, as we've seen in the last couple of years, there can be start to finish video evidence of an officer using deadly force completely unnecessarily and he/she gets away with it. If you start prosecuting officers for using deadly force without proper cause I'm sure use of it would drop pretty dramatically.
- dazc 10y ago
  In the UK there may well be investigations but the end result is the same.
- galfarragem 10y ago

chris_wot 10y ago

Rather seems to be missing the point. In Australia, police carry guns. Unfortunately, there are police shootings but they are very rare and when it does occur there is a full and thorough investigation done. I don't think I've ever heard of a case in the last 15 years of anyone in the Australian police firing a gun at someone unless they were literally in imminent danger of serious violence from the one they were shooting at. As an Australian citizen, whilst the police here aren't perfect, I also believe they aren't as trigger happy because, quite frankly, we don't carry guns on our person in Australia. This means that when police make a routine stop because of a broken tail-light they aren't as likely to feel like their life is in danger, and this almost certainly means they hesitate to fire their weapon unless they are really in danger. They are also aware that if they do discharge their weapon then there is a full investigation done. The investigations are quite thorough and actually normally very fair, but no police officer wants to be investigated really and all police officers know what a serious thing it is to fire their sidearm. I don't expect any citizens of the U.S. to agree with me. But it occurs to me that as more people carry increasingly powerful weapons, the police have had to upgrade their own weaponry, body armour and tactics in response. From my vantage point here in Australia, it puzzles me why this isn't obvious: the more people who carry guns, the less likely law enforcement will try to negotiate and use minimal force. From my perspective, America's gun culture is bizarre.

wrong_variable 10y ago
You are not the only one, and its not only Australian that find American gun culture bizarre.
darkseas 10y ago
While deadly police incidents seem less common in Australia, don't kid yourself that our police always get it right. They could do with better de-escalation training to deal with situations in critical environments like crowds [1] or when dealing with mentally ill people [2]. I think anyone carry a deadly weapon, civilian or government officer should bear extra responsibility to safeguard the safety of all people around them. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/four-injured-as-police-shoot-man-hornsby-shopping-centre/7496102 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/four-injured-as-police... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Tyler_Cassidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Tyler_Cassidy

Havoc 10y ago

The article treats these police forces as something special when really the unusual case/outlier here is the US. The US has a bit of a culture problem on this front - everyone is armed to the teeth & violence has been made acceptable via Hollywood etc. Plus there is the old "if you have a hammer everything starts looking like a nail" issue. People will resort to what they have available. And you can't really do much about it because the gun freedom crowd will howl if you take away their guns. I guess people will just have to keep dying.

vesinisa 10y ago
> violence has been made acceptable via Hollywood Pretty sure Hollywood films are just as popular in all the countries mentioned in the article.
- Havoc 10y ago
  Probably. Me mentioning firms was meant more as a shorthand for "in popular consciousness". You don't really see that same widespread fascination with guns in other countries.

mamon 10y ago

I agree that 19 weeks of training for police officer in US is very low, and that leaves officers poorly qualified for their job. On the other hand, the attached video of how British policeman handle a man with machette is nothing but pathetic, the kind of stuff that we regulary make fun of. As the very minimum, if the policeman does not carry a gun he should carry a taser instead. This would resolve machette man situation in seconds, and only took one policeman to do so, instead of dozen.

jgrahamc 10y ago
Tasers are not issued to all British police officers. They are considered to be a weapon and used by specially trained officers. http://content.met.police.uk/Article/FAQs/1400015961061/1400015961061 http://content.met.police.uk/Article/FAQs/1400015961061/1400...
mjlee 10y ago
British police do use tasers: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/dec/22/how-dangerous-is-the-use-of-tasers https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/dec/22/how-da... I think you may have missed the point of the video. It isn't to show the most time-efficient and effective use of force against someone. It's to show that gradual escalation of force is effective. They initially keep their distance and wait for him to tire or to make a rational decision. Then they use pepper spray. Only when it becomes clear that he won't give up they slowly escalate force, resolving the issue without major injury. Contrast that with the informal 21 foot "rule" that has been used to justify fatal action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/12/mario-woods-autopsy-san-francisco-police-fatal-shooting https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/12/mario-woods-... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639772/Suicidal-teen-shot-death-police-lunged-knife.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639772/Suicidal-tee...
TheShark 10y ago
Wow. I'd pay MONEY to see you roll into South Chicago armed with a Taser. Most CompSci people I meet are skinny liberals from the suburbs and have NO IDEA what it's like to live in bad neighborhoods and have ridiculously naive socialist ideas they take from group-think liberalism. The matter-fact reality is we have MILLIONS of individuals in the US that have 0 mentors, are trained to from a young age that compliancy is for punk made bitches, and will kill\hurt you if you try to enforce compliancy with a taser. Good luck with that. The real problem the US is similiar to the problems Liberia is facing with child-soldiers. You've got MILLIONS of young men with no mentors, trained from a young age to be violent, and have no career paths. Not a good combination and it's not the police who are to blame. It's a cultural\systematic issue.

