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The British police need guns The response to Chris Kaba's death won't save lives

“I’ve got a real problem with bullies" (DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)

“I’ve got a real problem with bullies" (DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images)


September 20, 2022   7 mins

The public unsurprisingly jumped to conclusions when it was reported, earlier this month, that a Metropolitan Police officer had fatally shot an apparently unarmed black man. Voices from the black community and beyond have speculated that the shooting was either yet more evidence of a “trigger-happy” police force, or a reckless accident known in the business as a “negligent discharge”. But it is still too soon to judge what happened.

The only facts we have are these: on 5 September, 24-year-old Chris Kaba was being pursued by police after an automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) camera linked the car he was driving to an earlier firearms offence. After being stopped on Streatham Hill in South London, Kaba was killed by a single shot fired through the driver’s side of the car’s windscreen by a Met police officer.

That officer, who remains unnamed, has been suspended from frontline duties — a routine procedure under the circumstances. But the police’s view of the incident, according to sources, is that their unnamed employee acted in defence of himself, his colleagues and the general public. It’s a line that’s hard to argue with, if one makes a clear case that the individual feared for life or limb.

Faced with a lethal threat, police officers have, under English law, the same right to self-defence as the rest of us. The application of a layman’s “reasonable force”, though, might be augmented by a professional order to “shoot to stop” any suspect engaged in armed violence or life-threatening behaviour. And in practice, shooting to stop often amounts to shooting to kill: police marksmen are trained to aim for the torso — the easiest part of the body to hit — and a single well-placed round, let alone five or six, frequently proves fatal.

The public’s understanding of marksmanship, ballistics, perceptual distortion, perpetrator behaviour and human anatomy is largely based on far-fetched cop shows and disbelief-defying Hollywood beat ‘em ups. The naïve belief that a violent suspect can be easily immobilised by a good “winging” is ubiquitous — and ridiculous. Most people couldn’t hit their own front door with a football from six feet, yet we expect armed police officers to shoot a knife-wielding terrorist in the hand, or aim for the arm of a driver who’s weaponised a vehicle. We suppose that a violent suspect would just shout “Ouch!”, stop what they’re doing, and go quietly into custody. Well, good luck with that.

As former Met marksman Tony Long told me, when I interviewed him for the Channel Four documentary, Secrets of a Police Marksman: “If they pose an immediate threat to you, they cease to be a human being. They are a target. They have to be shot and you shoot them.” The reality is, an armed confrontation with a police officer isn’t meant to a fair fight. The shock and awe tactics employed by the service, particularly in vehicular hard stops, are designed to intimidate, destabilise and immobilise a suspect by using superior force. As one armed officer told me: “If you don’t want to get killed on the streets of London by someone like me, don’t go out there with a knife or gun thinking you’re fucking Charlie big potato.”

Now in his sixties and retired, Long is a highly commended Met veteran of 33 years, 25 of which were spent in the force’s ever-evolving specialist firearms unit. He knows all too well what it means to shoot to stop a “target”, having hit five suspects in his career, killing three. (“I’ve got a real problem with bullies,” he says.) The first was Yardie police informant Errol Walker, in Northolt, North West London, during the Christmas holidays of 1985. I remember the incident well: it followed the siege of a flat on a council estate, and in those days of scant TV offerings, the unfolding drama made for gripping viewing. His handlers tried, several times, to coax Walker out of the darkened flat with the offer of takeaway pizza.

Walker’s crime was stabbing his wife’s stepsister to death, before throwing her over the balcony and taking the victim’s four-year-old daughter hostage. In the end, he was double-tapped by Long, but  miraculously survived. Grabbing the child, who had been stabbed in the neck by Walker, Long ran out of the flat, carrying her to safety and leaving the incapacitated criminal to be dealt with by colleagues.

No one can fault Long’s actions on that day — nor on another, two years later, when he took down three heavily-armed robbers at a meat-packing factory in Plumstead, South East London, killing two and injuring a third. Such were his gun-toting heroics that the News of the World, having discovered his real name, dubbed him “Dirty Tony”, a moniker he bridles at. The paper also reported the nickname foisted on him by a police commander, Sue Akers: “the Met’s own serial killer”. Her loose lips wound up costing the Met £5,000 in damages, after Long sued his former employers.

But it was Long’s final shooting that echoes the Chris Kaba incident, in that it was more ethically and practically ambiguous, and called into question the definitions of hero cop, psycho-villain, and, yes, racial profiling.

In April 2005, the officer found himself opening fire on 24-year-old Azelle Rodney, who was sitting in the back of a VW Golf with his fellow gang members, Wesley Lovell and Frank Graham, in the front. All three were black. Police intel, which included the use of a surveillance drone, had indicated that the men were armed with machine guns and en route to rob a gang of Colombian drug dealers somewhere in the outer reaches of North London. Long fired eight rounds from his Heckler and Koch G36 carbine at him, six of which hit Rodney, in the face, head, neck and chest. Rodney died of his wounds.

To cut a long story short: the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) initially concluded that there was insufficient evidence to convict anyone in connection with Rodney’s death. There followed a long, drawn-out inquest, then a judge-led public inquiry, and finally an Old Bailey murder trial in 2015, which saw Long acquitted and his name finally cleared.

All the signs suggest there will be a similarly drawn-out exercise in truth-seeking in the wake of Kaba’s death. Heat, confusion and protest have followed the incident: Sky News bizarrely reported that a large central London protest, featuring Stormzy, was a memorial march for the Queen. The Independent Office for Police Conduct has now opened a homicide inquiry, a move that has prompted the Met’s approximately 2,500 armed officers to threaten handing in their weapons in support of their beleaguered colleague. It’s not the first time such threats have been made, nor will it be the last.

A cynical solution to the perceived problem of specialist firearms units “holding the public to ransom” — a solution that would also, conveniently, help the police regain the streets from violent criminals — would be to simply arm all police officers. The UK (excluding Northern Ireland) is one of just 18 countries, out of 193, that does not routinely arm police. Doing so would surely level the playing field between officers and armed criminals, especially female officers, who routinely face suspects with an advantage in both size and weaponry. Why should the 34,000 Met police officers tasked with keeping a city of nine million people safe be expected to do so, for the most part, with little more than a stick and a pair of handcuffs?

“The subject of arming the police has been going on for years and is normally raised after an officer is shot dead,” Long says, “or more recently after terrorist attacks such as Borough Market where unarmed officers received life changing injuries because they weren’t correctly equipped.” Last week also delivered up another justification: on Friday, in Leicester Square, a female police officer was left with potentially life-changing injuries after she and a male colleague were stabbed by a “frenzied” suspect.

