Should Police Officers in England be more armed?

Question

Share your thoughts! Its for a book i am writing!

My answer: Knife crime in England is rising! I strongly think the police are a huge problem. My town has about 25,000 residents, we have 6 community officers! Community officers are a pointless waste of space and a huge waste of money! They are useless and do not help at all! What England needs is GUNS for the Fuzz! Having the police more armed and ready is more likely to prevent crime!

^^^ my quick (not in depth) opinion.

Answer 1

No, the UK police have mobile armed response caperbility and put enough guns where they are reqd - and when they are reqd. In the United States, where this doesn't actually work very well, when the cops have guns, the crim scumbags bring even bigger guns. It is far more violent there, the yanks have solved very little in comparrison to us inthat respect. With use of tazers and gas, and future development of 'non-lethal' weaponary, we can crack this problem. I don't want to see GB like the wild west, and I'm sure most people don't.

Answer 2

I would be happier with a tazer myself.  I wouldn't want to have to kill someone unless it was in defence of my own or the life of someone else and then I would find it hard to pull the trigger.

Answer 3

there are more armed officers on the streets than ever, and still we have a rise in violent crimes, i know a few officers and have asked them would you like to be armed , some say yes and others mainly older ones say no, how ever what they all say is that if armed and are called upon to shoot some one it will be them that are suspended and interrogated as to why they fired a gun, the officers involved in the death of a man who had a "chair leg wrapped in a black plastic bag " where suspended for three years and where in fear of being charged with murder or unlawfully killing, until the law is changed where by a police officer is able to clearly issue the warning police stop or i will shoot and be un convict able , then you may find that more police officers will agree to be armed, these are my views and nobody Else's.

Answer 4

Most Officers don't want to be armed. I don't think that they should be, some are dangerous enough without issuing guns to them.

Answer 5

your wrong giving those dumb cun.ts guns is asking for trouble.

Answer 6

What they need is a good strong whistle....No, not really, tool 'em up I say. But it'd never work because the law will always side with, 'the poor little criminal' Just look what happens when a terrorist gets shot.

   p.s. They should use real Stingers(missiles) to stop a car.

Answer 7

No...two arms are enough...three might look a bit odd.

Answer 8

well im gonna be the odd one out and agree with you, how can they fight a bullit with cs gas, they are fighting a loosing battle and as for people saying they are useless, their hands are tied, the government has them doing all the paperwork instead of being on the streets, they get community beat officers instead of real cops, it must be as frustrating for them as it is for us.

Answer 9

no they are dangerous enough without allowing more officers to get trigger happy **** that no guns for cops they are too nuts with cs gas and batons guns will make them power mad and gun weilding nutters

Answer 10

This is a d**n shame about what England is gone to!. I can remember some times ago like up to the 80s, when police did not even ever seen a gun never mind have to uesd one on some body to kill them, furthere more people having to be using Guns & knifes on each others. I know that this is cause

by the public servants and the parents of these youngersters.

Tha problem that the public servants cause are, there are nothing that is been built in t UK. any more. There are nothing for the youngsters to do, after they left School or the older ones who have left Collages. There parents are the same so what do you espect the people to do for them self??.  Now the

parents, when there children done some thing wrong they do not scoled he or she as the way they, the parents were been scloled when they were growing up. Especialy the Boys, you

Mothers will brest feed those Boys until they are 100 yrs. old

so you mothes will have to start to let those males out of the nest & let them go & finn for them self like your daughters who

are more ambitius than there brothers because of you motheres!. You all want to get on the cases of your Minister of

parlements to get back the Corporations that they let moves out to other countrys so that you all can have those jobs back in the country!. I can garanteed you that would stop the crime but if they left it for too long then it shortly will be too late

to do any thing about that crime and that will be better for the

publict servants because they will get to Employed more police and make more money off the heads of the public.

Answer 11

Well there in lies the crux of the argument for and against gun control.

Personally I believe that if guns are (mostly) outlawed, then only the criminals will have them, as (for the most part) criminals get their guns by non-legal methods.

Certainly the police should be able to properly defend themselves and others, so to me, arming police officers is a no-brainer.

Answer 12

I'm not entirely convinced that you're aware of the exact role that PCSOs play. Do some research, then criticise.

Answer 13

More likely, your problem lies with the amount of community offices in your town, not how largely they are armed. Regardless of whether they have a nightstick, or a tank, each officer must guard about 4,200 people who are scattered among the area. A gun can't make them move faster or cover more ground in a length of time. A gun is simply another weapon.

Answer 14

Absolutely they should! There was a case in a town close to here recently where an armed gunman broke into a house. Hubby came downstairs to investigate and the woman upstairs phoned the police. They would not send an officer out because the intruder was armed and so they had to deploy an armed response unit who didn't arrive for 30 minutes! If all police were armed we would not have such problems!

Answer 15

oh no! That's a hop skip and a jmp away from your average idiot demanding the "right to bear arms" like americans!  One look at their gun crime statistics will tell you NO!

Answer 16

In my opinion the UK response officer should be armed with Taser. They currently carry a baton, cuffs and CS gas / Parva.

Each force within England and Wales already have Firearms Departments, which operate to provide an adequate response to the criminal use of firearms. This is done by having patrolling ARV's (Armed Response Vehicles), available to respond to spontaneous incidents.

Armed officers also conduct pre-planned firearms operations to arrest individuals, following a risk assessment of the individual. Tactics used all depends on the nature of the risk.

At present the the numbers of firearms officers is adequate. Yes we hear of more shootings, however having more firearms officers on the streets will not negate this. The shootings will still occur. What we do need is robust sentencing to a) Take offenders off the streets for a long time and b) Send out the right message to all the other people who carry and use firearms.

All recent surveys by th Police Federation show that the vast majority of UK officers do not want to be armed.

Very rarelly do officers come face to face with armed criminals. We will all remember recent incidents where UK officers were shot and killed attending incidents. Having a firearm will not necessarily prevent this. On the occasions that I remember the officers were responding to incidents where no firearm was mentioned. On one occasion the officer was a fireams officer and was shot before he had time to react to the threat.

As I've alreadt stated, my personal opinion, is that response officers are armed with Taser. These are being trialled on non-firearms officers in a number of UK forces. The biggest threat to those officers is from edged weapons. Hopefully this will endeavour to give those officers the protection they need and the capability to deal with such subjects.

Answer 17

I wouldn't change it. I live in the U.S., and it seems that if a police officer has a gun, they will use it at some point in their careers.  I think we have more violence as a result.  Of course, we also allow just about anyone to carry a weapon, so it's likely the problem isn't the police.

Answer 18

I don't trust the plod with old fashioned sticks, let alone anything more deadly.

They just can't be trusted.

I'm still seething about the way they murdered that Brazilian kid, got their own people to investigate what happened, then (surprise, surprise) found themselves innocent of any crime and the whole lot walked away scot free.

As far as I'm concerned the plod are every bit as bad as the murderous delinquents with knives.

Useless bunch of overpaid pillocks.

Answer 19

Stop!  Or I'll say stop again!

That has got to be very frustrating.  I agree with most of the posts.  If cops use guns, more criminals will also get their hands on them and then you'll end up with gangs, shootings, and all that c**p.  Why not tranquilizer guns, tazers, Stun guns, anything where the cops have an advantage.  There will always be "police brutality" but if crime can get controlled, it's worth it.

Answer 20

They are armed my friend. They have deployed enough armed response units to deal with most issues. All officers, I think now wear stab vests. Putting more guns on the street will mean that the cons will tool up even heavier. Look at the US!

Peace and respect to you.