Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 50 total)
  • Ok let’s try again without the mopeds
  • mickmcd
    Free Member

    Armed officers on the streets yay or nay

    Some people including the mod couldn’t grasp what the thread question was about so here’s a link

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/29/scotland-yard-considers-using-armed-police-tackle-violent-gangs/amp/

    eddiebaby
    Free Member

    That would be down to your badly phrased question. And nay.

    ads678
    Full Member

    Certain circumstances may require armed officers, but I don’t like the idea of random coppers wandering around with guns.

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    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    And nay.

    There definitely are armed officers on the streets – I’ve seen them. You obviously haven’t grasped the question. 🙂

    gears_suck
    Free Member

    The best way to stop a criminal with a weapon is to shoot them. They have no regard for the well being of those they are robbing and have repeatedly shown that using their weapons to inflict serious injury or death is always an option. If you choose to engage in this type of criminal behaviour, the sooner you learn your own death or serious injury may be an occupational hazard, the better. In my opinion of course.

    mickmcd
    Free Member

    Certain circumstances may require armed officers, but I don’t like the idea of random coppers wandering around with guns.

    Well one out of three got it at least

    Bregante
    Full Member

    Just to clarify, the story in the telegraph is about allowing already trained firearms officers to deploy on foot patrol with their longarms. This is beyond what they are routinely authorised to do and requires superintendents authority in my force and is constantly reviewed based on the perceived threat at that time. It is not common but not exactly unheard either. In the area where I work we have had this in place a couple of times this year but only for a few days at a time. It is a very visible deterrent but ties up a valuable commodity.

    mickmcd
    Free Member

    This is beyond what they are routinely authorised to do

    <span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>And thus it’s a matter of time poor Sadiq is already frothing he wasn’t consulted.</span>

    esselgruntfuttock
    Free Member

    The best way to stop a criminal with a weapon is to shoot them.

    NO! This attitude is wrong. They should be apprehended & arrested & given a fair trial & a chance to explain their actions/defend themselves, with the outcome decided by the courts. It is after all the 21st century & we MUST think about their human rights!

    On the other hand…naa **** it, gimme a gun & I’ll help.

    zippykona
    Full Member

    What is the likelyhood of the cops coming across some bad guys , the bad guys then aiming to fire and the cops having a safe shot?

    Pretty bloody slim.

    I’d rather they spent money on doing something rather than looking like they are doing something.

    rmacattack
    Free Member

    Awaiting Mikesmith to say they should carry white bunnies , so the criminal scum can pet them for rehabilitation.

    Certain circumstances may require armed officers, but I don’t like the idea of random coppers wandering around with guns.

    This is the only answer needed on this thread.

    cynic-al
    Free Member

    Well one out of three got it at least

    Well maybe you’ll explain/phrase your post properly on the 3rd go?

     It is after all the 21st century & we MUST think about their human rights!

    On the other hand…naa **** it, gimme a gun & I’ll help

    Those rights you complain about have existed for centuries.

    Is your second point a joke? I mean you can’t be serious?

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    Awaiting Mikesmith

    😉

    Oh, and

    Certain circumstances may require armed officers, but I don’t like the idea of random coppers wandering around with guns.

    Is the correct answer, as above.

    v8ninety
    Full Member

    The only problem I have with armed bobbies on foot is that they are them not in response cars and become less responsive as a result. Armed response is a very finite resource and making a percentage of it less able to respond seems a bit daft to me.

    Although I appreciate that the Met has a LOT more armed officers than most.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Awaits the frothing gun lovers being able to read….. It’s going to take a while.

    Shooting a suspect needs to be the very last resort for the police something they do if there is no other way to preserve life It also relies on those officers being in the right place which is probably going to be harder if they are patrolling somewhere else.

    Last time I checked as a country we didn’t sign up for executions, it’s not time to start despite some keyboard warriors wanting to have a go.

    ajaj
    Free Member

    If you phrase the question slightly differently, “Given the extreme constraints on Police budgets would you prefer armed officers to be sitting around eating donuts waiting for an incident or out of the streets deterring crime?”, does that change the answer?