“Sadly, we’re now at a point where there is more justification in routine arming than ever, but at the very point where the police have never been in a worse position to implement it,” says Long. “The current government and the last two Mayors of London have got rid of 70% of police stations required to securely store sidearms, and all but one of the ones containing a firing range.” The other issue is that “no serving police officer has been recruited on the understanding that they will be required to carry a firearm, so they could not be forced to do so”. Understandably, “incidents such as the recent Streatham shooting reinforce the attitude among many officers that they would never carry a firearm for fear of the way they’d be treated if they ever had to fire it”.

Long says that for a sea change to occur, every Met recruit who joins the service must be prepared to be armed — if not immediately, then at some point in the future. If they refuse, their employment should be terminated.

As Long’s career illustrates, an officer who shoots someone may be characterised as either a hero or a villain. The fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station in 2005 — a tragedy of mistaken identity that occurred in the hunt for the 21/7 terrorist, Hussain Osman — tested the resolve of many armed officers, and the thickness of London’s collective skin. But, such was the capital’s siege mentality following the 7/7 bombings, Londoners expected the police to do what they had to do to take out the bad guys. As former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Blair, would later tell me: de Menezes “died in the fog of war” — a sentiment that, alas, many Londoners were prepared to accept in the short-term.

Equally, some battle-hardened Londoners would have written off Mark Duggan’s death at the hands of a specialist firearms unit in August 2011 as just another “scumbag” getting what he deserved — regardless of the details of the shooting. Others protested, and ultimately his death ignited days of rioting. Once again, the Met’s relationship with London’s black community was strained, as it had been after the accidental shooting of Cherry Groce, which triggered the second Brixton riots in 1985.

Ultimately, every police shooting leaves both the public and the police damned if we do, damned if we don’t. We want the police to protect and serve and take out the human trash that other state agencies are failing to catch, but we don’t want to give them the resources to do their jobs. Rampant racial profiling, the industrial scale stop-and-search of black youths, and the service’s failure to get a grip on London’s violent gang crime often makes me question the Met’s motives, as well as its strategies. But as the old saying, mistakenly attributed to Orwell, goes: “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” To put it another way: being an armed cop is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.


David Matthews is an award-winning writer and filmmaker.

mrdavematthews

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Nell Clover
Nell Clover
2 years ago

A poor craftsman blames his tools.
I was witness to panicked police unable to take control of a street fight between some drunken young men. Half a dozen young, well-trained graduate officers procrastinated whilst 2 bouncers and 1 member of the public stepped in and took control. That night shocked me. I already knew PCSOs were glorified traffic wardens but these were nightshift’s supposedly proper coppers yet they looked like the kids who got picked last for football.

Whether those officers would accept a weapon is questionable, what is unquestionable is that those officers should never, ever be armed. Weak, indecisive, low physical presence, little physical deterrence, and a poor sense of risk, they are the wrong sort to hold a weapon and no amount of training will correct that.

Fundamentally, the police have become a bureaucracy that focuses on anything but their core purpose and this is reflected in recruitment. People don’t sleep peacefully in their beds at night because no longer are there rough men standing ready to do violence on their behalf. Instead we have an abundance of waddling wannabee social workers playing dress-up in police uniforms.
Before the police start discussing weapons, they need to address leadership, recruitment and purpose.

Last edited 2 years ago by Nell Clover
Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 years ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Indeed, moreover to base any decision on arming police on the number of individuals shot by the police at present would be foolish as the number of deaths caused at present by police shooting is so small as to be statistically meaningless.
Trained police officers are reluctant to shoot since to do so puts their career in jeopardy – particularly if there is a race element. There might be an argument in favour of training more black police firearms officers so that the chance of black police officers killing black villains is increased to dampen accusations of racism but to increase firearms among the police generally would be extremely foolish.

Laura Creighton
Laura Creighton
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

The American Black policemen I have spoken with say that ‘I am Black, therefore I cannot be racist against Blacks’ cuts no ice with the twitterati. Instead it is ‘All policemen are racist. You must be particularly full of hatred for your own race to be willing to be a policeman.’ Now, I haven’t spoken with them since ‘Defund the Police’ and ‘Police-free zones’ got a try-out in parts of the USA 2 summers ago, so perhaps the tune has changed.

Last edited 2 years ago by Laura Creighton
Terry M
Terry M
2 years ago

Most polls of black residents in predominately black neighborhoods (US) show overwhelming support – 80+% – for MORE police presence. Not surprising since crime is high in those districts.
I would be in favor of higher pay for police, but closer scrutiny on the marginal cops. Too often the cop who kills someone irresponsibly has a significant track record of misbehavior and ‘letters in the file.’ If the cop has a poor record perhaps he/she should not be allowed a weapon beyond a taser?

Emre 0
Emre 0
2 years ago

Twitterati aren’t normal people – policies shouldn’t be designed to appease them.

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

“Rampant racial profiling, the industrial scale stop-and-search of black youths”
Perhaps the police wouldnt feel the need to if black people, despite making up 3% of the population commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes relative to their population. Given the increasing number of violent and mentally ill individuals out on the streets in London these days handguns are a no-brainer.

David C
David C
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright

Exactly -what it comes down to is don’t go carrying a weapon if you not prepared to face a police bullet.
More armed officers who are visible would definitely be a deterrent.
The stance on this remains unchanged but the population hasn’t and there are pockets of the population that take up a lot of police time and resources.
Stop and search is for a statistical reason.

Richard Roberts
Richard Roberts
2 years ago

The coverage of the death of Mr Kaba to date will suggest only that a young, unarmed black man was stopped by police in a car and shot. Many members of the public have no doubt already concluded that the police were criminal and racist. Few who have weighed in on the incident seem willing to acknowledge, however, that establishing the full facts will require time and care. There is much that is not yet known – and neither the police nor the media are providing much by way of context. The Evening Standard, at least, spoke to a witness for an article on 7 Sept 2022 (https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-dies-shot-police-south-london-streatham-lambeth-pursuit-b1023353.html). It reported: “a witness said that he had seen the man trying to drive his Audi at police after his vehicle was boxed in by three police cars in an attempt to stop and arrest him… “Armed police jumped out and were shouting at the man ‘get out of the car’. It was at least a dozen times.”… “The guy in the car had a lot of opportunities to stop but he refused. He then started driving forward towards a police car and smashed into it then reversed, he just wouldn’t stop the vehicle. I heard one shot. “From what I could see he could have killed one of the officers with his car. I don’t understand why he didn’t stop.” This throws a different light on what happened to the pared down version generally reported.
There is also the fact that Mr Kaba was found guilty of a firearms offence at 19. And there seem to be grounds for believing that he was a member of a county lines drugs gang. The media do not seem to be investigating or reporting upon these aspects.
Of course, it would be wholly premature to conclude that Mr Kaba was a gang member who reacted to being stopped by the police by deliberately driving at an officer. But it is equally premature to be making allegations that the MET are obviously racist, or trigger happy. Both the police and media, by failing to provide any context to the shooting or emphasise the fact that there may be a good explanation for what happened, do no service to the public. The black community will become still more fearful that any young black man is liable to be killed by officers, without justification – but it may ultimately be shown that Mr Kaba’s death does not support that conclusion at all.

