British Police Women shot and blown up by One Eyed Criminal

[terry78]

Then you fall into the "we're no better than they are" argument.

 

[B]

Then you fall into the "we're no better than they are" argument.

I realise that, however people need to know that they can't get away with crimes (ones even less serious than this) & go sit in a jail with Sky TV, soft bed, 3 meals a day & limited access to a computer for the rest of their life.

For example, I've read that in some middle eastern countries if you were to steal something, if you are caught, they would cut off your good hand, I'm not sure if that is true or not but I have read similar things so I presume it to be true. Now if you brought that sort of punishment into the likes of the USA or the UK, I would guarantee you the theft rate would significantly drop. If people know the punishment for their crimes is going to be extreme, a lot of them will reconsider what they are about to do.

 

[BrollySupersj]

I'll be honest here, I had no idea most policeman/woman didn't carry guns in the UK, so that's news to me. I had to doubletake when I read it in the article. Now I get a joke I heard about Manchester on Family Guy the other night.

 

[Mike_D202]

British police do carry firearms.

This differnce is every officer doesn't carry firearms this for a number of reasons.

We have Armed response units which attend crimes involving firearms as the article said. When armed officers do use guns in the UK they usually kill innocent or the wrong people.

Last summer when police shot Mark Duggan last summer there were riots across England. Police also shot innocent man Jean Charles Menezes dead in London and shot another man dead after they thought a table leg he had was a gun.

Gun crime has always been relatively low in Britain. The amount of gun homicides in England and Wales the last few years has been between 40 to 50 per year in a population of 56 million people which is considered hight by British standards but is actually pretty low. France has a similar sized population and they had 35 gun murders last year.

It might be hard to understand from cultures in which everyone has a gun or acess to one but in the UK even alot of criminals don't carry guns. Your far more likely to be stabbed than shot here. Police deaths of any kind are very rare in Britan.

I doubt these officers having guns could of saved them seeing as they were ambushed. The guy chucked grenade at them and then shoot them.

Forgive my ignorance, but they should have sent in ARMED police officers to a burglary in progress. Maybe it's just my way of thinking.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

They can't send in armed police to every small time crime. Obviously if there had been reports that the criminal had a gun, they would have. But they had no way of knowing that.

You have to understand that it's not just the police that don't often have guns. Our criminals don't often have guns. It is not anywhere near as easy to get a gun in the UK as it is in the US.

Burglaries aren't usually some guy in a balaclava holding up a family with a hand gun and yelling at them to put their valuables in a bag. It's a guy or two scoping out a place during the day and then breaking in when everyone is out.

 

[chamber-music]

Burglarys in Britian don't carry guns at most they carry a knife plus I'm not sure if it was a burglary in progress. I think he called to say his house had been burgled which required just a couple of cops to go talk to the victim and write a report except obviouly it was a set up.

 

[Mike_D202]

Over here, police are armed for not only for their safety, but for the public's safety. It's so they are prepared for the worst in any situation, in some cases officers have been murdered during a routine traffic stop. I understand that armed crime over there is rare, but that shouldn't mean to disarm the police and put their own safety at risk. If people are that worried about the police "shooting innocent people" then maybe they need to up the standards/training. Maybe this will be a wake up call.

 

[Silvermoth]

I'm shocked by this but also by the pro-gun reaction. This isn't a Western. People can't just do a Clint Eastwood.

I would much rather a system like the UK where gun violence is so rare that people are shocked when it happens once every three years or so as opposed to dozens killed in massacres every three months like in the states.

Guns just cause more problems for cops.

I hope the families of the slain cops find peace.

 

[terry78]

I've never been a gun advocate, but I feel if the guys in authority can't have the upper hand regarding weaponry, attempts at stopping any criminal activity are futile. There's being gun crazy and then there's having it as a "in case of fire break glass" thing. That's just me talking because I grew up in a pretty, for lack of a better term, ghetto neighborhood where you kinda had to watch your back a lot walking down the street.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

Over here, police are armed for not only for their safety, but for the public's safety. It's so they are prepared for the worst in any situation, in some cases officers have been murdered during a routine traffic stop. I understand that armed crime over there is rare, but that shouldn't mean to disarm the police and put their own safety at risk. If people are that worried about the police "shooting innocent people" then maybe they need to up the standards/training. Maybe this will be a wake up call.

Yeah cause in America the standards/training has proven to iradicate all the unneccesary deaths caused by the police being armed.

I don't see how everyday cops having leathal weapons protects the public at all. It protects them, and it means they can 'dispose' of a situation in the quickest way possible.

Being 'prepared for the worst in any situation' is basically just 'drawing you're gun and shooting if anything gets a bit hairy'. Which just isn't how we do things over here.

You know why? And hey, you can think i'm an idiot for saying it, but a lot of the time criminals don't deserve to be shot. On purpose or by accident.

It's different in America because your every day guy could be carrying a gun.

That's simply not the case over here. And it works for us. The numbers speak for themselves. Very few people get shot over here.

I personally feel ALOT safer knowing that our cops don't have guns.

I've never been a gun advocate, but I feel if the guys in authority can't have the upper hand regarding weaponry, attempts at stopping any criminal activity are futile. There's being gun crazy and then there's having it as a "in case of fire break glass" thing. That's just me talking because I grew up in a pretty, for lack of a better term, ghetto neighborhood where you kinda had to watch your back a lot walking down the street.

The armed responses team ARE the 'in case of fire, break glass'.