franciscop 10y ago

The main problem I see is the "free flow" of legal and ilegal guns for citizens. In Japan, a disarmed society, the amount of deaths by gunfire are almost nil. They also have a really tight gun control, which arguably it's easy since it's a "small-ish" island. Of course there are many more reasons, and I think that America's youth thinking of "gangster's are cool" is way off. Hech, in Japan even a knife stabbing reaches all newspapers and makes a big fuss. But doing that in USA would make the economy slightly worse and "cut their freedom": tighter border control on imports, regulating the shit that is on TV, better education, etc.

rtpg 10y ago
Americans are also major gun manufacturers. If guns became illegal the supply would get a lot lower.
- nojvek 10y ago
  Sometimes I wonder "is America too big to get anything done for its citizens". It seems they are equally opposite views for any law. Plus lobbying means big companies will usually win over citizens. Healthcare is insanely expensive, universities put you in endless debt, police killing more people than terrorists with guns. Would the solution be for the states to have more power? I.e implement the policies state by state? Just the way LGBT marriage and cannabis laws are propagating?
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GrumpyNl 10y ago

Most gun related crimes in Holland are drugs related. Regulate drugs, problem solved.

tremon 10y ago
Actually, they are related to organized crime. Sure, most of that is drug-related but that's because there's plenty of money to be made there. Regulate drugs, organized crime might shift to a different product or scope. It's way too simple to say that it will "solve" the problem.
chrisbennet 10y ago
Man, we should try that (stiff drug laws) here in the U.S. That would fix our gun problem. (Kidding, I suspect you meant deregulate drugs, problem solved.)
c23gooey 10y ago
Of course, a war on drugs - why hasnt anyone thought of that before /s

cm3 10y ago

Assuming tasers are effective, do US police forces carry them? If they do, why is it not the first choice? If they don't carry, what's the problem with tasers? If tasers are not effective, I'm still wondering why non-lethal weapons do not seem to be the first choice. Would all known non-lethal restraining tools be inefficient (too slow) if we assume the civilian will make use of a firearm? I mean, let's say tasers are not good enough, maybe pepper spray or something else can be used. Genuinely curious and probably missing important details.

yodsanklai 10y ago
> Assuming tasers are effective, do US police forces carry them? I remember watching the Cops documentary/show [1]. You can see cops regularly using their tasers. Actually, it's amazing to see how easily they may "tase" non violent people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cops_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cops_(TV_series)

dogma1138 10y ago

"Don't show up with a knife to a gunfight" is what most people would say, but in many occasions the opposite holds true too. When the officers are implicitly armed it by default escalates the situation. That said the US always had a problem with "gun violence" and even some level of "utter lawlessness", the wild west, the prohibition era, and now the more modern gang violence. You think of 1930's you think of tommy guns, you think of bonnie and clyde you think of the hails of bullets shot at them by the FBI, somehow the US has been always that extreme. I don't know if that's actually was the case or that turn of the century popular culture is too American centric especially due to hollywood, but at least to me that always seemed the case.

digi_owl 10y ago
My history may be faulty, but i seem to recall that the designer of the Tommy Gun meant it for military use during WW1, but could not get army attention before the war was over. To recoup costs he then started selling it to the general public. Mix that with the prohibition, and things escalated quickly.

ljosa 10y ago

My father was a cop in Norway. He told me that they once tickled a belligerent drunk to get him to surrender.

jdub 10y ago

It was fairly controversial when the Australian Government recently decided to have submachine gun-armed Federal Police provide security at our national Parliament House. It was rationalised by claims of terrorist threats, of course. To an Australian, it's very weird to see submachine guns at all, let alone around our national buildings. (Another thing to consider about different attitudes: There's a bunch of interesting politicisation about the terms "Police Force" vs. "Police Service" in some jurisdictions around the world, to the point that, in general, conservatives prefer "force", progressives prefer "service".)

0xADEADBEE 10y ago
Is this correct? I lived in Australia last year and frequently saw police with firearms. I'm guessing it varies from state to state, but isn't a sidearm predominantly standard issue?
- jdub 10y ago
  Yes, state cops on the beat have pistols. The special AFP officers who guard parliament house (who replaced private security contractors) have submachine guns.

rmk2 10y ago

I think lots of people here have made excellent points about the UK etc., so I would like to add something else, which is the representation of gun usage in the media. Let's compare a show like Flashpoint with, say, NCIS Los Angeles. A Canadian series, Flashpoint shows you in its very first episode a SWAT situation (that's what the show is about) in which one team member acts as a sniper and kills a man who is holding somebody hostage. The first thing you see is that, as the sniper emerges from the building he was positioned on, his gun is taken away and he is led away by internal investigation to be interviewed. In the same episode, a proper investigation is launched, all team members are questioned and a judge ultimately has to decide whether the killing was warranted or not. The usual approach in all of the episodes is a gradual escalation from negotiation to non-lethal to lethal methods, highlighting specifically that the least amount of violence possible is always to be preferred. In NCIS Los Angeles, between the four main investigators, they probably shoot on average one or two people per episode, and nothing ever seems to come of it. Not just do the characters not seem to mind or care, but nobody else seems to be concerned either. If an investigation ever happens, it happens as a plot device or conspiracy, not as a routine investigation of law enforcement conduct or the lawfulness of a police killing. Of course, all of these events are fictional, but they nevertheless show a very different approach to gun usage as well as general escalation/deescalation strategies employed. Furthermore, they have an impact on how people conceive of law enforcement, setting expectations but also showing examples. Is every show like NCIS Los Angeles? Certainly not, and not every Canadian show is like Flashpoint, either. However, I do think that these shows emblemise very different understandings of law enforcement and what is appropriate conduct as well as what constitutes reasonable violence.