Valerie Taplin
Valerie Taplin
2 years ago

That witness’s account puts an entirely different complexion on the matter. The police should make this public, urgently, before more goodwill is lost. Any newspapers untainted by left wing bias should publish this important further information, as the witness’s account appears to justify the shooting.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
2 years ago

Of course, we must.wait for the results of a full investigation. And in the meantime wonder why the car tyres were not shot out, instead of the driver

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

I don’t know why the car tyres were not shot out.

It might be the same reason why they didn’t wait for Batman to turn up. It wasn’t a Hollywood film.

Last edited 2 years ago by Steven Carr
JR Stoker
JR Stoker
2 years ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

No, its the death of an apparently unarmed man

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

And the truck driver in Nice was also an unarmed man, by your definition. Yet he managed to kill 86 people without a “weapon”. Let’s get some more facts first.

Last edited 2 years ago by Diane Merriam
Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
2 years ago
Reply to  Diane Merriam

Facts? There is no such thing these days,only feelings about impressions hastily formed and then clung to for ideological respectability.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Aye, “apparently,” there’s the rub. You would have behaved in a manner beyond reproach because of your wizard-like reflexes.

Dominic S
Dominic S
1 year ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

He’d have known in advance exactly what would happen, and that no one was really being threatened with being run over. Hmph.

Peter Joy
Peter Joy
1 year ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

He was armed with a 1.5 tonne car. Plenty of jihadis and drunk drivers have killed people by the score with one of those.

Alan Tonkyn
Alan Tonkyn
2 years ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Shooting out the tyres might have stopped the driver from using his car as a weapon, but wouldn’t have stopped him from shooting the police officers. We have to remember that the car had been identified as having been involved in a firearms incident, and it seems that the driver (Kaba) was unwilling to obey police commands to leave the car and was behaving aggressively, all of which would justify their belief that he was armed and dangerous. I agree with those who say here that the full facts of the event need to be published as soon as possible, before more damage is done to already febrile police-black community relations.

Kevin Lockyer
Kevin Lockyer
2 years ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Do cars stop instantly if their tyres are “shot out”?

eleanor nightingale
eleanor nightingale
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Perhaps because shooting at the wheels would not stop what they believed to be an armed man using his gun? And if shooting at the wheels caused the car to veer onto the pavement and kill an innocent pedestrian what then?

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Bullets go through tyre, hit the road and which direction do they then travel and could they kill a bystander?One can still drive a car with blown tyres.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago

Since a lie travels round the world before the truth has got its boots on it is important for the Met to release all the information they have, including bodycam footage, at the very first opportunity, i.e. the same day if not the same hour.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
2 years ago

This muddle-headed comment suggests a moral equivilence between lawbreakers and police enforcing a law(s)broken by a violent person who shows every sign of breaking more..

Last edited 2 years ago by Jerry Carroll
peter barker
peter barker
2 years ago

The article has “The only facts we have are these: on 5 September, 24-year-old Chris Kaba was being pursued by police after an automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) camera linked the car he was driving to an earlier firearms offence. After being stopped on Streatham Hill in South London, Kaba was killed by a single shot fired through the driver’s side of the car’s windscreen by a Met police officer.”
We also have these facts (albeit not about the actual incident but very pertinent):
Kaba had been sentenced to four years in a young offenders’ institution for possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence in January 2019.
We also know he was a member of a drill rap collective “67”and that other members have criminal records for firearms and knife possession offences. Ten of the group were jailed in 2018 and 2019 for a county lines drug- dealing operation.
As you say / Orwell said “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago
Reply to  peter barker

Note that four years from January 2019 would take us up to January of next year, but of course not even violent offenders ever serve the full term of imprisonment.

Bryan Dale
Bryan Dale
2 years ago

Perhaps if they spent more time arresting criminals and less on policing thought crimes, there would be less violent crime and need for police to be armed.

Andrew Roman
Andrew Roman
2 years ago

The issue is more about race than weaponry. In other democratic countries where the police carry guns, like the US and Canada, they protest about the police being racist. That will also happen in the UK regardless of the weapon used by a white police officer who kills a black person unless the black person also has a gun and shoots first.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Roman

The issue could be said to be the fact that the Police are already regularly accused of racism against black people.
That is another issue but with the guns & Knives already on the streets in the wrong hands its time to offer to train and arm any policeman/woman who volunteers to do so

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 years ago

Rampant racial profiling, the industrial scale stop-and-search of black youths, and the service’s failure to get a grip on London’s violent gang crime often makes me question the Met’s motives, as well as its strategies.’
Gosh, statistics show that 20% of these ‘industrial scale stop-and-searches’ produce results.
If you question the Met’s motives, the question would have to be ‘Why are you doing something that works so well?’

That is highly targeted searching. Compare it with the hit rate of airport searches for example, that we all have to endure.

Tommy Abdy Collins
Tommy Abdy Collins
2 years ago

Of course more blacks than whites are going to be stopped and searched – they are overwhelmingly responsible for most crime in UK. All security, whether police airport or any other should be employing profiling. It is probably the most effective solution to identifying criminals. Why stop and search a retired senior military officer who has spent all his working life supporting the country. The same can be applied to Judges, doctors, policemenand a host of others. To say it is unfair (non PC) is ludicrous and does it matter – I don’t think so if it is going to be effective.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago

No, keep arming of the police to a minimum. It’s pandemonium in the USA, where the police regularly kill people who have actually called them for help, usually due to mental health issues. Check out this very tragic case reported last week:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11221119/Kiwi-man-shot-dead-police-heart-signs-hands-moments.html
Gun related deaths and homicides in the U.K. are very, very low – we’re almost the ‘best’ in the world on this statistic – see link below. Though it’s fascinating to see in this data that Canada has a very high rate of gun ownership but relatively low gun homicides compared to other countries, but especially its neighbour the USA. Does Canada have very strict gun control laws compared to the USA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

Doesn’t it rather depend on what State you are in? I seem to recall that New York is rather strict, whilst Washington rather liberal.

Terry M
Terry M
2 years ago

Illinois has some of the most restrictionist gun laws.
And the murder rate is extremely high.
Correlation is not evidence of causation. Anti-correlation IS EVIDENCE OF LACK OF CAUSATION, however.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Terry M

Just as I thought, thank you.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Terry M

And how do they compare to Canada?
This was my point actually – that legal gun ownership isn’t the issue. You seem to think I was arguing the opposite!

