My wife and I watch a fair bit of Brit TV shows (Midsomer Murders, Broadchurch among others) and the cops very rarely, if ever, carry sidearms and collaring the murderer generally seems to go something like this:
sometimes drive quickly to interrupt the/a murder (but not a car chase)
if not the above interruption of a murder, there’s a genteel confrontation in a pub or someone’s living room
murderer casually explains why he/she had to do it
casual stroll out to the police car
I’m in Canada and any cop I’ve seen IRL is wearing body armour and is packing (I don’t know about detectives btw) and it seems obvious to me from news coverage that US cops are the same. And I’ve heard or read that UK police are not armed. So, outside of planned raids on terrorists etc, how do UK police actually get anything done?
UK cops are not routinely armed and armed police are kept in reserve to deal with armed criminals. They do, however, wear stab vests and often carry Tasers.
On the other side, so to speak, criminals are not routinely armed either. Guns are not so easy to acquire and since they don’t normally expect to face armed security etc, the risk of a higher sentence may well outweigh the wish to carry a lethal weapon.
Do not course genteel policing in the style of Barnaby with real life. Criminals really don’t want to be captured and “no comment” interviews are more likely than a confession. American cop shows have the same defect because they want the case wrapped up at the end, usually without the boring anticlimax of a trial.
Surveys of police on the ground constantly show that they are mostly against the idea of being armed routinely. This is in part at least because if they were armed, the criminals would be more likely to arm themselves.
UK cops aren’t routinely armed but can call on others who are trained in such things -
eg Police Firearms Unit (SCO19) , Armed Response Vehicle Officers (ARV),Trojan Proactive Unit (TPU) and others with fancy codenames - when necessary.
Someone ought to do a comedy skit about the classic murder mystery big reveal of who the murderer is and the chief detective says “come along now”. The murderer then says “bugger you!”, pulls out a revolver and shoots the detective and his assistant constables, then makes a clean getaway.
I couldn’t find any in a google search, although pub landlords did show up fairly often. In general, and this is anecdotal, I think most arrests are made either in a police station after an interview, or at someone’s home, often after an early morning knock.
According to Wikipedia, the murder rate (2018) in UK is 1.2 per million, while the USA is 5. Canada where firearms are much more restricted than the USA, but criminals have the benefit of a big open border should they need a firearm, is 1.8 - it’s my understanding that in Canada, if a policeman draws their weapon, they are in for reams of paperwork to justify that action. In the USA where weapons could be more common, we read news articles of officers routinely pulling their weapon for simple traffic stops before they’ve even interacted with the driver. (Depending on certain circumstances, no doubt; and at least this way they know they are not holding the taser).
I would hazard a guess the British police probably also have to fill out some serious detailed reports if they open up the station’s locker and take out the lethal weaponry.
It’s always been my suggestion that if Law & Order and similar shows were true to life, the courtroom wrap up of the murder would be shown two seasons after the investigation and arrest.
We don’t, on the whole, expect our policemen to kill us, and when they do it is not looked on with favour. Even Taser use is much criticised by civil liberty groups here, who would like them to withdrawn altogether.
We have got more used to it in recent times, though. In the 1970s it was headline news when it happened; now, it barely causes a ripple. British criminals do not commonly have guns, and actual exchanges of gunfire are even rarer.
Having said that, one should not rely on TV shows as a reliable guide to how policing works here.
I don’t rely on TV shows as a reliable guide to policing anywhere; the Brit shows just got me thinking. What if the bad guy just won’t give up and he/she can outrun the cop? What happens then?
I remember a former cop once telling me the “laws of the street”.
if you have to chase him, once you catch him, it’s a beatin’
if you catch him in someone’s house, it’s a beatin’
and there were a few others I don’t remember.
Another cop was telling me that the back seats of the cars don’t have seat belts (or they’re not used), and if the prisoner doesn’t behave himself, just touch the brakes enough to throw him into the plexiglass partition until he settles down.
I think the key point is in the US (and in Canada to lesser degree AFAIK) if you are approaching a criminal, not matter how petty and low level the crime involved, there is a good chance they’ll be armed. As a cop rolling up on someone accused of burglary or car theft, or any minor crime, there is a significant chance they’ll be armed (hell if you are rolling up on someone who’s done nothing more than run a red light there’s a good chance they’re armed)
That’s not the case in the UK. The chances a petty criminal who’s just nicked a DVD player is armed is really low. Sure if a cop is apprehending a bank robber, a high level drug dealer or terrorist they may well be armed, and so armed police will be used, but that represents a tiny of proportion of police work.
Most UK police would not be legally able to carry any lethal weapons, nor would most stations have a locker containing any lethal weapons. There are some places with routine armed patrols- mainly airports and other major transport hubs, and a few higher-risk suburbs- but for your everyday policeman the approach would be to call in the guys with the training if required.
A taser is a perfectly sufficient weapon against a guy with a knife, which is the worst they’re usually going to face, and they’re generally decent at de-escalation tactics.
I don’t think that’s the case. I was under the impression most large-ish police stations even in smaller towns would have asidearms. They would not, unlike the equivalent US town, have a full on paramilitary SWAT setup, but they would have access to a couple of handguns a minimum.
They would only be accessible to (the small minority) of police who are trained to use them.
There’s some British reality TV show that follows Armed Cops on their daily beats I remember seeing a single episode once. It was 2 cops in a van and both had pistols but they also had an AR-15 type rifle in their trunk.
Granted I have no idea how close to reality it was because the armed cops were sent to respond to a cow on the loose near some farmland. I have no idea if they were sent because nobody else was around or if they actually might have had to shoot the cow.
That would have been the case once, but not these days, after some well-publicised disasters it’s left to the specialist squad who do nothing else (and if they’re busy training on the other side of the county then you are Surely Out of Luck).
The next article beginns with this warning:
This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably . (January 2019)
and includes this graph.
About 200 people die every year in the UK as a result of police actions, the same order of magnitude as policemen killed in the USA (excluding Covid for last year):
Would you rather be a criminal in the UK or a policeman in the USA?
On several UK cop shows, I’ve seen (I think they were set in London…not Midsomer County) all the cops going on a call carried telescoping nightsticks (for want of a better description).
