The UK police overwhelming do not want to be armed. 82% of officers were against it.
The explanation goes as below.
*Arming the police undermine the principle of policing by consent - the notion that the force owes its primary duty to the public, rather than to the state, as in other countries.
*
It’s all gone into in a lot more details on the below.
For my part what I notice about UK police in comparison to US police is they are far less confrontational. It seems the fact the police are armed in the US leads to weapons being drawn and threats being made far more that I see in the UK. I am entirely going on reality TV programs though so possibly the reality is quite different. It’s certainly possible the US programs on policing are choosing to show as the more action packed cases.
Of course the whole question of arming the police in the UK is helped quite a lot by the fact gun crime is so comparatively rare.
Major confrontational incidents that require guns do be drawn are rare in the US. Of course the media sensationalizes everything. The reason US cops carry guns is because they are facing an armed populace (thanks 2nd amendment). Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always been under the impression that gun ownership is illegal in the UK. Why carry a firearm when the criminals most likely won’t either?
Airports and transit are another story. The 2005 bus bombings and the multiple threats against UK aviation have prompted the government to respond accordingly, leading to firearm-carrying LE.
I understand and appreciate that; more power to them. It speaks well of British society that they are willing to do so, and feel safe in doing so. Nevertheless, to not train police to use firearms seems, to me at least, to be an oversight. In some future emergency it might prove useful.
My experience with police and police-wannabes is that there is a proportion of them that like the idea of being boss, carrying a weapon, giving orders and the general population has to do what they say. These are the types that could end up using excessive force and expect their fellow officers to cover for them, like to taze grannies, children, and women who won’t hang up the cell phone and get out of the car, because a taser is allegedly a non-lethal weapon. They don’t like to have their orders or authority questioned. I suppose the more grungy and unappealing the job - i.e. policing American inner cities - the harder it is to atttract the “good cop” types to balance these.
If you let the authoritarian types rise in the ranks, they will eventually latch onto whatever excuse is necessary - valid or not - to augment their arsenals. Of course, as the Hollywood link shows, sometimes there are good reasosns.
My perception is that the change happened in the late 80’s or early 90’s. It seems that it was then that there started to be more and more young cops with butch haircuts and surly demeanors. There were excuses made at the time that the police were getting lots of recruits who were fresh out of the military and they brought a military attitude towards the job with them, but I never bought it. The cops I knew when I was growing up and the older guys I worked with at the Sheriff’s Office had all been in the military due to the draft and many of them had served in Vietnam and they didn’t act that way.
If I had to serve a warrant on David Koresh, my go to plan for doing so wouldn’t involve assaulting the compound, I’d quitely pick him up when he was in town. The entire handling of the Waco fiasco wasn’t law enforcement’s most shining moment.
I seen many shows cops fox and seen many TV news crime and most cops have hand gun and some shot gun . Only SWAT have higher guns or cops in hot zones.I have seen some documentaries where some police do come with higher guns but there mostly gang areas or hot zone areas .
I read that Los Ageles is having problem with some gangs getting AK-47 and other higher guns . So I would not be surprised some cops do have higher guns .Some places in the US have such high gang and crime areas that even one or two officers would not patrol the street alone.I think if the gang problem is getting out control and more and more getting higher guns than you will see more cops getting higher guns.
The nature of the UK and Canada is it much harder to get gun thus the cops other than SWAT don;t need it.Where in the US some areas people and gangs are getting these guns.
Even if the US ban all guns there so many guns out there they will never get all of the guns .
In the UK hand guns are banned so it next to possible to get handgun other than black market and even this very hard.
I’ve seen the “Killdozer” film clip and i wonder if there was a reason why the army wasn’t called in early on…
If the cops have military style weapons to fight gangs with AK’s they have to be trained to fire something that not only goes through people but walls, cars, houses and then people too.
Basically, there are strict limits to the use of military forces for law enforcement activities.
Also, garrison military forces aren’t exactly ready to go at a moment’s notice. The National Guard would have to get permission from the Governor, call in their troops off their day jobs, open the armory, get ammo from the AHA, and then move to the scene of the crime. Not a fast process, even if we assume there is an armory or post in the vicinity.
Active duty troops would only be marginally faster (since they are already at the post), but they’d probably require approval from the President. (Which would slow things down even more)
I’ll suggest that MP5s, M16s, Thompsons, BARs, etc were funded and issued in response to a need within the law enforcement community to have equal or better arms than the criminals they are facing. A police department can create a 24/7 SWAT-type group or call up specialty trained officers from individual departments when the need arises.
Not arming the local PD with heavier firepower would mean that the criminals would win every gun battle that they started. The PDs are responding to the environment and conditions that exist. The legislatures are also responding to the environment and conditions that exist when they fund and issue weapons for a more heavily armed PD.