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

‘Though it’s fascinating to see in this data that Canada has a very high rate of gun ownership but relatively low gun homicides compared to other countries, but especially its neighbour the USA. ‘
I think the demographics of Canada , compared to East St. Louis , Jackson MS, or North Philly may be a factor.
There is a lot of gun crime in Toronto, a Canadian city which most closely reflects the demographics of American cities.

Last edited 2 years ago by Steven Carr
Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Is the urban population of Canada sufficiently different from the USA to explain a differential factor of 10?

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Stewart
Bryan Dale
Bryan Dale
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

The problem is illegal gun ownership. In the United States it’s illegal for a convicted felon to even hold a gun but it’s poorly enforced in many Democrat cities. The places that have the highest crime rates are reluctant to disarm criminals but want to take guns away from everyone else. In such an environment, police know that they may be shot at every time they stop a criminal, so they are quick to use their own weapons.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Dale

Yeah that screws up any data analysis about this. Though I was exploring the point that the scale of legal gun ownership isn’t an issue.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Stewart
Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
2 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Dale

Anyone who really wants a gun can get one in fairly short order. There are about 400,000,000 guns in private hands in the US. More than one for every person. Criminals usually get their guns from friends on the street or family members. They don’t buy them in gun stores or at gun shows where the background check gets run. And even if they do, it simply means they haven’t been *caught* yet as a criminal or as mentally ill.
But I will echo an earlier poster. There are places in the US where there are many guns and few homicides and there are other places where there are fewer legal guns and a much higher homicide rate.
The US doesn’t have a single culture. Our states can be as different as the UK and Hungary are as countries. Rural vs urban differences are huge. The best correlation between guns and violence is found in gangs and the drug wars that feed them. That’s where you get a half dozen people shot in an average Chicago weekend whereas a whole state can go a year without a single gun homicide. Vermont is not Arizona and Montana is not Mississippi.
From when our gun homicide rate peaked around 1993 to twenty years later in 2013, the gun homicide rate dropped in half while, at the same time, the number of guns in private hands doubled. While that doesn’t prove the “more guns means less crime” line, it puts a pretty big dent in anyone’s claim that “more guns means more crime”.
It’s gone up a lot in the last couple of years though. I’d look at three main reasons. More drugs and therefore more drug dealing violence (I mean, when was the last time you heard of two liquor store owners shooting it out over territory? Not since Prohibition). The violence in all the 2020 riots which went unpunished and was even praised by some. And cabin fever.
As to the mass murders, a lot of it is the copycat effect. The first one happens and gets lots of publicity, digging through every moment of the killer’s life, all of his writings and his justifications. So another murderer thinks I can do it bigger and kill more and become even more famous (or infamous). There are still writings from some of them today comparing their plans to those of the Columbine killers over 20 years ago.
My take would be to treat them as below common criminals. Don’t give their names. Don’t show their faces. Forget why they say they did anything, only what they actually did. The 24/7 media blitzes are almost a co-defendant when it comes to whys. If it bleeds, it leads, in all its glory and all its gore, leaving a precise road map for the next one.

Last edited 2 years ago by Diane Merriam
Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Diane Merriam

Thanks for the insight Diane.

Michael Daniele
Michael Daniele
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

“It’s pandemonium in the USA, where the police regularly kill people who have actually called them for help”.
Got any actual data for that claim?

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 years ago

There was the Somalian immigrant Mohamed Noor who became a poster boy for the Left when he became a policeman and then went on to gun down a 40 year old white Australian yoga instructor who had rung 911

Last edited 2 years ago by Steven Carr
Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago

Yup, there is a study that reported how many times this has occurred but I have to admit I can’t be bothered looking it up again. It was over a hundred in a couple of years, nationally.
Ach I looked it up after the comment by Jake below:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/police-shootings-mental-health-calls/

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Stewart
Jake Varghese
Jake Varghese
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I think the proper comparator for the UK should be any of the European countries where the police are all armed but especially France, Germany and Italy, which have similar or slightly larger populations, and not the USA! If so you’ll find that police are not ‘regularly killing, anyone!

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Jake Varghese

Nah in those countries they have very high levels of gun ownership compared to the U.K. and low levels of gun deaths by police. American police are an outlier – though it’s understandable as an earlier commenter said, in many circumstances because they have to approach each circumstance with great caution, unlike U.K. and European police – but not those cases I’ve read about where they’ve been called to help people who are clearly harmless but having breakdowns.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Stewart
Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

Policing here itself has changed a lot in the last 20 years or so. They are no longer trained to be investigators and public servants, but to be an internal army. They are given army vehicles and army weapons. SWAT training used to be for a very specific and highly trained squad that only existed in large cities and were created specifically for things like hostage situations. Now that’s almost common for all of them. Armies exist and are trained to kill people and break things if needed, hopefully never having to actually do it. Cops all too often now are trained to think of themselves as “warriors” with any random civilian likely to be the enemy.
Our justice system practically doesn’t exist. Almost no arrests actually lead to trials. The D.A.s keep piling on every charge and amplification they can think up until the arrestee pleads guilty, even if they’re innocent, because of the risks of going to trial and, rightly or wrongly, being found guilty on all counts. Something like 93% plead out without a trial and the lawyers advise them to do so.
And, of course, anyone who goes to jail gets a quick course in how to be a criminal for real. Then when they get out, they are so constrained that many go on to become real criminals since they can’t get a job or do many things others take for granted, simply by being a convicted felon.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Diane Merriam

Jeez Diane, quite depressing.

James Anthony Seyforth
James Anthony Seyforth
2 years ago

We are rapidly heading towards a situation where the state no longer has control over it’s territory and despite all this week’s Britishising at the death of the Queen, the fundamentals of this country are being laid bare as crisis hits.

Economic, social and security crises are mounting and we have not the structural integrity to deal with them without a lot of struggle.

I’m sure the drug dealers and assorted gangs will start taxing certain areas soon as they move in where the state moved out. It’s no different than Mexico if you can’t enforce the law, it’s really pretty simple and a shame we are heading that way.

Rick Sareen
Rick Sareen
2 years ago

Surely if you arm and train a policeman and then send him into a situation where he is expected to use that training and weapon then he should not be judged by the same rules as a civilian would be?

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
2 years ago

I don’t know what the numbers are in Britain but in the US, blacks–who are just under 13% of the population–commit more than 70% of the violent crimes. You can look it up until the left decides these numbers are racist and must be concealed.

