I feel safer already. Was Ross Kemp involved?

Never buy a used police vehicle.

I think they are a necessary evil , a small well trained well equipped and highly mobile unit to respond to a particular threat . As long as that is what they are and remain in is far better than the alternative of either relying on the SAS to travel from Hereford while a guy with a truncheon and a taser plays for time or trying to tool up every PC and hope we don’t descend to American levels of incompetence with guns.

they do seem a little bit too tooled up – the army seem to get by with smaller weaponary than that and are sniper type rifles really appropriate for someone patrolling at ground level in amongst crowds?

The police aren’t restricted by the Geneva Convention

I did know a Merseyside armed officer who failed an All Arms APWT, but that was down to a bad choice in kit

TurnerGuy

they do seem a little bit too tooled up – the army seem to get by with smaller weaponary than that and are sniper type rifles really appropriate for someone patrolling at ground level in amongst crowds?

I’m going to take a wild guess that the sniper rifle isn’t for patrolling around at ground level. After recent events it really doesn’t take a lot of imagination to imagine scenarios where it might be useful.

“This stunt is an expression of a government looking to capitalise on self-propagated fears of terror to remind us who’s in charge.”

Normally I’d agree (tanks outside Gatwick in the early 2000’s was a classic example) but giving armed Rozzers motorcycles strikes me as a pretty reasonable step to take given the MO of recent attacks in Europe.

When I saw it on the news I thought it looked more like a seen from a movie and thought it quite comical. Then you think

1. How high up in the government was involved involved in putting on this show of lunacy
2. Not at all London centric
3. It’s a sad situation when we need more armed Police to protects us, when it was our own Mr Blair who got us in to this shit in the first place 🙄

it’s to keep the peasants at bay come the revolution.

Long long overdue. We need 10,000’s more armed police and/or army on the streets. As we spend a lot of time in Paris we are used to seeing all the police being armed and now fully armed soldiers walking through the parks, guarding all Jewish schools and Synagogues and patrolling the streets.

We need 10,000’s more armed police and/or army on the streets.

Not really, there’s a much easier & potentially cheaper way.

The police aren’t restricted by the Geneva Convention

I don’t think the Geneva conventon would have concerns about any of that weaponry.

jambalaya – Member

Long long overdue. We need 10,000’s more armed police and/or army on the streets. As we spend a lot of time in Paris we are used to seeing all the police being armed and now fully armed soldiers walking through the parks, guarding all Jewish schools and Synagogues and patrolling the streets.

I can’t understand why France seems to have a problem with terrorism then.

Nor can I understand why without 10,000’s more armed police/army on our streets, which is long long overdue, apparently, we don’t have more terrorist attacks in the UK than in France.

It’s almost as if armed police/army on the streets makes no difference.

struggling to understand what the alternative is from all the nay-sayers and those ‘disturbed’ at the sight of armed police officers (ah didumms). Of course we’re doing what we can to deal with potential terrorists before they act – but guess what- this isn’t a Tom Cruise film like Minority report. We’re never going to be 100% effective at stopping every single attack, so for those odd few the slip the net then we need a plan B to deal with the situation on the ground and having a few trained and armed police chappies around seems a perfectly reasonable and sensible plan to me and a minor relaxation of our freedoms – it’s a million miles away from a police state so lets not get ahead of ourselves. Lets leave the professionals to do their job. The average joe on the street knows nothing about national security – we are completely ignorant, so our opinion means little at the end of the day. I’d rather have the piece of mind that when I do visit London or a big city with my family I stand a 90% chance at least of leaving alive. The terrorists have got us on the back foot at the moment, but we’ll catch up and get ahead and neutralise the threat – it’s inevitable and only matter of time. Until then a few armed officers on the street are a welcome sight to me.

Of course we’re doing what we can to deal with potential terrorists before they act

The terrorists have got us on the back foot at the moment, but we’ll catch up and get ahead and neutralise the threat

Apparently the security forces have the ID’s of between 2000 & 3000 active terrorists or sympathisers. They’ll probably know the whereabouts of a fair few of those as theyr’e keeping tabs on them.

The police aren’t restricted by the Geneva Convention

The have the Human Rights Act and the IPCC to bear in mind. And the business of every shot being accounted for. Poor sods with single shot G36s taking on nutters with AK47s, willing to spray and pray.

I thought the armour parked by the airport was because they contained the unit’s coms, and added a little security theatre.

Even with more armed police I still find it heartened that the man involved in the knife attack yesterday was tasered and arrested.

He’d have had 50 bullet holes in him if it had happened in the US.

Guns are fine as long as they are used as a last resort.

Nothing more than a PR exercise. There really is no way to effectively stop terrorism. I can think of at least a dozen scenarios* where no amount of armed police would make a slightest bit of difference to the outcome of an attack. And I realy haven’t given it much though!

(*I’m not a terrorist neither do I have any plans to become one, in case MI5 are reading… 😉 )

“Long long overdue. We need 10,000’s more armed police and/or army on the streets.”

😆 As predictable as it is idiotic.

