Armed Police - Casually strolling

[RecklessAbandon]

2 minutes ago, Steve_Christian said:

Ah - soldiers. Not armed forces. And those pesky nurses eh? We should ban them. 

Last I checked, soldiers were part of the armed forces.

And soldiers is a bit of a generic term - RAF Regiment, Royal Marines, etc are "soldiers" but not in the Army.

[RecklessAbandon]

2 minutes ago, Steve_Christian said:

Perhaps because we have armed response. 

And before we had armed response?

[A fool and his money.....]

9 hours ago, Derek Flint said:

 

I'm currently in Japan. It has an unbelievably low crime rate, massive public conformity to rules and exceptional personal and public safety. It has also some of the strictest, if not the strictest, gun control in the world. 

It's police service is armed. 

I think you're clutching at straws now. I've been to Japan, it's lovely and feels very safe, in that respect it's comparable to the IOM.

Unlike the island there is organised and violent crime with guns there at times. You only have to do a very quick Google search to find several examples of the police shooting at criminals in the last two years.

Perhaps inevitable with a population of 25 million.

Meanwhile here, criminals don't use guns, there's never been an instance of police shooting at anyone as far as I can remember, oh and the population is round 85,000. 

Also, guns were introduced to the Japanese police force after WW2 by the allies, rather than any current operational need.

Other than that it's a very relevant comparison.

[Two-lane]

5 minutes ago, HeliX said:

 

https://abc11.com/post/brooklyn-nypd-subway-shooting-cop-2-bystanders-suspect-shot-police-train-what-began-nyc-mta-fare-evasion-incident/15310039/

This kind of thing amazes me, as is the desire by some people here for the police to have guns - for whatever reason.

Years ago I was on a local train in Frankfurt, late at night. Two railway police got on. They had batons, but no guns. I suppose some here might have thought them intimidating because they had black overalls, black berets and black combat boots. They also had a sodding great black dog that was straining at its lead and drooling through its muzzle and desperate to find a fare evader - 'cos it ain't 'ad its breakfast.

There is more than one way to solve a problem.

 

[WTF]

is that a sweeney reference  TL 

[Tinpot]

58 minutes ago, Blade Runner said:

They don't get it Derek.

 

You are wasting your time.

 

 

They also still haven’t explained what the actual issue is, despite being asked numerous times.

Someone mentioned cost - which shows a total lack of understanding of what is being discussed, and someone else mentioned it being intimidating.

I can’t get my head round what the perceived issue is.

Edited Tuesday at 04:03 PM by Tinpot

[WTF]

Just now, Tinpot said:

They also still haven’t explained what the actual issue is, despite being asked numerous times.

Someone mentioned cost - who can shows a total lack of understanding of what is being discussed, and someone else mentioned it being intimidating.

I can’t get my head round what the perceived issue is.

immigrants is the issue these days , too many in some places , not enough in others.

[Tinpot]

14 minutes ago, Two-lane said:

This kind of thing amazes me, as is the desire by some people here for the police to have guns - for whatever reason.

I don’t have a desire for the police to have guns.  I doubt anyone does.  Where did you get that from?

However I don’t see what the issue is with some of them having them.  It’s been explained what the advantages are in terms of response time IF an armed response was needed.

As I understand it we aren’t talking about more than a handful of police on any given day who have a weapon and so if needed can respond quickly.  So what’s the issue?  Most of them still are just wandering about like they always have.

[Andy Onchan]

46 minutes ago, Blade Runner said:

They don't get it Derek.

 

You are wasting your time.

 

 

I get it but I'm not sure that our society has reached the point where firearms are required 24/7/365, rapid response or not.

In general there's really no comparison in terms of the level of threat here in the IOM vs UK for example. I'm pretty sure the statistics would bare that out.

Sorry but you'll not convince me that this policy is a necessity. 

 

[Tinpot]

5 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

Sorry but you'll not convince me that this policy is a necessity. 

Are you going to try and convince us it’s unnecessary, or anything to be bothered by?

[A fool and his money.....]

It's completely unnecessary. It's completely disproportionate to the risk (or lack of it)

The idea that we need armed police at all is pretty laughable to be honest.

The suggestion that they should walk the streets with those guns just in case they need to shoot multiple people without the inconvenience of first returning to the police station is completely fucking mental!

[A fool and his money.....]

We live in a backwater. A small, peaceful island with little petty crime, even less violent crime and no gun crime.

I kind of get why some small time copper who ends up here and knows he's going to see little or no action other than dog shit complaints and people driving past schools at 25 mph , may want to liven his job up a bit and invent some far fetched scenario where a group of mafia hitmen descend on the island and start indiscriminately slaughtering people with automatic machine guns.

There simply is no credible justification for having coppers walking around with guns on the island. It's simply not necessary.

[Omobono]

6 minutes ago, A fool and his money..... said:

We live in a backwater. A small, peaceful island with little petty crime, even less violent crime and no gun crime.

I kind of get why some small time copper who ends up here and knows he's going to see little or no action other than dog shit complaints and people driving past schools at 25 mph , may want to liven his job up a bit and invent some far fetched scenario where a group of mafia hitmen descend on the island and start indiscriminately slaughtering people with automatic machine guns.

There simply is no credible justification for having coppers walking around with guns on the island. It's simply not necessary.

I understand there were armed police present at the Government conference at the Comis hotel today  seen walking casually through the corridors ,  is there something that the citizens of the Isle of Man don't understand , have we walked away  entirely from community policing  and the friendly local Bobby   and opted for the paramilitary approach where the public are just an inconvenience  and kept at arms length also it seems there is a significant amount to be spent making the Island safe ,  while at the same time we are told its possibly the safest place in the UK to live ,  bit of a strange statement to make , with customs and  police port  search protection going up at both ports  air and sea , 

[TheTeapot]

The police exist to protect the rich from the poor. Maybe someone somewhere thinks there's only a little more pushing to do.

[Andy Onchan]

1 minute ago, Omobono said:

I understand there were armed police present at the Government conference at the Comis hotel today  seen walking casually through the corridors ,  is there something that the citizens of the Isle of Man don't understand , have we walked away  entirely from community policing  and the friendly local Bobby   and opted for the paramilitary approach where the public are just an inconvenience  and kept at arms length also it seems there is a significant amount to be spent making the Island safe ,  while at the same time we are told its possibly the safest place in the UK to live ,  bit of a strange statement to make , with customs and  police port  search protection going up at both ports  air and sea , 

+1 This.

The police have abandoned the community; the very place where the best intelligence is and the best place to get your message across. Mind boggling.