Marc Fulk
Marc Fulk
2 years ago

I enjoyed the article
Its always a tricky subject that seems to come up every few years.
Nearly every country in world manages to train and arm its police. Millions of of people in the Uk happily go abroad to live, work and holiday in counties full of armed police and don’t come to any harm . All our European neighbours arm their police and I’m not aware of any moves to change this
From personal experience I’ve been on “stops” while on duty and ARV (Armed response vehicle) have got involved. The sudden change in attitude when a group of officers with guns turn up is remarkable and certainly goes a lot more smoothly!!

Cho Jinn
Cho Jinn
2 years ago

Agreed. I cannot imagine you’d have much knife crime if all of your coppers were dual wielding .50 Desert Eagles.

Laura Creighton
Laura Creighton
2 years ago
Reply to  Cho Jinn

The Swedish police are routinely armed. Knife crime is a problem here.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

Yet the Norwegians aren’t, despite that ‘loony’ going berserk a few years ago.

David C
David C
2 years ago

But at least they are able to defend themselves and the general public if required.

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
2 years ago

Perhaps due to the numbers of Middle-eastern incomers. Sweden many and Norway not so.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 years ago
Reply to  Cho Jinn

Maybe not, but I’d wager criminals would be more likely to arm themselves and open fire first if they knew the police were armed and likely or capable of shooting them.

Marc Fulk
Marc Fulk
2 years ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Ive never bought into this argument
Id wager that if criminals had access to assault rifles and rocket launchers they’d be using them …,on each other.
The idea that they don’t arm themselves out of some sense of “fair play” to the police is with respect nonsense

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Marc Fulk

‘They’ the criminals, used to be far more circumspect about using firearms when they knew they could be hanged.
Didn’t Roberts give that as a reason for the Shepherd’s Bush killings in 66?

Last edited 2 years ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago

“‘They’ the criminals, used to be far more circumspect about using firearms when they knew they could be hanged.”

There’s an interesting late 50s British film (can’t remember the name) with Glyn Houston as a lone police inspector threatened and injured toward the end by an armed gang (he has meantime confiscated another criminal’s gun for self-defence). However said armed gang surrender immediately to unarmed police when more arrive. And the reason you’ve given is why most audiences at the time would not have found that plot aspect laughable, as we would these days.

Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
2 years ago
Reply to  Marc Fulk

Only 4% of all gun crimes are done using rifles or shotguns of any kind. Assault rifles are a subset of that number. More people are killed with hands or feet. Assault rifles just aren’t very useful in most crimes. They’re hard to hide and awkward to use at the short distances that most gun crimes occur at. And at short range, I’d rather get hit with almost anything else than a round from a run of the mill .45 ACP.
There are hunting rifles that no one thinks twice about being legal yet fire the same ammunition at the same velocity and take the same magazines as an AR-15. And AR doesn’t stand for “Assault Rifle” but for Armalite Rifle, the first company that made them. Actually, most game hunting rifles are *more* deadly than the AR-15 style. Some states even ban them from big game (as in anything above a hog) hunting because they are too likely to *not* kill, leaving the animal able to get away, but injured. But they look scary.

Tony Sandy
Tony Sandy
2 years ago

I take your points about hitting the torso and the silly belief in shooting someone in the arm as in film and TV (The A Team). The thing is that there are two types of perpetrators in these situations – those who are stirred by emotion and can be disarmed by words as in the case of a karate expert on the Japanese underground, who prepared himself for a fight upon seeing this man working his way down the corridor, intimidating passengers, when this old man suddenly asked him what was wrong, whereupon the man burst into tears and said he had just lost his wife. The alternative is those who do believe the hype about violence and don’t see real people opposite them (zero degrees of empathy as Simon Baron-Cohen put it). In a threat situation, who can say how anyone will react, not even those involved. Fear can take over, replaced by regret in those that think and feel, unless negotiators can allow the situation to cool off (not always possible when facing an armed assailant, who has a gun, unlike an edged weapon, where you can maintain a distance). The reality is that the public need to protect themselves through vigilance, not always expect the police and emergency services to sort out the mess afterwards. Perhaps if those at the Arianna Grande concert had paid more attention to what they saw and reacted to it earlier and with coordinated action with the police, there would have been another outcome or stepped up to the plate as they did with a London terrorist attack, perhaps things would have been different?

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
2 years ago

The naïve belief that a violent suspect can be easily immobilised by a good “winging” is ubiquitous — and ridiculous.’
Come on, man! President Biden thinks it perfectly reasonable to shoot somebody in the leg.

D Frost
D Frost
2 years ago

Faced with a lethal threat, police officers have, under English law, the same right to self-defence as the rest of us.

And, unlike the now disarmed law-abiding population, police officers can actually exercise the right.

Hillary Hegarty
Hillary Hegarty
2 years ago

As is pointed out in the article, the police in Northern Ireland are armed, they are armed to the teeth with side arms and H&K automatic rifles, prior to that they were armed with Ruger carbines and Sterling submachine guns. Around 400 Northern Irish police officers were killed in the course of 30 years of never-ending violence, often in mass public disorder on the streets.
Guess how many times ordinary RUC/PSNI officers in the course of their duties used their weapons to shoot an armed criminal or terrorist? None that I can think of.
The police did shoot a few children occasionally, they also staged ambushes of dubious legality in which unarmed suspects were shot dead, but officers in the ordinary course of duty using their personal weapons to shoot an armed criminal or terrorist? Never.
You don’t need to routinely arm beat coppers, not in the UK anyway.

Last edited 2 years ago by Hillary Hegarty
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

If Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford OBE, and the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment had continued into the Bogside on that sunny Sunday just over fifty years ago, none of that nonsense would have continued.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

OK, I am going to presume you simply aren’t trolling, and you seriously believe that asinine statement.
So, just to help me and the other sane and rational posters here, please try to explain how on God’s green earth you have come to the conclusion that massacring even more unarmed British civilians, on the streets of a British city, in broad daylight in front of the world’s media would have brought the Troubles in Northern Ireland to an immediate end.
Before you do, however, be sure of your facts, because I certainly am in regard to that incident and if you produce incorrect facts or fallacious statements I will destroy your argument and demolish whatever reputation for analytical thought that you think you may have created on this forum.

