Or let themselves get tunnel vision where they fail to see a line of innocent people at a bus stop behind the bad guy. Armed London officers—a tiny portion of the total—quickly ended a terrorist attack on London Bridge in Are other European police forces unarmed? Generally, the European police are armed. But you have to put it against our firearms law.
If you had a handgun under your bed in the UK and we heard about it, got a warrant and searched your house, you would go to prison, I believe for a minimum of five years. You might have no criminal history. In the UK, firearms are harder to obtain. That all but eliminates spur-of-the-moment actions, somebody getting shot over an insult in a bar.
By running surveillance against the more serious criminals, the UK police can often intervene when criminals are arranging to pick up firearms. I disagree with respect being synonymous with fear. Police are equipped with things like tasers and with incapacitant spray in the UK, and those non-lethal options are used from time to time.
But the degree of force required in this context is entirely different to the American context of a gun ownership culture that goes back hundreds of years. My side would never suggest the States should disarm police, based on what I can see. Some of the equipment that was passed on to the US police after the Iraq War sends an odd message that the way to police our communities is with the same equipment that was used to deal with terrorist insurgents in a war overseas.
How did the British system come about? In Britain, in the s, there were magistrates who were in charge of law and order in their parishes.
Before the Industrial Revolution, all you had was parishes. To help them with a bit of muscle, they would swear in a local good chap as a constable. This was a very fragmented bottom-up model. After the Industrial Revolution and post the Napoleonic Wars, cities developed, and now you needed something more organized in places like London. It was Sir Robert Peel, the British Home Secretary, who founded the Metropolitan Police in , and who lots of people would say is the founder of modern policing.
Peel had this idea that you need to stick all these independent constables together into police forces which are called constabularies. It was bottom-up community law enforcement. L ast year, an armed man in Oslo, Norway stole an ambulance, injuring four people and firing shots as he drove. Police officers chasing the vehicle fired their guns—but not at him. Instead, they shot the wheels of the ambulance to slow the vehicle and arrested the armed man.
Norway is one of 19 countries worldwide where police officers are typically unarmed, and permitted to use guns only in exceptional circumstances.
These countries, which include the United Kingdom, Finland, and Iceland, seldom see deadly incidents involving police officers. While people were killed by police in the United States in , Norway saw no deaths at the hands of police officers for the same year. But pressure is growing to change the U. While the 19 nations in the world that do not arm officers vary greatly in their approach to policing, they share a common thread. The Norweigian government maintains its low numbers of fatal shootings are not only the result of a mostly unarmed police force, but also extensive training for law enforcement where policing is considered an elite occupation.
It may be surprising to learn that although it is the 15th most armed country in the world, per capita, on this island nation, patrol officers never carry firearms. Instead, officers are equipped with pepper spray and extendable batons. Despite such a heavily armed population, crime is rare and firearms are used almost exclusively for hunting. The only African nation on this list, Botswana is uncommon among its neighbors of South Africa , Namibia , and Zimbabwe , where patrol officers are regularly armed.
Although all officers are licensed and issued a firearm, it is unusual for patrol officers to carry guns. Botswana has strict gun-control laws, and mirrors these in its patrol force. This followed trials earlier in the year which had identified no significant problems: it was concluded that the spray was a safer option, both for the public and for the police, than the use of batons. A Police Complaints Authority report warned that US-style baton training regimes and a lack of refresher training was resulting in an excessive number of injuries.
A report expressed concern about a lack of research into the health effects of CS gas, following a number of deaths related to incidents involving its use. The s — A rise in armed police The police have been armed, increasingly to respond to mounting levels of violent crime and the on-going terrorist threat.
Throughout the s, the reform of police equipment was objected to in some quarters as a form of militarisation and Americanisation of an organisation that historically had had no need for lethal weapons.
Opponents also argued that arming the police more heavily would harm carefully built community relations. On the other hand, the s and s saw rising violent crime, and the increased use of firearms by criminals. In the early s, there were a number of controversies involving armed police, including the shooting of a man in Brixton in After firing six rounds into the target, the police discovered that the lethal firearm they thought the man was carrying was actually a cigarette lighter shaped as a gun.
This incident followed the shooting of Harry Stanley, shot dead by armed police in East London in as he was returning home from the pub carrying a coffee table leg in a plastic bag. The Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to bring prosecutions against any individual officers, but implemented proceedings in against the office of the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police for failing to protect the health, safety and welfare of Mr de Menezes.
These incidents led some to call for the police to use only non-lethal weapons in all operations. Alternatives to conventional firearms The Home Office regularly carries out assessments on — and introduces when possible — equipment that is less lethal than conventional firearms. In Taser stun guns were made available to authorised firearms officers in England and Wales and a twelve month trial began in September in ten police forces to decide whether Tasers should be issued to specially trained police units who are not firearms officers.
Following the success of the trial it was decided to allow Chief Officers of all forces in England and Wales to extend Taser use to specially trained units with effect from 1st December In June the attenuating energy projectile AEP was introduced into operational service as the successor to the L21A1 baton round.
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