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    A very specific loaded question there…. Sounds like a good one for Morning Radio Phone ins

    Will having the patrolling impact the response time to incidents?

    Are they in a fixed location waiting currently or are they patrolling in vehicles?

    Which crimes would an armed officer deter better than an unarmed one?

    Will you maintain the same rules of engagement for these officers?

    v8ninety
    Full Member

    If you phrase the question slightly differently

    By differently, you mean using inflammatory language, supposition and fibs? Yes, I would imagine that an answer to that question would be different.

    cynic-al
    Free Member

    Come on Mike, it’s not fair to ask the ad hominem gammons reasonable and logical questions!

    raybanwomble
    Free Member

    I’d like to hear more of Bregantes opinion, but it seems like a better way to deal with gang crime if the police were resourced properly would be to have more undercover officers building cases against these scrotes and intelligence led efforts to actually catch them when they have weapons on them – not when they are stashed away.

    anagallis_arvensis
    Full Member

    Given the extreme constraints on Police budgets would you prefer armed officers to be sitting around eating donuts waiting for an incident or out of the streets deterring crime?

    Giving the police more powers re guns when violent crimes spikes after budget cuts seems more than a little short sighted to me.

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    I think that all police should have mopeds.

    MSP
    Full Member

    I wouldn’t want the UK to be policed like the states, but Germany and France are probably more comparable, and there seems little or no problems with armed officers there. I find UK officers can be rather aggressive, I speculate this is a trained action to “control” a situation without firearms, and is a behaviour they enact even when not necessary. So with that in mind my worry would be the transition from a largely unarmed force to an armed force.

    gears_suck
    Free Member

    Come on Mike, it’s not fair to ask the ad hominem gammons reasonable and logical questions!

    An elaborate effort to condescend and at the same time self stroke a tiny minded ego. I bet you dream of spooning Mike every night.  🙂

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Let’s read the article shall we? Even the first two paragraphs should be enough to define the proposal being made.

    Scapegoat
    Full Member

    For decades this country has depended on policing by consent. With varying results, and in the face of criticism, sometimes justified, sometimes mischievous, from many different factions and perspectives, the police consider themselves to be working with and in consultation with other actors within any given community. They readily acknowledge that the wellbeing of a/the community is a shared responsibility of those that live within it, those that work alongside members of the community, and those who are charged with its wellbeing and guardianship.

    Communities are not homogeneous. Within any community there will be those whose ideals, values and ambitions differ from and all too often clash with the concept of the “common good.” There will of course also be those who are disenfranchised, disillusioned and see no benefit or interest in engaging with the “common good”, and then there are those who for a number of reasons are intent on exploiting the disenfranchised and marginalised for their own gain.

    Opinion and reaction are, today more than ever, fuelled by narrative. Recently that narrative has become more and more polarised. This isn’t solely an issue among the underinformed who lap up the garbage their “friends” share and retweet without a second thought to the truth behind the headlines, but it also blunders its way through what should be informed and well-read debate, with every opportunity taken to rubbish an alternative perspective by attacking the character and history of the opponent. The narrative simply becomes binary.

    There is a very real danger here that we don’t actually try to understand the implications of what is being proposed, because we’re all too tied up in either rejoicing the fact that the police have taken the gloves off and are ramming moped robbers off the road, and are going to be in a position to shoot violent criminals more often, or alternatively decrying the fact that the police are using authoritarian shows of strength to further oppress disenfranchised and exploited members of society who have turned to crime or been forced into it.

    There is, as far as I can determine, no call for the routine arming of police officers. I think we could all agree that some armed specialists are required, and how they are deployed should remain very tightly controlled and regulated. I personally believe that the status quo strikes a reasonable balance.

    The danger here is that the narrative changes with the headlines, and while to some “it stands to reason” that certain areas require a much tougher policing approach, the decision to deploy routine armed patrols to certain areas labels and stigmatises ALL within that community.  While it may have a deterrent effect among some individuals, and have a reassuring effect among others, there is a risk that it will have a very negative effect on the efforts made by those actors within a community to bridge the divides. It runs the risk of ending positive dialogue in often very fragile partnerships and consultation groups. It signals a lack of trust, and potentially ends that very valuable notion of consent.

