It was inevitable that after the deaths of two police officers in Manchester following a gun and grenade attack, the unarmed status of British police would be bought into question.Britain is one of only a handful of countries that refuse to routinely arm their officers and so we have a lot of statistics from elsewhere to show how allowing the police to carry lethal weapons is fraught with risks.
The president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde, said: 'Guns don't necessarily solve the problem. You only have to look at the American experience' and a 2006 survey of 47,328 Police Federation members found 82% did not want officers to be routinely armed on duty, a position shared by the Police Superintendents' Association and the Association of Chief Police Officers.
One of the other countries that do not arm their police is New Zealand and the Police Commissioner, Peter Marshall, faced the same debate over arming their officers in the wake of two of their police officers in 2010 but warned that: 'International experience shows that making firearms more accessible raises certain risks that are very difficult to control' citing the risk of police having weapons taken from them, the risk of greater use of weapons against the public and/or offenders and over confidence of the armed officers that may lead them into more dangerous situations.
Another argument is that gun crime in Britain is very rare and introducing guns onto the streets could escalate the number of guns that criminals bring onto the street leading to American style gun violence where according to the UNODC, 60% of all murders in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.
All valid arguments but the over-riding fear is that when the police are armed, mistakes lead to innocent people getting shot. Whether it is innocent bystanders caught in the cross-fire or a mistake by the armed officers of which we have the starkest example with the tragic shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes at Stockwell tube station in 2005.
That chilling scenario being repeated should be enough to dampen any discussion about arming our police force.
9 comments:
I've heard that cops here get killed with their own weapons a significant proportion or majority of the time.
But we have an opposite debate of sorts with tasers. Our experience is that police who formerly only had guns and therefore almost never used actual force were far more, shall we say liberal, applying what the taser-armed police saw as nondeadly force occasionally with deadly effect.
Although tragic, what happened on Tuesday will have to occur a helluva lot more frequently in order for the ‘arm the police’ lobby to gain any traction or to be taken seriously by the vast majority of people. Currently it’s just a tabloid headline, and about as likely as bringing back hanging and/or conscription.
very rare huh? the last time i looked the usa has 3 gun murders per 100,000 and the uk has 1.5 per 100,000. not that much difference if you ask me (and if those numbers are right).
q
"very rare huh?"
It's all relative, but compared to the USA, yes, almost vanishingly rare. You seem to think that your rate is only twice as much as ours! Not so, I'm afraid.
Here's the thing: If the USA had a rate of 'homicide by firearm' of only twice as much as England & Wales, then you wouldn't have 3 deaths per 100,000 population, you'd only have 0.14 per 100,000...
Unfortunately, the reality is that the USA's rate is over twenty-one times this amount.
i.e. In England & Wales, the rate is 0.07 deaths per 100,000. Not sure where you got your 1.5 from then.
Source is here.
Cheezy,
I made 2 errors, but the main point is not far off.
I should have said "homicides" not gun crimes.
It is 4.2 homicides/100,000 for USA and 1.2 for UK.
While a statistician may go bananas over the difference, to me, the odds are about the same – very low. You know, yawl may have a knife/blade issue in the UK...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
q
"a knife/blade issue in the UK.."
We do, yes. Last year there were 103 murders in London - the majority by knife/blade. And the victims are generally getting younger & younger.
I'd also say this though:
The homicide rate for the whole of the UK is boosted up by bonny old Scotland, where (for e.g.) knife crime is committed at a rate 3.5 times that of England and Wales.
Since it peaked in 1995, the overall homicide rate for the UK has dropped by about 40%. And I'm aware of a similar drop in the US too - a particularly steep drop in the case of NYC (and I've read thought provoking stuff regarding this by Malcolm Gladwell in 'The Tipping Point' and the book 'Freakonomics' by Levitt & Dubner).
i dont remember that in either book. most not have impressed me... though i liked both books and their ability to expose how emotional human decisions are whilst we think we are completely rational.
q
Gladwell talked about the 'broken windows' theory i.e. If there's a street with obvious broken windows, then it gives the criminals the idea that 'law & order don't live here no more', and they can basically fill their boots. Fix the windows, on the other hand, and the criminals will get the opposite idea, and crime will fall. In the case of NYC, it wasn't literal broken windows he was talking about; the issues were tagged & bombed subway trains and fare dodging on the subway. The city made a policy decision not to let another train out of the station until it had been cleaned of all graffiti (quickly stopping most attempts to tag the trains, as the offenders realised that their handiwork wouldn't be seen by anyone), and there were random raids of subway stations, arresting and prosecuting fare-dodgers to the fullest extent of the law, which likewise cut offending instantly by a massive amount. Gladwell's theory is that when concern is shown about 'small' things like this, it perpetuates a more general overall impression of law & order in any jurisdiction, and this contributes greatly - far out of proportion to the literal effect - to people's behaviour in society.
'Freakonomics', on the other hand, posited the much more controversial idea that widespread contraception, particularly after Roe v Wade in 1973, meant that many of the people who were most likely to grow up to become criminals, never got born in the first place. Consequently, just at the time that you'd expect a criminal to reach 'maturity' in terms of offending (i.e. their late teens/early 20s), this was the early-to-mid 90s in terms of when the Roe v Wade 'never-borns' were... or rather weren't... around!
Personally I think there's a great deal to be said for both theories, in terms of influencing the way crime dropped during this time, in NYC particularly but also elsewhere, but it's definitely not the whole story. I think you have to factor in the economy (a huge factor in crime stats, at all times), the lessening of the crack cocaine epidemic, more of a 'zero tolerance' approach to law-breaking (putting more people through the legal system, imprisoning more, and not just fining them), and a gradual ageing of the population...
I tend to think the answer is 'all of the above'... and it's impossible to quantify the relative weightings of these factors.
concur concur and concur
in the process of becoming the futurist for my company i learned long ago that you cant' prove the future. i realized this in spades when i realized we can't prove the past either!
instead i suggest things about the future that are defendable... it is really easy to use the past to make guesses about the future seem plausible...
q
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