Sharon Beshenivsky's shooting death and the wounding of Teresa Milburn has prompted a number of debates. Some of these debates are open and predictable. Should police be armed? Should the Bobby on the Beat carry? The UK is one of two nations in the world where the police are not regularly armed.
Gun crime has been increasing in the UK. And though it is still more likely that criminals will not be armed than that they will, there are certainly increasing calls for police to be armed. The police themselves, and specifically the body that represents the most senior police the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) are against it. But my sense is that most ordinary citizens grudgingly accept that police should be armed. However, there are some voices strongly against, and given that UK police seem to have a tendency to shoot the wrong guy, I can understand why this is.
My fellow American London blogger, Sarai of Anglofille, wrote:
This incident has renewed the debate over whether police should carry guns. From an American perspective,it’s rather astonishing that 90 percent of the British police force is unarmed. To me, police and guns are synonymous. I can’t imagine the police being able to do their job without having the threat of deadly force at their disposal. But then I guess that’s just the blood-thirsty Yank in me. A survey of the UK police force three years ago revealed that 80 percent of them do not want to be routinely armed.
And I would echo that, except for the bloodthirsty Yank bit, as I would never call myself a Yank.
There's also a less open debate about immigration policy. At least two of the suspects in Sharon Beshenivsky shooting are Somali. Near my office the other day, I saw a hand drawn sign pasted on the outside of a bagel shop which said:
Somalians fired the gun, but Blair loaded the bullets. How many more people will die as a result of Blair's misguided immigration policies?
This has not been a part of the mainstream coverage, but clearly there are some rumblings of discontent.
Finally, there's a debate which doesn't seem to be occurring at all. And that's one about Police recruitment and operational policies.
Sharon Beshenivsky was 37 years old and had only been working as a police officer for less than six months, before that she had been working as a childminder. I don't want to suggest that people in their 30s can't join the police, but it's probably not a good idea unless they have just left a career in the military or had been spending the last decade or so in a physically demanding job. I have to wonder why Sharon Beshenivsky was recruited as beat police officers. Her partner, Teresa Milburn who is of a similar age and a former machinist had only been a police officer for around a year.
I also have to wonder why it's the operational policy of the West Yorkshire police to respond to robberies with two unarmed, relatively inexperienced police officers.
Tags:Politics, Crime, Police
5 comments:
I think gun crime is distorted here. I just checked the figures (for another reason) and the UK isn't even in the top 25 countries for handgun deaths. But if you listen to the BBC you'd think we were popping caps at each other right and left.
We're just not used to _any_ handgun crime - the last real handgun crime wave was ca 1945-1948. And the importation of east-European handguns used by Caribbean gangsters, along with the importation of east-European, near-East and African criminals, has resulted in increased amounts of gun crime, albeit from a low base. I think most gun crime here is West Indian (Caribbean), but the khat-dominated Somali culture is exceptionally violent.
the difficulty with arming police is that you've just upped the ante for both sides. and there's no going back. in other words, you just ensured that guns become a self-perpetuating problem.
aside from that, i think that having to work without firearms actually produces better police. without being able to use the threat of violence, police are actually able to assess situations more carefully, communicate better, and gain the confidence and trust of a community more readily. i've seen a few police/civilian interactions here, and they are like nothing i've ever witnessed in the u.s., where they rely on guns to get results - a strategy which doesn't always work.
That is definitely true that the police here are more interactive and more creative in their problem solving without guns.
Congraulations on a brilliant weblog - it's very interesting to read a US-expat's view on armed police, what with all US cops carrying guns. And thanks for the link - it's always good to know that people read the blog! :-)
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