About Time They Used Them

[Grianane]

http://www.manxradio.com/readNEwsItem.aspx?id=23662

 

this is reassuring but to be honest until someone has their head blown off by the police too many people will continue to

carry weapons.

[Blixo]

http://www.manxradio.com/readNEwsItem.aspx?id=23662

 

this is reassuring but to be honest until someone has their head blown off by the police too many people will continue to

carry weapons.

 

No

 

Personally I don't agree. The last couple of Police call out's have been nothing but showboating exercises - The deployment of firearms should only be used as a last resort, not justifying budget spends and political ponker pulling.

 

somebody in Manx Police Force has their priorities arse about face.

[Gladys]

Have to agree with you Blixo. Recent events have been blown out of all proportion. If you want to up the ante by the police introducing firearms then it is just a slippery slope IMHO. We can start to be concerned about gun crime here when we have some. At the moment we have had nothing, but the way we are going it would be a cruel irony if the first gun fatality was at the hands of the police.

[rallybug]

Have to agree with you Blixo. Recent events have been blown out of all proportion. If you want to up the ante by the police introducing firearms then it is just a slippery slope IMHO. We can start to be concerned about gun crime here when we have some. At the moment we have had nothing, but the way we are going it would be a cruel irony if the first gun fatality was at the hands of the police.

 

Surely that would depend on the circumstance in which the firearms officer used his weapon? I'd hardly call it a cruel irony if a firearms officer shot and killed someone with a machete, sword, something like that or worse, who was refusiing to lay down the weapon and was endangering either a police officer or a member of the public.

[Chinahand]

I don't really agree with the comments about over reaction or whatever, but there is a problem. The basic issue is that beat officiers are totally taking the attitude that they aren't going to get involved if someone is swinging a weapon about be that a cricket bat, a hammer, a knife or much more rarely a fire arm. More often than not they'll be facing someone who is absolutely distraught, often with mental illness, or drink and drugs playing a part.

 

Often the police presence is seen as a provocation and can make things worse - I am certain they will try all the usual tricks about cups of tea etc, but pure and simple a standard beat officer isn't going to get anywhere near someone upset and holding something that could do significant damage to them.

 

I don't really blame them. The uniform isn't treated with respect anymore, in fact quite the opposite, it is almost more likely that a police officer arriving and telling the person to calm down and get a grip will result in a torrent of abuse and will give the person a target for their anger.

 

As a result the beat officer backs off and calls for assistance. Because the heavy mob will not go in to subdue a person like this without protective equipment and cover from someone with a taser (which are classed as fire arms) this makes for a major undertaking.

 

People seem to be saying its the police who are over reacting.

 

I don't agree - would you be willing to try and get a hammer off a person distraught and with a suspicion of drug abuse or whatever (this is a hypothetical question and has no relevence to recent events of which I know no nothing).

 

I'm not surprise they decide that if push comes to shove that they will use riot shields to pin the so and so down with an officer with a taser covering them incase anything goes wrong.

 

Think about it - what would you do?

[The Old Git]

I think I caught the back end of that interview yesterday.

 

It sounded like the firearms officers are the only ones allowed to use Tazers, so the fact that firearms officers are called out may mean that the actual firing of a gun is the very last resort and a Tazer may be used instead.

 

Tazers had only been used once over here and that was in an ongoing case. (Allan St, or the other one a couple of weeks before?)

 

I think we need armed police over here. I don't feel unsafe or threatened by gun crime, but if we didn't and some armed nutter walked through Strand St shooting at people and all our police had were batons and pepper spray then no doubt there would be a lot of hand wringing and asking why we weren't better prepared.

[rallybug]

IOM Constabulary have firearms officers, and yes, only firearms-trained officers are issued with tazers - your normal beat bobby has his truncheon (extending metal one, I assume) or his big stick if a sergeant or higher , pepper/cs spray (can't remember which) and handcuffs.

[ballaughbiker]

I'm not drawing any conclusion and this is just an observation but I spend a lot of time in a european country where the police are armed. It may be a cultural thing but they seem to get a lot more respect than IOM or UK police.

 

I agree that firearm use by the police should be an absolute last resort to save the life of the public or fellow officers in the face of extreme danger from any weapon use by an assailant. However the way things are going (and I don't read the Daily Mail!) its madness to send officers out to a dangerous situation with basically a stick. Would the antis be against the use of armed police say at Liverpool airport where they patrol through the passenger lounge with machine guns? Whilst they are a tiny percentage of the overall population there are some real nutters out there.