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

Your second paragraph makes you sound like a bully. So you know ALL the facts about that incident? What was the name of the IRA gunman on the roof of the building?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago
Reply to  Doug Pingel

Oh yeah, I am the bully here, not the man advocating for the mass murder of unarmed British civilians.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

Yes you’ve become the bully, losing the plot with accusations of supporting fascism later in this thread – the last resort of someone who can’t engage constructively. And your claimed expertise to justify your own biased opinion reminds me of the medical ‘experts’ who used their expertise to claim covid developed naturally and wasn’t engineered.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Stewart
Malik Hills
Malik Hills
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I would submit that advocating the mass murder of your fellow citizens, as posters here are doing, for the crime of having an opinion you disagree with is the very definition of fascism, is it not?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago
Reply to  Doug Pingel

Which building? There were literally thousands of buildings in the area involved. Which IRA gunman? There were several in the vicinity. Which branch of the IRA? Both were in operation on the day.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

The one firing the decrepit .303 as Saville stupidly described it.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

Self praise is no recommendation!
You should know that?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

I noticed you have yet to explain how massacring even more British civilians than Wilford’s men managed to slaughter in their 10-minute rampage would have brought a swift end to the Northern Ireland Troubles.
In your own time.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

All 15,000 demonstrators on that sunny afternoon were Republican/IRA/Enemy sympathisers. Granted 99.9% were passive and 0.1% active.
If they didn’t want to get shot they should have stayed at home watching the Telly as the other 30,000 or so residents of the Creggan and Bogside did.
QED.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

Oh dear, you have truly beclowned yourself.
So you advocate the mass murder of British civilians whose political opinions you disapprove of and then you compound your idiocy by stating that would have brought an end to the Northern Ireland Troubles.
Do they allow you to have access to sharp objects in the facility where you are held, or are you restricted to crayons only?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

Calm down, you are making a fool of yourself with such intemperate language.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

“Intemperate language” says the fool advocating the slaughter of unarmed British civilians for the crime of having a political opinion he disagrees with.

You couldn’t make it up.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

I beg to disagree- The platoon involved was commanded by a Colour Sergeant, who lost control: the attitude of the then GOC Northern Ireland, later my appalling Commandant at Sandhurt, who was itching for more agression did not help, and Bloody Sunday escalted the conflict, and was a massive recruiting boom for PIRA.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

Derek Wilford will never accept that anybody loss control (not even the late Soldier F) and the late Edward Logan, Support Company Commander can be heard quite clearly giving correct fire control orders on the TV footage. Also I clearly recall Lieutenant N being adamant that he was under effective enemy fire.
However I completely agree with you that it was a PR disaster of epic proportions.
My point is Wilford should have pushed on and finished the job there and then. If that had been followed by the correct political response, ie the complete destruction of the Unionist monopoly of power, things could have been different.
Incidentally we had tried this before after the appalling Second Boer War, and it worked.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

Soldier F is not dead, the major’s name was Loden, Lieut. N was not under fire, he shot over the heads of civilians to threaten them, Wilford did “push on” he himself claimed he “owned” the Bogside, but like a dog chasing a car he had no idea what to do with it when he caught it, and it did lead to the ending of Stormont a few weeks later.

Goodness, so many factual errors in such a short post, and yet you pompously set yourself up as some sort of expert.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

My apologies for misspelling the late Edward Loden’s name, typing is not my forte!
Otherwise, again calm down, you do yourself and your cause no good by such an immature rant.
Incidentally are you sure about F or is it another that has died?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

Are you referring to Robert Ford? He was CLF. To my mind Wilford, who made an utter nincompoop of himself over the years with ludicrous TV and newspaper interviews, was the useful scapegoat to let Ford off the hook.
The operation was Ford’s, he planned it and set the Paras in action and then conveniently left the scene for the next half hour, taking an inordinately long time during the shooting to get to the roof of a building two minutes’ walk away, leaving Wilford and Loden to take the blame when it all went pear shaped.
I have no doubt he would have taken all the credit had the operation achieved any sort of success, although quite what that success would have looked like is anyone’s guess.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

Haven’t you forgotten Frank Kitson in that rant?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
1 year ago

You don’t know the meaning of the word rant do you? You really are exposing your ignorance to a shocking degree on this thread, aren’t you?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

You have been ranting for the past twenty four hours. Admit it.
Ever since your immature opening salvo you have provided much amusement to both myself, Ian Stewart and Doug Pingel. To find such passion in one so young is rather unusual.
I thank you, but it is now time to move on.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
1 year ago

The fact that I am getting a rise out of the sort of pompous fool who claims that the government’s reaction to the COVID crisis amounted to state terror, and who no doubt feels that the police monitoring Twitter is akin to repression by the Stasi, but who then casually advocates that the self-same state should murder people whose political opinions they disapprove of tells me that I am hitting my targets, bang on.
You sir are a clown, good day.

Tony Sandy
Tony Sandy
2 years ago

Totally agree. Arm everyone and you end up with what the Americans have through expectation.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Sandy

Which Americans where? Most of us don’t worry about it personally at all.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
2 years ago

50 years ago guns used by criminals were the exception and knife crime wasn’t an issue.
Today guns are available to the bad guys and knife crime is killing lots of young people.
If we expect our Police to keep law and order on the streets it seems bizarre today if we don’t provide training and arms to those police who volunteer to do so.

Marc Fulk
Marc Fulk
2 years ago

“You don’t need to routinely arm beat coppers, not in the UK anyway “

After seeing what happened to the 2 officers in the West End last week I’d very much disagree!!

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 years ago

Certain issue which are which are ignored.

  1. The days when politicians, civil servants, academics, lawyers had boxed at school, played rugby and served in the Armed Forces and new from personal experience, how strong, violent and dangerous some men can be, are long gone. Someone who boxed in the AF, say in the Commandos or Parachute Regiment would know how much physical punishment some men can take and still go forward.
  2. Those who have been trained in the AF know how difficult it is to hit someone with a shot , especially if they have had to run, it is dark and raining.
  3. Since the late 1960s large numbers of extreme left wing middle class types, largely Trotskyists have undermined law and order, making such statements ” Property is theft ” . These Trotskyists have entered teaching, The Law especially the criminal Bar, academia, politcs, civil servive, local government, journalism. Labour politicians such as Lord Callaghan, Roy Mason, Don Concannon, etc had no time for those who justified crime but this aspect of the Labour Party has died out.
  4. Discipline has been made a dirty word in most comprehensives, especially in the inner cities and there is an absence of rigorous contact sports o expend teen gers energy.
  5. The absence of tough, emotionally mature, hard working and honest men who can keep unruly boys in check is absent from most inner cities. The days when every church hall, youth club, companies which had apprentices had a boxing club are long gone.
  6. If a teenager is say working as a scaffolder, training in martial arts, boxing, rugby, rowing or in Reserves, they are unlikley to have the energy to get into trouble.
  7. The devil provides mischief for idle hands; a lie ifs half way around the World before truth has got it’s boots on and a half a truth is whole lie.
  8. The Police cannot solve society’s social problems; they are there to stop them becoming criminal..
Dominic S
Dominic S
1 year ago

Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken identity?
No, utter incompetence throughout several levels of policing involved, and a death to be laid at the door of the officer in charge. Now, who was that I wonder?

