Deepcrush wrote:Its not that it shouldn't be, its just that the UK population lacks concern over the safety of its officers.
No, it isn't. Quite the reverse. It's rather that we are able to maintain a society where people are rather less inclined to go shoot each other than some.
A shame, but may explain the constant trouble you guys mention over being short on numbers. I wouldn't want to serve that kind of a population either.
Huh? Short on numbers of police? I've never heard of such a thing being an issue in the UK.
I don't have solid numbers but a lot of it depends on their deployment zone. In rural and suburban areas, its rare that an officer will ever even have to draw a firearm in their 20yr street assignments. In the urban areas risk goes up but still its rare that an officer dies, road side injuries are the most common. Getting clipped by a passing car or such, which is why the newer vests have wrapped plates by the ribs. Some of the Metro commands get down right ugly but that happens in welfare and durg populated areas. Maryland lost three last year that I know of, however it could have reached double digits if not for the body armor they were deployed with.
According to
this 67 cops were shot to death in the US last year. In the UK it was zero. In fact from
this, there was one prior shot this year, and before that it was 1 in 2007, 1 in 2005, 1 in 2003... so the average seems to be about 0.5 per year.
So the armed police in the US are shot to death something like 120 times as often as our unarmed police are in the UK.
Which really goes to the actual issue here, that the two countries have very different cultures. I would never advocate that US cops should go unarmed - they'd be shot to pieces, obviously. But you can see from a casual glace at the numbers that there just isn't that culture here. Our cops aren't armed, for the most part, but our criminals also aren't armed for the most part. It's a less gun saturated, less violent culture where occasions like this are so rare that it really would be absurd to make policy based on them. If our police went routinely armed, the criminals would start to do the same. We'd go down the US route and the result would be that a few years along the road we'd have the same result - a far greater number of dead police officers.
First off, how is a tank useful for checking on a house? Second, a lot of officers use armored cars but thats mostly on highway patrols so that they can push a disabled vehicle off the road if need be. Third, I didn't say I wanted you to prove how ignorant you can be on the subject but you've at least succeeded there. Tanks and armored cars aren't useful in securing a house, which is why I never said to "bring tanks and cannons and magic ponies", police who are armed and armored however are useful for securing a house.
It covers you on the approach to the property - which is where these two officers were killed. Have you actually read anything at all about the case?
Having to rush a guy with a gun and grenade because you aren't equipped to defend yourself vs being able to back away and engage from a distance is a rather large difference.
No UK cop is ever required to rush an armed man when they are not armed. So no, not really a comparison.
Again, you don't have to increase your numbers of officers unless there are simply no armed officers in the UK. The Maryland Metro SPO command has 94 officers per shift of which 6 are armed. In 2003 there were only about two dozen SPOs per shift with six per shift being armed. Having armed or unarmed officers in response positions has nothing to do with numbers. Never has, never will.
Of course it does. There are a small number of armed officers. If we required every crime scene to be cleared by an armed officer before other cops turned up, the large majority of the police force would spend most of their time sitting around waiting for the armed cops to show up before they could do anything, and the only way to overcome that would be more armed cops.
That speaks more to the inability of your country to recruit officers then anything else. For all the talk of how your officers like it, you don't seem to be able to keep your numbers at full roster. Cause and effect seem rather plain here. The US has never had a shortage of officers, in fact the most common problem is that there isn't enough budget or time to train all of the volunteers stepping forward to serve. Something which of my country I am extremely proud, to refer to your statement quoted below.
Actually the issue with UK police numbers is more how many the politicians are prepared to pay for. Recruiting has never been an issue.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...