tzs 10y ago

> Another week, another police shooting in the United States. So far this year, 569 people have be killed by US police, according to The Guardian’s count. Police brutality is a horrific normality and, in more ways than one, black men being shot by police has become the modern-day equivalent of lynching. This is greatly exaggerated. It makes it sound like black men are being gunned down by police left and right, usually without justification, and it makes it sound like the majority of people shot by police are black. Black men are being shot at a higher rate than other groups (except for Native Americans), but they are only about 1/4 of the police shootings. Here are numbers as of a few days ago: Number shot in 2016: • 10 Asian/Pacific Islanders • 13 Native Americans • 40 Other/Unknown • 88 Hispanic/Latino • 136 Black • 279 White Here are the rates per one million group population: • 0.56 Asian/Pacific Islander • 1.41 White • 1.59 Hispanic/Latino • 3.23 Black • 3.4 Native American Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... To try to get a better idea of what is actually going on, I used a random number generator to pick 10 entries from the list of 2016 police killings at http://www.killedbypolice.net/ http://www.killedbypolice.net/ and looked at each and classified it as either "Justified" or "Not Justified". KilledByPolice.net tries to keep a running list of all police killings in the US, and for each they give race/ethnicity, gender, age, state, and links to the news report on the killing and to the KilledByPolice Facebook post on the killing (which usually duplicates that news link, but also includes followup news stories). Here were the 10 that I looked at, my summary of the facts as gleaned from the news reports, and my verdict as to whether it was justified or not justified. Keep in mind that this was only a sample of ten. I'd be curious to see other people's sampling results (or even better, the results of someone with the time and interest to go through them all and classify them as justified or not). The numbering in this list matches the numbering at KilledByPolice.net. #94, black male. He was fleeing from an arrest attempt, slipped and fell, and a gun that had been concealed fell out. The officer told him not to reach for the gun. The suspect reached for the gun, and was shot. (It later turned out the gun was just a BB gun, but the officer did not know that). My verdict: Justified. #110, white female. She was the wife of a reserve office. He was cleaning his gun in their home and it accidentally fired, shooting her. My verdict: Not Justified (although also not criminal). #263, white male. Former officer, fell on hard times and turned to robbery. Killed 2 people during a robbery, and then was killed by police who arrived in response to that. My verdict: Justified. #272, white male. Suspect was driving/parking suspiciously. Officer talked to him, then headed back to patrol car. Suspect started shooting at the officer, officer shot back. My verdict: Justified. #328, latino male. Burglar, with knife holding a hostage when police arrived and shot him. My verdict: Justified. #398, black male. Armed robber, shot at officers several times and hit one. They shot back. My verdict: Justified. #446, white male. Man walking down the center of the street, bare chested, complaining of chest pains. Police and paramedics arrived to help and/or take him to the hospital. Man became combative and police handcuffed him. He then went into medical distress. CPR was given, but he dies on the scene. I'm unsure how to score this one...it is not clear it should even count as a police killing. However, if I'm going to rate every item as either "justified" or "not justified", then I'll give it: Not Justified. #475, latino male. Shot a customer in an auto detail shop, then shot at responding officers who shot him. My verdict: Justified. #505, white male. Police responding to a 911 call about gunshots and a woman yelling for help got the wrong address. The man who answered at that address had a gun, and ignored police orders to drop it. It's unclear whether or not the police identified themselves sufficiently, and there had been a home invasion next door not too long before, so I'm going to tentatively call this one Not Justified. #535, white male. Reports of a drunk driver causing damage. Police find the car, but the driver is gone. While the officer was working on paperwork, the driver returned and pulled a gun out of his car. The officer struggled with him for control of the gun, and another officer arrived and jumped in to help. After over a minute of struggling, and dozens of commands to drop the weapon, one of the officers finally shot the suspect. (It later turned out the gun was just a BB pistol, but it looked like a regular gun). My verdict: Justified. So...that's 7 justified, 3 not justified. Of the three that I classified as not justified, only one remotely fits into the trigger-happy police narrative. This is quite different from the impression I would have if I had relied solely on what the press is telling me about US police shootings.

simbalion 10y ago

The 2nd amendment applies to police officers as well as non-police officers, so even if their job did not demand they carry, they would be allowed to carry. Asking this question shows one significant way that people do not understand our 2nd amendment freedom. I use 'how people' rather than 'the author' because this is the 2nd time in 24 hours that I've seen this topic raised.