Last edited 1 year ago by Dominic S
Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
2 years ago

The ‘bad’ guys have no problem obtaining guns and do so
Our Police should be armed without delay
The article fails to say whether or not the majority of Police would welcome such a move

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

The ‘bad’ guys have no problem obtaining guns and do so.

I do not think that is really true. You cannot keep them out completely, but guns are not that easy to get hold of, even for criminals. Consider Mark Duggan, who was stopped by police while transporting an illegal weapon: to wit a single-shot handgun, converted from a starters pistol. Or consider all the knife crime among youth gangs. Sutrely a lot of that would have been gun crime if guns had been easier to get hold of.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

We are currently one of only four European countries where the Police do not routinely carry firearms, and it should stay like that.

Ever since our Police carried guns it has been a disaster, from the Steven Waldorf event and the Mrs Gross fiasco, to the Chief Firearms Instructor at Kidlington shooting a ‘student’ with a .44 Magnum! And many other such horrors, too numerous to relate!

If anyone has to be shot, let the Army do it. They have unmatched discipline, training and esprit de corps in this field, and frankly it is unreasonable to expect a 9-5 ‘civvy’ force such as the Police to do it properly, as history has all to sadly shown.

An excellent photo by the way, which says it all.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

Does not sound wise. The army is trained to operate in a war zone, where you shoot first and dead civilians (while they try to avoid them) are ‘collateral damage’ if they happen. So sending the parachute regiment in to police demonstrations in Northern Ireland got us Bloody Sunday.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

“So sending the parachute regiment in to police demonstrations in Northern Ireland got us Bloody Sunday”
What else would you have done? The Province was in a state of insurrection, sixty British soldiers had been killed in the previous eleven months. Or are you arguing for a case of a Irish exceptionalism?

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

I have no objection to military in Northern Ireland, given (as you say) the situation. But Bloody Sunday was objectively a disaster, with terrible political consequences. Almost anything else would have worked better. It is not a good argument for sending the army in to police demonstrations.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

‘Bloody Sunday’ was a disaster because we made it so.
Had I PARA continued and shot say 300 or so, that would have brought the insurrection to a standstill and prevented thirty years of mayhem and the deaths of over three thousand innocent citizens.

As it was we surrendered to NORAID/US and UK ‘Pinko Blob’ pressure with simply appalling consequences.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

Sounds rather like what Putin is trying in Ukraine, France tried in Algeria etc. Neither were very succesful. Morality aside, terrorising NI into submission would seem to be unlikely to work as long as Eire and the US are backing the opposite side (as they would be) and the UK is too squeamish to massacre entire towns, like Assad could do in Syria. It may be a nice wish fulfillment fantasy, but I do not think this would be a rational policy.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

It would have been a ‘short sharp shock’, but it would have to have been followed by immediate, major political change, so necessary after fifty years of thoroughly incompetent, selfish Unionist misrule.
Nothing else would have sufficed.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago

It’s the ‘optics’ Charles. We never hear the end of this Sunday event at which relatively few people were killed, especially from Americans – who at the very same time dropped more bombs on Hanoi than were dropped on Germany in WW2.
But optics literally stopped the Americans in Vietnam too – two photographs – one of the Vietnamese officer shooting a viet cong in the head; and the other, which had a huge influence on the American public, of the little naked girl, burned by napalm, running down the road. That was just two people, in a war where 2 million died – but they both changed American policy on the war.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

Yes I recall those two photographs and there is much it what you say.
But it can work both ways.
In Aden in 1967, Lieutenant Colin Mitchell, Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders captured the heart of the nation by his astute manipulation of ITV Television, and thus provided the country with a splendid ‘end of Empire’ performance.
It’s just a matter of presentation, as it has always been.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

If a splendid performance of the End of Empire you mean British soldiers being filmed openly beating, kicking and abusing clearly unarmed and non-threatening civilians, including boys and old men and dragging them by the hair into trucks for no doubt more of the same back at the barracks then yes, Mad Mitch laid on a masterful performance.

Oddly however, contrary to your assertion the British people, in their innate decency and revulsion for his and his men’s thuggish behaviour, did not take him to their hearts as can be attested by his one-term failed career as an MP and subsequent business failure and well-deserved obscurity.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

We’re you alive at the time?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

Yes, I was.
Why do you ask, what statement have I made that is factually incorrect?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

Have you read the late Tam Dalyell’s obituary to Mitchell?

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

No, because I have no interest in the life of an irrelevant and obscure end-of-empire throwback who contributed nothing to the betterment of his nation.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

and the them Labour Government reduced his Regiment down to one company, which was appalling.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

There’s nothing as spiteful as the ‘Left’.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

No his troops’ brutal treatment of unarmed and non-threatening civilians, including boys and old men, was what was appalling.

I am genuinely shocked by the number of posters here, who would no doubt jump up in outrage if they heard a policeman questioned a Twitter user for an allegedly “transphobic” remark, but who not only tolerate but actually advocate the use of brutality and mass murder against British subjects because they have a political viewpoint they happen to disagree with.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

I am genuinely shocked that you can’t engage in debate.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I note that you have not actually tried to engage me in debate.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

It most certainly is not the optics!

It’s the facts themselves. British soldiers whose sworn duty it is to protect British citizens and uphold the law when tasked with aiding the civil power, have no right to massacre unarmed British civilians merely for the “crime” of marching to demand equal British rights before the law (ie not to be imprisoned without a trial).

You do not defend the constitution of the United Kingdom by murdering inconvenient British civilians.

Optics my foot! If you are advocating a fascist state then have the decency to come out and say it openly.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

You really are quite hysterical, and lose all credibility when you extrapolate to extremes.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I am the hysterical one? Just for the record posters here are recommending the mass murder of fellow British citizens for the crime of having the wrong political opinion.

Trust me, I am not the hysterical one here, and your failure to comprehend opinions outside the reactionary echo chamber that posters here have created for themselves speaks volumes for your ability to think logically.

Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

“I am the hysterical one?”
No, but your stance is resolutely lacking in any attempt to consider and counterpose alternative explanations (whatever you might conclude in the end). Thus you end up insulting your interlocutors, instead of evaluating their arguments. Most here are not dogmatically anything, I’d guess.
In civilized conversation the best thing is to put the argument you don’t agree with first, then proceed to try and prove it wrong. But all you’ve done here is basically wave a flag for an emotional conviction. Anybody can do that.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
1 year ago
Reply to  Arnold Grutt

The very first statement I made was to calmly ask the poster whether he truly believed the nonsense he was spouting or whether he was simply trolling.

When he came back with the reply that indeed he really did believe that it was justifiable for the British state to massacre its political opponents, he confirmed that he had no serious debatable point to make and was nothing less than a clown.

