Should All Policemen And Women Be Armed

[emmie]

going on yesterdays and previous terror attacks.

[emmie]

sqad
i am in two minds, divebuddys argument is a powerful one/

[Sqad]

emmie......the whole country is divided, not only AB.

[chrissa1]

Definitely not. Guns beget more guns.

[naomi24]

Chrissa, //Guns beget more guns. //

I really don't think the police being armed would encourage more law breakers to carry guns. If criminals want guns they'll get them regardless.

[Sqad]

In Spain ALL police officers are armed and one thinks nothing of it, however, although I have never heard of innocent people being shot accidentally, I am sure that it has happened.
If the dead policeman had been armed, who knows, depending upon the crime incident details, he may well have been alive today.

[emmie]

going on the current news he didn't stand a chance.

[rich47]

Absolutely not

[Hopkirk]

American police are armed.

Does that make America a safer place?

[Sqad]

Hopkirk

"Does that make America a safer place?"

I have no idea, but at least it puts the Police on equal terms with the villains.

[naomi24]

^Good point.

[237SJ]

I definitely think they should be armed when they are on duty in high risk areas. They are armed to the teeth at Heathrow but not at Westminster, it seems.

[Hopkirk]

There is of course the other danger of the police having the gun snatched from them.

That happened the other day at Orly Airport, although that was a soldier not police.

[emmie]

so mostly no.

[Mamyalynne]

I think it has to be their decision, they are surveyed regularly on the subject and the numbers who want to be armed are surprisingly low - I imagine that fluctuates each time their is an incident such as this one.

Then there is this problem...

//However, police chiefs say they have struggled to recruit firearms officers, claiming that many fear they could spend years under investigation if they used their weapon in the line of duty.//

[emmie]

mamy i don't doubt that officers can be put off from taking up arms, due to be prosecuted for discharging a weapon.

[Togo]

I don't know about arming the police, but the next time I need to visit a major city, I wouldn't mind packing a nice automatic handgun.

[emmie]

according to the report the man was killed by a plain clothes officer carrying a gun.

[jno]

I'm pretty sure there are already armed police at Westminster.

[jno]

PC Palmer was a member of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command (PaDP), a special operations branch of the London Metropolitan Police Service responsible for protecting UK embassies, diplomats, and the parliamentary estate.
The unit is an armed command, meaning that most of its officers are "authorised firearms officers" (AFOs). ...
But not all PaDP officers carry weapons on duty. The Metropolitan Police's Acting deputy commissioner Mark Rowley said in a statement on Wednesday:
"Our parliamentary protection team are a combination of armed and unarmed officers doing different roles, and sadly the officer who lost his life today was unarmed.
"He was supported by armed colleagues who shot and killed the attacker. [The attacker] tried to enter parliament and was stopped at the gate."
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg reported that Defence Secretary Michael Fallon's bodyguard may have been the officer responsible for shooting the attacker dead.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/should-westminster-policeman-keith-palmer-killed-terror-attack-have-been-armed-2017-3

[emmie]

there are - you can see them all the time. just that this one wasn't in police uniform..