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.
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.
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.
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?
Twitterati aren’t normal people – policies shouldn’t be designed to appease them.
R Wright
1 year 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.
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
1 year 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 1 year ago by Jerry Carroll
peter barker
1 year 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.”
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
1 year 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
1 year 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.
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
1 year 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
1 year 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
1 year 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
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.
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!
‘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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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
1 year 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
1 year 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
1 year 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
1 year ago
Agreed. I cannot imagine you’d have much knife crime if all of your coppers were dual wielding .50 Desert Eagles.
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.
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
‘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?
“‘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.
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
1 year 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
1 year 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
1 year 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
1 year 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
“Intemperate language” says the fool advocating the slaughter of unarmed British civilians for the crime of having a political opinion he disagrees with.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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
1 year ago
Certain issue which are which are ignored.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Police cannot solve society’s social problems; they are there to stop them becoming criminal..
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
1 year 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
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
1 year 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.
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.
“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?
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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”….
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Twitterati aren’t normal people – policies shouldn’t be designed to appease them.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
No, its the death of an apparently unarmed man
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.
Facts? There is no such thing these days,only feelings about impressions hastily formed and then clung to for ideological respectability.
Aye, “apparently,” there’s the rub. You would have behaved in a manner beyond reproach because of your wizard-like reflexes.
He’d have known in advance exactly what would happen, and that no one was really being threatened with being run over. Hmph.
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.
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.
Do cars stop instantly if their tyres are “shot out”?
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?
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.
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.
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..
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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
‘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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Just as I thought, thank you.
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!
‘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.
Is the urban population of Canada sufficiently different from the USA to explain a differential factor of 10?
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the insight Diane.
“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?
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
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/
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!
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.
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.
Jeez Diane, quite depressing.
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.
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?
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.
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!!
Agreed. I cannot imagine you’d have much knife crime if all of your coppers were dual wielding .50 Desert Eagles.
The Swedish police are routinely armed. Knife crime is a problem here.
Yet the Norwegians aren’t, despite that ‘loony’ going berserk a few years ago.
But at least they are able to defend themselves and the general public if required.
Perhaps due to the numbers of Middle-eastern incomers. Sweden many and Norway not so.
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.
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
‘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?
“‘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.
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.
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?
‘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.
And, unlike the now disarmed law-abiding population, police officers can actually exercise the right.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oh yeah, I am the bully here, not the man advocating for the mass murder of unarmed British civilians.
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.
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?
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.
The one firing the decrepit .303 as Saville stupidly described it.
Self praise is no recommendation!
You should know that?
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.
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.
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?
Calm down, you are making a fool of yourself with such intemperate language.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Haven’t you forgotten Frank Kitson in that rant?
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?
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.
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.
Totally agree. Arm everyone and you end up with what the Americans have through expectation.
Which Americans where? Most of us don’t worry about it personally at all.
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.
“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!!
Certain issue which are which are ignored.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
“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?
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We’re you alive at the time?
Yes, I was.
Why do you ask, what statement have I made that is factually incorrect?
Have you read the late Tam Dalyell’s obituary to Mitchell?
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.
and the them Labour Government reduced his Regiment down to one company, which was appalling.
There’s nothing as spiteful as the ‘Left’.
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.
I am genuinely shocked that you can’t engage in debate.
I note that you have not actually tried to engage me in debate.
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.
You really are quite hysterical, and lose all credibility when you extrapolate to extremes.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
And just let the gunmen hiding amongst those protesters kill people. Yeah that’ll work.
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?
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”….
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
Those were the the days indeed.