[bluemonday]

or his big stick if a sergeant or higher biggrin.gif, pepper/cs spray (can't remember which) and handcuffs.

 

Must....Not....Mention....Max......Mosley

[Bombay Bad Boy]

I don't agree - would you be willing to try and get a hammer off a person distraught and with a suspicion of drug abuse or whatever (this is a hypothetical question and has no relevence to recent events of which I know no nothing).

link

[andrew]

For what the Policeman needs day to day, what they have is probably fine.

 

When you start getting people with Knifes, Hammers threatening themselves and others, then Firearms officers will be called out. They will however only be allowed to use "less-lethal" weapons such as Tazers and Baton Rounds as the use of Guns would not be appropriate with what the offender has. If the offender then pulls a handgun out, then the Officers would be given permission to use lethal force.

 

I think the recent ones haven't involved the offenders having guns, so assuming they had items such as knifes, sticks, hammers etc and threats must have been made to hurt/kill other people.

 

If you had someone standing in a street waving a knife around shouting "anyone who comes near me is going to get hurt" then I can't think that an unarmed Policeman is going to try and run up to him and wrestle the knife off him!! So, get some Firearms officers out and they can stand 30 metres away, perfectly safe and start talking to the bloke. If talking isn't going anywhere, and he is not going to put the knife down, then you can't have the roads etc closed forever - a decision has to be made to end it. Authorisation will be given to the officers to use less-lethal weapons - Tazers to start and if they don't work, then try Baton Rounds. Neither of these "should" kill/seriously injure the bloke (and in my view, if he is hurt a bit, then maybe he won't try the same thing again!).

[Silentbob]

I fully agree that we should maintain a properly trained firearms section within the police force. But deploying half a dozen MP5 totting cops to wander around the streets because BoB the builder is having a bad day was overkill (no pun intended)

[manshimajin]

I fully agree that we should maintain a properly trained firearms section within the police force. But deploying half a dozen MP5 totting cops to wander around the streets because BoB the builder is having a bad day was overkill (no pun intended)

I agree. When I was a kid, when people suggested arming the Poice, the Police themselves used to say that being armed encouraged the crims to also arm themselves.

 

If someone went berserk with an AK47 having armed police on the street would 99.9% of the time be too late as they would be in the wrong place to do anything. So that means calling out a specially trained squad and we already seem to have one of those to deal with hammer crime etc...what extra is needed?

[Gladys]

Have to agree with you Blixo. Recent events have been blown out of all proportion. If you want to up the ante by the police introducing firearms then it is just a slippery slope IMHO. We can start to be concerned about gun crime here when we have some. At the moment we have had nothing, but the way we are going it would be a cruel irony if the first gun fatality was at the hands of the police.

 

Surely that would depend on the circumstance in which the firearms officer used his weapon? I'd hardly call it a cruel irony if a firearms officer shot and killed someone with a machete, sword, something like that or worse, who was refusiing to lay down the weapon and was endangering either a police officer or a member of the public.

But there you have it, was this person endangering anyone or just giving out a general threat? I grant you, different set of circumstances if the person has another in a neck grip with a knife held to the throat, but from what I can glean the guy was just wielding a hammer with no specific threat to anyone else. With a machete, hammer or sword you have to be within a reasonably close distance for it to be a real threat. Whereas, with firearms the threat distance is greater, which kind of indicates to me that the level of force available far exceeded what was reasonable and so upped the ante.

 

Would you really agree that shooting him was an option? If it wasn't an option, than that element should not have been introduced until the circumstances indicated otherwise.

 

Wouldn't it have been quicker and probably more effective if they just did something like chuck a net over him and pull him to the ground, disarm him of his B&Q hammer and cart him away rather than give him hours of high level threat attention? Definitely less kudos for everyone involved (and definitely a high level of embarassment factor for him), but the job would be done.

 

And before anyone starts whining that to treat someone in that manner is injurious to his self esteem, unprofessional, etc. remember, he was acting like an eejit and so deserved to be treated like an eejit, not given the dubious, but short-lived, notoriety of having the starring role in the Allan Street siege!!!!

[bluemonday]

I fully agree that we should maintain a properly trained firearms section within the police force. But deploying half a dozen MP5 totting cops to wander around the streets because BoB the builder is having a bad day was overkill (no pun intended)

 

Beautifully put.