    What Dick appeared to me to be proposing was that armed specialists could be called upon, under certain circumstances to leave their vehicles and make limited patrols in areas where levels of violent crime <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>at the time </span> justify their presence. That’s a very different scenario to making routine armed patrols in communities with high levels of violent crime. By failing to grasp this, or by twisting the narrative one way or the other, we once again run the risk of polarising the debate,  in exactly the way the “moped” debate produced two factions of “about time too” and “summary police executions.”

    dissonance
    Full Member

    does that change the answer?

    No because it is asking the wrong question. They would be patrolling anyway a lot of the time its just now they will be on foot rather than in vehicles.  The marked cars are normally easy enough to spot.

    Seems mostly security theatre. I would have thought having unmarked cars lurking around would be far more effective.

    ajaj
    Free Member

    “By differently, you mean using inflammatory language, supposition and fibs?”

    Not really, since the donut joke is part of popular culture. However, try it this way

    “You have been forced by budget cuts to reduce your manpower and increased evidential requirements means that each officer is less productive. You have also been forced by events to reassign officers from community duties to armed response and maintain a larger reserve than is usually needed to deal with extreme events. Should you deploy your reserve when it isn’t needed to partially fill the gaps.”

    Not quite as pithy but the same principle.

    timbog160
    Full Member

    Like the moped thing it is a populist move designed to deflect criticism from a failing police force….the reasons for which are too numerous to list here…

    For what it’s worth I agree with it for the short term.

    finephilly
    Free Member

    Deploying armed police just tackles the symptoms, not the cause. Why are people conducting armed robberies? I don’t want gun battles on the streets. What if some random gets shot? When i see an armed officer, I hope they don’t shoot me. It makes them less approachable.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Anyone else curious as to what the OP’s opinion on this is?

    Bregante
    Full Member

    To answer raybanwomble, I would be very surprised to hear that there were no covert tactics being used but the met are hardly going to put that in the telegraph (although with the met, nothing would surprise me)

    Now if that were the case, then maybe those armed deployments aren’t as random as people on here may have first assumed. Just a thought.

    BigJohn
    Full Member

    The best way to stop a criminal with a weapon is…

    …having a culture where criminals don’t feel the need to carry weapons.

    sbob
    Free Member

    The best way to stop a criminal with a weapon is…

    …having a culture where criminals don’t feel the need to carry weapons.

    That’s prevention, which we should all be striving for. Unfortunately we do have violent criminals on mopeds attacking the innocent, and the best way to stop them is smearing them into the tarmac.

    But yes, we all wish for the day when all the criminals are lovely pacifists. 🙂

    Klunk
    Free Member

    watched Dredd last night as a documentary 😀

    eddiebaby
    Free Member

    chewkw
    Free Member

    Armed officers on the streets yay or nay

    Absolutely Yay!!!  😀

    mickmcd
    Free Member

    …having a culture where criminals don’t feel the need to carry weapons.

    i say old boy one of your drug dealers appears to have run off with my 200ks worth of heroin would one of you mind asking awfully if he would bring it back

    oh awwwfully sorry old bean ill make sure he drops it off tonight and make sure he apologises for the inconvenience, frightfully sorry

    i can see this would be a lot less aggro

    eddiebaby
    Free Member

    It would be, wouldn’t it?

    tinribz
    Free Member

    oppress disenfranchised and exploited members of society who have turned to crime or been forced into it

    Some serious ‘False consensus effect’ projection going on here. You should get out more.

    This has nothing to do with armed robberies and just as unlikely about criminals with guns.  It’s about police being too scared to patrol certain areas with just a truncheon for protection.  The recent spike in murders has put pressure on them to have a presence.  Driving around within the safety of a steel box isn’t working, fairly sure they will have tried that first.

    This seems like a London only issue but there was a spike in similar cases in Glasgow a few years back.  How come they didn’t need to be armed to tackle it there?

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 50 total)

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