Should the police be armed

[F1.2]

All the police in my area have arms , not seen any with arm missing

 

[Blank_Canvas]

Well strictly speaking anyone who is a crown servant, is an officer of the HM government, and is employed by the crown (as opposed to a civil servant who is employed by a government dpeartment or agency).

But they ARE employees.

A Crown Servant is defined as someone who has sworn an oath to protect the Monarch I.e Police Officers, Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force personnel.

That does not extend to Home Office mandarins of bean counters.

 

[bindex]

I really do sit on the fence on this. I would like police to be armed in order to deal with certain situations better, but also agree that if they were armed we would probably see criminals tool up more and it would be worse overall. Also, the training needed would be impractical to deliver over the short term.

I don't know the numbers but an inbetween could be just to have more police marksmen 'out and about on patrol' but that may not be needed.

thats in itself is not hard to grasp. But you seem to fail to understand that some of us ares of the opinion that the system we have now generally works pretty well

I have to agree with both of these opinions. There are times when we need armed police, but it really should be the exception rather than the rule.
I'd hate to see a Proliferation of criminals carrying guns, and I suspect that this would be the case if the police were always armed as a matter of course.

 

[Blank_Canvas]

We have things balanced at the moment, each force has a highly trained carde of an Armed Response Unit on patrol in ARVs 365 / 24 /7 ready to respond to any incident. We do not need routine arming of every Police Officer. At this time it is simply not required.

 

[big soft moose]

I'd hate to see a Proliferation of criminals carrying guns, and I suspect that this would be the case if the police were always armed as a matter of course.

trouble is we've already got a proliferation of criminals tooling up with guns, knives, lead pipes etc - this is why more police need to be armed in order to deal with them effectively. ( I suspect the answer is not routine arming of all officers though - but increasing the number of available armed officers so there's enough to deal with every incident where they are required. I'd also suggest that there's a case for rank and file having better non lethal weaponry like tazers or stingrays

 

[Mr Bump]

i vote no
if you want a gun join the army
go to gannie