I told him such in no uncertain terms, that’s what you do with clowns who post absurd and unsupportable claims on an otherwise serious political debating channel, you do not humour them.

If you wish to engage in debate about the moral righteousness of the British government massacring British citizens on the streets of a British city in broad daylight in front of the world’s media I am happy to oblige, but if, like the poster above you are simply a troll who has no knowledge of the events on which he is commenting then be assured, I will not treat your arguments with anything other than contempt.

Terry M
Terry M
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I remember very vividly the Vietnam war and had family and friends over there. The reporting of the war was clinical at first, showing little violence and celebrating our troops. The atmosphere changed largely due to the massive protests and the change in the reporting – including those photos – but, more importantly, guys like Walter Cronkite starting to doubt our purpose. ‘Four Dead in Ohio’, just down the road from me, was at least as important as those photos.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
2 years ago
Reply to  Terry M

I was living in Cleveland at the time, so it was close for me too. Things were pretty crazy in the US then. The assassinations, riots, police station and power station bombings, the various underground groups, and then Tricky d**k playing his hand.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago

What should have been done? Two alternatives perhaps.

We could allow British citizens in a British city the right to demonstrate for their British rights under British law and then allow them to disperse back to their homes?

Or send in a battalion of troops, from a regiment that six months earlier had massacred civilians in Belfast (including a 40yo mother of eight and a priest providing comfort to another dying civilian and a man who lost his hand serving King and Country in Normandy) now known to have within its ranks several psychopathic mass murderers (soldiers E, F, G and H, and Corporal Costas Georgiou better known as Colonel Callan for his massacres in Angola), hyping them up beforehand “to get some kills” and unleashing them on unarmed civilians, many with their hands up or running away or again going to the comfort of the dying.

Jeez, it’s a tough call, what on earth should we do?

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Malik Hills

And just let the gunmen hiding amongst those protesters kill people. Yeah that’ll work.

Malik Hills
Malik Hills
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

The only gunmen killing people in the Bogside that day were in Support Company of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and they proceeded to murder 13 unarmed British civilians.

Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed that rather inconvenient fact?

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

No, the army in northern ireland was comprehensively trained for the task, and with the notable exceptions such as Bloody Sunday, not only performed very efficiently ( admittedly some regiments better than others) but also used intelligence skills most effectively. One has to remember that Sectarian venom was so acute that RUC and UDR men often did not know that Catholics were allowed in The Army, let alone as Officers, publicly made it clear that they did not like nor trust Catholic Officers, as manyba Scots Guards Officer remembers… ” The only thing worse than a Taig, is a posh Taig”….

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

That same prejudice made it impossible for the Irish Guards to serve there until the very end.
I’ve often thought we should have sent in the Gurkhas on day one, back in ‘69.
That would have made both sides sit up and think would it not? I doubt the much vaunted ‘B Specials’ would have survived for long.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

I would not deny that – with the exception of Bloody Sunday, as you say. But then 1) Bloody Sunday was right at the start – after that the British Army was comprehensively (re)trained for operating in that specific environment and 2) they were actually fighting a war there, courtesy of the IRA. All respect for the British Army.
My point was more general: the army is by and large trained for war. Putting it in in peacetime to deal with hard stops of criminals suspected of arms possession is not war, and their standard operating procedures are unlikely to give good results there. If you comprehensively retrained them they could probably learn to operate a firearms officers too, but it seems doubtful whether that would fit too well with their initial training – or whether they would be any good for fighting wars once they had been retrained for armed policing. Unless you want to kill a few hundred demonstrators to teach the b******s a lesson (as Charles Stanhope apparently does) I really cannot see any point in replacing firearms officers by soldiers.

Last edited 2 years ago by Rasmus Fogh
Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
2 years ago

We don’t want the army patrolling our streets … that would indeed be a retrograde step … better to train and arm those police who volunteer to carry a gun

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

The army will not be patrolling the street, but providing a highly disciplined quick reaction force.
We have already tried giving the police guns with the disastrous results I outlined before.

Marc Fulk
Marc Fulk
2 years ago

As a serving officer that has been both armed and unarmed ( currently unarmed)
Many of the ex forces officers Ive lined up with with on the range have been really poor shots. I have 2 colleagues now both ex services who failed their firearms course’s

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Marc Fulk

Sadly that doesn’t surprise me. When the Army adopted the SA80 with full automatic capability the end was in sight. Then to abandon the doctrine of aimed shots for the US idea of ‘suppressing fire’ really was the end.

I saw with horror a TV clip of a Lance Sergeant boasting in Afghanistan that he had fire 39 magazines of SA80 in one contact! His exact words were “ fooking ‘ell I’ve fired 39 mags”! Unfortunately no one asked him if he had hit anything, which he almost certainly hadn’t.

However that can all be changed back again. Restrict the SA80 to single shots,, just like the SLR before it, and get the Small Arms School or whatever they call it these days to restart teaching troops to take aimed shots. Not an impossible task I would think.

As an aside can you explain what happened at Kidlington a few years ago?

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

The police have no Officer corps and no system of ” on the ground command and control” of the ” orders group” and ” company to section” system that The Army uses, and stubbornly refuse to adopt same. One only has to look at media footage chaos to see this when various shooting or terrorist incidents occurr. They lack training, and discipline, but most of all, leadership.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago

Absolutely correct, and despite various feeble Home Office attempts to change this, precisely nothing has happened and the ‘ Canteen Culture’ persists.
It must be very frustrating for many young Policeman, scattered across our 41 or whatever it is Constabularies.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 years ago

Historically many ex sergeants from the Armed Forces entered the Police, many from Commando/Guards/Parachute Regiment/ Special Forces background and Chief Constables were often ex military officers. Also many colonial Police entered the UK Police which meant they had foreign languages and para military experience. Consequently, the Police had men who had experienced far worse violence than anything enountered in the UK. When the Policeman knows they are physically and psychologically stronger plus more skilled and experienced than the criminal, it gives them an advantage
Reading Cecil King’s Autobiography for the period 1970-1974, UK was close to collapse, economic, political and just about everything: we were nearly a third world country. N Ireland was probably far down the list of the UK Governments list of priorities. I think the British Government was completely at a loss of what to do about the violence of N Ireland. It was said that Northern Ireland was a corporal’s war. I think many decisions were made by junior NCOs and officers.
Malaya was a success because the British Government was determined to beat the communists and appointed Gerald Templer. There was noone with Templer’s ability in N Ireland and the only politician with an understanding of the magnitude of the problem was Roy Mason MP . Martin McGuinness said ” Mason kicked the s… out of the PIRA and was three weeks from defeating them “.
The unpleasant reality is that at times there are people who are in positions of authority who are completely inadequate in dealing with the problems.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Charles Hedges

Those were the the days indeed.