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Sometimes I think the lack of Armed Police in the UK is a benefit as they take arming an officer with a lethal weapon is a serious matter and requires specific

• anu_gupta 13y ago
  > Sometimes Not sure I've ever thought that arming British police on a routine basis would be a good thing.
  • cones688 13y ago
    Very True - I really think untrained humans cannot handle the stress and high pressure of logically assessing a potentially lethal situation.
• rtb 13y ago
  Massive +1 to this. It seems to me that the UK police, since they are not armed, generally try to defuse situations. (Of course, they can call for armed backup if it is necessary.) Time and again, I read of US police unnecessarily escalating situations. If your immediate response to any tension is to pull out a gun and start shouting, then things are very likely to get a lot worse in many cases. Perhaps this is just confirmation bias though. I only get to read about the US cases where things have gone wrong.
  • pestaa 13y ago
    > pull out a gun and start shouting I know this is a typo, but that picture in my head made me smile. Confirmation bias is only dangerous when there is significantly more evidence against the statement. You rarely hear, "we could have saved the day if we had higher damage output!"
    • joe5150 13y ago
      I don't think it was a typo. Shouting usually comes before shooting.
      • rtb 13y ago
        I did mean shouting; it wasn't a typo. I see that the way I phrased it was ambiguous though. :-) I meant that the police generally pull out their gun to emphasise their power and to reinforce their shouts, not always with the intention of actually shooting.
  • rangibaby 13y ago
    > Perhaps this is just confirmation bias though. I only get to read about the US cases where things have gone wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menez...
    • willvarfar 13y ago
      Whilst that is a harrowing case, it is hardly the same as the routine pulling of guns first and asking questions later attitude that you were replying to?
      • rangibaby 13y ago
        Thanks for bringing this up! I considered the same point before posting the link, but decided that it was appropriate considering (imo) that it is a product of the same 21st century paranoia and police culture of "shoot first, ask questions later".
        • willvarfar 13y ago
          These were officers who, at short notice, were staking out a suspected terrorist's flat just days after a bombing and during a national hysteria. It was a horrid chain reaction of errors, but it was hardly officers waving guns around to apprehend a girl they thought had brought beer?
  • speeder 13y ago
    I read once a argument that is related to this... I saw on a forum, a couple of people arguing that women should not be cops, I was confused, since the argument was filled with cop jargon and seemly started elsewhere. Then someone posted a personal anecdote that I found interesting, about escalation. The guy was a cop, returning home after work. He saw a female cop confronting a teenager (that the male cop knew personally) that was obviously not in the right state of the mind. The male teenager, was obviously stronger than the female cop, and started to make a imposing pose (but not threatening, just "imposing" I am bigger than you), the female cop pulled her gun and threatened the guy, that obviously got shitless scared, and started to run toward her, the male cop also as soon he saw she pulling the gun, also run toward her (unseen by both of them), he shouted, and in the confusion she pointed the gun at him, he did some evasive movement and ended tackling her before the boy reached her. Then he took her gun, and the boy stopped (not feeling threatened anymore), then he explained the boy he was a cop and was taking him to drug exams and he was free to go, and that noone would use violence against him. Immediately the boy turned around and allowed himself to be hand cuffed. This guy was arguing that female officers in his apartment killed way more people with guns than male officers and this is why they should not be there... But anyway, I brought this here, because I think it is a good example of a attitude to just bring up guns whenever they feel they can use it to impose power, and obviously this many times only result in dangerous escalations (like pulling a gun on a junkie, or a scared innocent), I doubt the pair (female cop, junkie boy) would leave intact if it was not outside intervention, or the junkie would have killed the cop, or the cop would have shot the junkie.
• tommypalm 13y ago
  In Northern Ireland, all Police Officers are armed. I may be wrong in this but in recent years it hasn't led to many shots being fired mistakingly and I don't think there has been any deaths. Even still, why would a unit that polices underage drinking need firearms?
• vidarh 13y ago
  As much as I agree, the US at some point passed a tipping point: Police and the population were armed, so criminals needed to be armed, so police needs to be armed etc. Rolling that back would be incredibly hard. In UK and other countries where police are generally not armed, using a dangerous weapon often also adds substantial amounts of time to potential sentences, and there's either low levels of private ownership of guns (UK) or tight controls on storage and use (e.g. Norway has tons of firearms, but the law requires it to be separate into at least two non-functional parts that must be kept locked down separately, so your hunting rifle is not something you'll go fetch on a whim when you hear a weird sound), and so criminals know that not only are they unlikely to face an armed response if they don't arm themselves, but they're also likely to get off lighter if caught without weapons, and so there's very little incentive for criminals to arm themselves in most situations. It's one of those things where de-escalation is nearly impossible because of the likely public response to news of dead cops, and how widely guns permeate the culture.
  • cones688 13y ago
    I appreciate that, its about the polices training and response to "threats" as someone mentioned below pulling a firearm on a "suspect" just leads to aggravating the situation (innocent will panic and probably do something stupid, guilty will probably pull their own weapon to escape) neither ends well for anyone. America can't undo its weapons problem even if it introduced gun control but discouraging pulling weapons out in public without serious consequences (even for the police) might stem this trend of pulling weapons at every situation.
  • scotty79 13y ago
    Australia rolled that back and they are doing fine.
    • pezh0re 13y ago
      That's because everything in Australia can kill you - guns aren't necessary </sarcasm>
    • ddeck 13y ago
• Uchikoma 13y ago
  I don't think this necessarily has to do with weapons. There are ten thousands of armed German police officers who (number went through the press) shot 85 bullets in 2011 and usually do not draw a weapon immediately.
  • Retric 13y ago
    The us has approximately 80 times that many armed police officers. So, if they shot ~7,000 bullets a year they would arguably be showing similar levels of restraint. Unfortunately, it takes less training to become a police officer than a kindergarten teacher in the US so we don't see the same level of restraint. IMO we would be better served by a smaller but better trained force unfortunately the federal, state, and local governments all do law enforcement and at the local level there often seen as a way to generate revenue making them 'free'.
    • Uchikoma 13y ago
      Sorry for my typo, I've meant to write tens of thousands of police officers. Would have been funny if Germany has only ten thousands with a population of 80M people. In 2010 there were 243k police officers in Germany. Could not find 2012 numbers.
    • flagnog 13y ago
      and to top it all off, you're disqualified from joining the force if you score TOO HIGH on the test - it happened to a good friend of mine. smh.
  • Nursie 13y ago
    That's a very small proportion of the overall police force that carry. It's got to be to do with the attitude around weapons. There are about 7000 armed police in England and Wales. Their weapons are kept in safes in the back of their cars, they need to have a very good reason to be carrying one, let alone actually using one. I think in the UK, despite the police closing ranks when threatened (I don't think we have this as bad as the US either) an officer that drew a weapon on a suspect that they had no reason to think was armed (and was only suspected of underage possession of alcohol) that officer would be subject to some sort of disciplinary action.
• walshemj 13y ago
  Yes there was a case in the UK local to me where one of the armed response team put a magazine on the roof of the car and accidentally drove off - I think some one found the mag the next day He was suspended from the team immediately - the UK police do take fire arms training very seriously.
• sfall 13y ago
  typically they are cops on duty and conducting a normal assignment, like a DUI check point