There really is no way to effectively stop terrorism.

There is when you know who they are. Ok not stop it completely but you could certainly effectively make an impact.
As I said,

Apparently the security forces have the ID’s of between 2000 & 3000 active terrorists or sympathisers.

We need 10,000’s more armed police and/or army on the streets.

Not really, there’s a much easier & potentially cheaper way.

Cloning ?

One mans Empire is another mans Rebel Army.

A big dollop of security theatre for sure, but on the other hand increasing the capacity to respond to stuff like we’ve seen in Europe seems like a reasonable step to take and I guess this is what that’s going to look like in practice. And just saying the existing set up is enough is never going to fly- it’s not just politicians wanting to be seen to be doing something, they do actually have to reassure the public that they are doing something and in that context pointing out how rare these incidents still are compared to other more realistic risks is never going to fly.

That said it’s pretty depressing to think that people as heavily tooled up as this might be a routine sight on the streets in the UK. I don’t think the police are all trigger-happy thugs, but it does still seem like a step towards a militarisation of the police like they’ve seen in the US and that’s a worrying road to go down. Escalations like this rarely seem to get toned down when the need has passed, and with the populist politics we’ve seen lately who would be pushing for a ‘weakened’ capability anyway?

As for deterrent, I reckon there might be something in it. Potential suicide attackers might not be bothered about dying but they might be bothered about being stopped before they’ve actually done what they set out to do. What the actual likelihood of these SWAT types actually being able to do that by getting on the scene in a minute or two is is another story I suppose.

It’s almost as if armed police/army on the streets makes no difference.

Probably, except if we look over the otherside of the Atlantic ffect seems to be far more deaths (of both citizens and police)…

And 10,000’s more? Seeing has France has always armed its police then we can only surmise that it’ll make FO difference, except see above.

scuttler – Member

Absolutely hate it. That’s wannabe SAS that. Someone in the Polis must be tugging themselves furiously at robocop, the Keanu SWAT bus film and coverage of US police operations.

It’s a horrid sight.

Whilst I agree with you, they might not be so “wannabe” when they were investigating the Jean Charles de Menezes killing it was thought that Special Forces might have taken part, it was all a bit gory for Police work.

At the time the Police said that the Military weren’t involved, they can’t just go about like that without Home Office approval, but later they changed their minds, some military personnel were involved in an advisory role, and then they changed their mind again, some military personal were involved on the ground, but it was okay, because they were on secondment to the Police, so not military per-se, that day anyway.

The Met’s firearms teams have been and are still being trained by the military, and I believe it a direct result of this that they’re seemingly suddenly so keen to shoot people, several times in the head for little provocation, they’re becoming more paramilitary.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some members of the C-Men are on ‘secondment’ from the military, but at least they’re not going to be routinely deployed on the streets, only if something happens.

C-Men

*chortle, fnarr etc.*

The Met’s firearms teams have been and are still being trained by the military, and I believe it a direct result of this that they’re seemingly suddenly so keen to shoot people, several times in the head for little provocation

The British Army had to exercise great restraint in Northern Ireland in the face of great provocation so I do not think the above statement is valid. I acknowledge that this restraint broke on occasion with tragic results but, in the main, a high degree of restraint was demonstrated.

I’d rather have the piece of mind that when I do visit London or a big city with my family I stand a 90% chance at least of leaving alive

When I go into town I have an expectation that I have a pretty guaranteed 100% chance of returning home with nothing more than maybe being a bit miffed by some painful grockle stopping dead at the foot of an escalator.

I’ll take a wild guess here. Since Bombay, the days of ‘contain and wait for the green chopper’ may be over. There might just be a requirement to move in actively, to avoid more victims being killed. In which case two in the head would become a standard to avoid leaving a live one behind yourself.

As we spend a lot of time in Paris we are used to seeing all the police being armed and now fully armed soldiers walking through the parks,

and that’s somehow a good thing?

So what’s the answer? Do we carry on as normal & for how long before enough’s enough. (like we haven’t had enough already)

Long long overdue. We need 10,000’s more armed police and/or army on the streets.

You really are a chimp.

The job of the Army is combat; you put soldiers on the street, they will kill people because that’s what they do. As for 10’000 armed police… dearie, dearie me.

like we haven’t had enough already

had enough of what?

This seems relevant…

Nick Ferrari On Why Armed Police Are Essential

This caller said he was "dismayed" that armed police will patrol London. Nick Ferrari brilliantly dismantled his argument in just 30 seconds.

Posted by LBC on Thursday, August 4, 2016

… not sure about the 84 tons, though.

So all the armed police will be in Russel Square?

So everywhere that lorries can go we’ll have armed police?

Chimp.

like we haven’t had enough already.

had enough of what?

Never mind. Forget it.

Poor sods with single shot G36s taking on nutters with AK47s, willing to spray and pray.

You are far more likely to hit your target with aimed rapid single shots, get far less stray bullets hitting people, and conserve ammunition should an engagement be prolonged.

Nutters spraying and praying watch too many films. As do people who think it’s effective.