 

[Mike_D202]

Yeah cause in America the standards/training has proven to iradicate all the unneccesary deaths caused by the police being armed.

I don't see how everyday cops having leathal weapons protects the public at all. It protects them, and it means they can 'dispose' of a situation in the quickest way possible.

Being 'prepared for the worst in any situation' is basically just 'drawing you're gun and shooting if anything gets a bit hairy'. Which just isn't how we do things over here.

You know why? And hey, you can think i'm an idiot for saying it, but a lot of the time criminals don't deserve to be shot. On purpose or by accident.

It's different in America because your every day guy could be carrying a gun.

That's simply not the case over here. And it works for us. The numbers speak for themselves. Very few people get shot over here.

I personally feel ALOT safer knowing that our cops don't have guns.



The armed responses team ARE the 'in case of fire, break glass'.

This will be like arguing with a wall so I'll just stop right here.

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

America and UK are very similar in a lot of ways, with one major exception being the general attitude to firearms.

It's very hard to make a pro gun American person see why it is better to have a police force which does not routinely arm its officers.

I for one, am happier that we have a select number of highly trained firearms officers in the UK that can respond when a situation calls for them.

Lets remember that this entire incident was staged by the criminal to lure unsuspecting police officers to the site of a reported (by Dale Cregan) burglary. As far as I am aware these poor women never even made it much out of their car before that animal opened fire and then tossed a grenade at them.

How much better do you think an American police officer would have fared in the same situation?

One of the things, amongst many about this, I don't understand is that he then went and gave himself up at a nearby police station.

I hope that bastards other eye is gouged out, then at least he can't do anything like that again.

 

[Dr Lee]

over here in the UK a lot of officers are being armed with Tasers...

and it's being reported now by a few news sources that at least one of the two women killed yesterday was equipped with one and had removed it from the holster before she was shot....

Personally i don't think we should arm the police here... maybe increase the armed response units a bit.... but i think the main thing we can do in the UK is give the officers better body armour, I don't mean giving the police military levels of armour, but upgrade the body armour a bit.

Yeah, it'll cost more money... and in this day and age of the UK having no money, it's not gonna happen soon... but i think it needs to happen ASAP

 

[chamber-music]

Sadly she didn't get her taser out fast enough it seems.

There was a £50,000 reward on Dale Cregan just for his arrest not even his conviction for the last month after he killed another guy and the guys father after he spoke out about it.

Seems like everyone was too scared to snitched on him or they didn't want to be a grass.

 

[Dr Lee]

it wouldn't have made a difference IMHO.... this situation was such a extreme instance... no one would have imagined that a simple intruder call was going to be a ****ing ambush...

 

[kit1982]

As I've said they need to ditch the amount of red tape involved, if an officer calls for an AR unit then that unit should be allowed to go no problem, the same as if an Officer calls for the K-9 unit or any other specialist department. Get the MOD Police and the CNC involved aswell as it means even the remotest parts of the country are covered.

Also we have to have more Officers taser trained, depending on where you go in the country you'll either find every Officer with one or no Officers with them.

 

[Dr Lee]

Not sure about the MOD police... could be seen as a move to use the military to control the masses...

 

[Mandalore464]

Edit : Deleted

 

[kit1982]

Not sure about the MOD police... could be seen as a move to use the military to control the masses...

I mean have them as a back up for the more remote parts of the country purely for when an AR units needed, instead of waiting for one from the nearest town like with the episodes in cumbria just call in MOD plod or the CNC. I mean both wear the exact same uniform as HO forces so really you wouldn't even know.

Just to add aswell whenever the talk of arming our Police comes up we automatically start comparisons with the States, just wondered if any hypers from any other European countries where the Police are armed had any opinions on this issue? I'd be interested to know the thoughts of guys in places like Italy or France.


Edit: cheers mandalore, exactly what I was looking for! Didn't see your reply when I typed mine out!

 

[Mandalore464]

Edit : Deleted

 

[Dr Lee]

Nothing could have trained anyone...... male or female... for this...

 

[Mandalore464]

Edit : Deleted

 

[Destructus86]

I'm shocked by this but also by the pro-gun reaction. This isn't a Western. People can't just do a Clint Eastwood.

I would much rather a system like the UK where gun violence is so rare that people are shocked when it happens once every three years or so as opposed to dozens killed in massacres every three months like in the states.

Guns just cause more problems for cops.

I hope the families of the slain cops find peace.

Sadly, in place of gun violence they have a huge knifing problem.

 

[kit1982]

I actually edited it. I was wrong about the Garda apparently. Which is weird, cause I saw loads of Gardai carrying weapons in Dublin. But I went and checked whether they were actually ALL armed or not, and apparently only 1 out of 4 officers is armed.

My point about French police still stands though.

No cheers for your input mate, I didn't even know French Police were armed until I watched Braquo! It's one of those things I've been suprised when travelling round Europe how many countries Police are armed yet overhere we hear so little about it in comparison to the states.

 

[Pink Ranger]

It's important not to overanalyze this situation too much.

One of Canada's worst police shootings occured in 2005, also in an ambush situation. Four (4!) armed male Mounties in Alberta (real proper, tough cops, not just smalltown bylaw officers here) were gunned down and killed by a single gunman while investigating a rural property seizure.

What conclusions can you possibly draw from that? That men aren't tough enough to be cops? That police officers should travel in groups larger than 4? That they shouldn't have been armed, or been more heavily armed?

An ambush is an ambush. When guns are involved, a bad outcome for the ambushee is almost certain.