Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Guns of Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham: routine armed patrols

likesfish said:
what are the police suppoused to do if armed thugs want to shoot at people
blow a whistle:confused:
Click to expand...
Maybe they can jump up and down, as the government advises us to do if we see an old lady being mugged.

I loathe the idea of an armed police force, but while guns are widespread amongst criminals, it's unavoidable. (Although the logic that says we should arm the police also says we should arm law-abiding people. Both, or neither.) Since criminals' guns are illegal, bans on firearms won't stop them. If career criminals knew they'd surely hang for committing murder in the furtherance of crime, perhaps they'd be deterred.

Until then, get used to officers waddling under the weight of weapons and armour adding holsters to the list.
 
chieftain said:
exactly, I'd rather highly trained experts try and control fools with guns than the other way round.
Click to expand...
Lets hope no one finger guns them then

finger-gun.jpg
 
So BoJo is happy with this so long as 'routine' doesn't actually mean 'routine'.

The CO19 Proactive Unit will walk estates while some officers will use motorbikes to provide the capability for high-speed pursuit.

But the announcement has created a political row, with demands for Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, to convene an emergency meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA).

It is understood that Mr Johnson, who is also the MPA chairman, was not consulted by senior police commanders. The Times understands that Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was also not fully briefed on the move, which was taken at assistant commissioner level.

Neither Sir Paul nor Tim Godwin, the deputy commissioner, were at Scotland Yard to respond to the news, which was revealed in Police Review magazine.

Joanne McCartney, Labour’s policing spokeswoman on the London Assembly, said: “We want fewer guns on the streets, not more, and people to feel safe in their community — not scared of those who are supposed to protect them. There has been no debate, no consultation and apparently no consideration to the strong opposition that exists to arming the police.”

[...]

Last night a spokesman for Mr Johnson said that the mayor had sought reassurance from Sir Paul over armed deployments. He said: “The mayor has been reassured that there is no intention of using armed police in the routine manner suggested. Armed police have a role but that should be the exception, not the norm.”
Click to expand...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6886192.ece
 
Joanne McCartney, Labour’s policing spokeswoman on the London Assembly, said: "We want fewer guns on the streets, not more, and people to feel safe in their community — not scared of those who are supposed to protect them."
Click to expand...
Ms McCartney, you don't get "fewer guns" by giving criminals, who ignore the law, a total monopoly on carrying weapons. How are unarmed police supposed to protect people from armed criminals? Pavement jumping ahoy.

Her comment is indicative of the non-thought that surrounds this issue. Everyone is fixated on firearms and knives instead of the people who use them. It takes evil intent to kill someone. A conscientious person is safe with a weapon. A thug isn't safe with a toothpick. If you don't allow yourself to blame criminals, you end up demonising an inanimate object.

Some more of Ms McCartney's wisdom:-

"I feel strongly that the boisterous behaviour of school children on our buses should not be confused with criminal behaviour." [1]

"When I was out in Edmonton Green, I was interested to see that shoppers and members of the public passing through the [knife] search arches seemed reassured by the police presence and happy to participate. The whole exercise seemed very good natured."

I hope we get lots of armed police on the streets, hefting MP5s and swaggering in bloused combats and armour, holsters swinging from their hip. I hope they patrol regularly in Ms McCartney's neighbuorhood. Perhaps then the likes of Ms McCartney will, slowly, realise what sort of society their dimwitted criminal-appeasing policies have created.
 
chieftain said:
Maybe, if you can find them then you could hire the...
Click to expand...

I cannot imagine how long it be before 18 kids charged at Mr T and nicked all those chains.

He'd fight them off at the start but it'd be like that bit in Lost World where the guy gets eaten by the the midget dinosaurs.
 
This isn't really unprecedented. There was a sporadic but sometimes heated debate in the second half of the nineteenth century over whether the police should be armed, and in some places constables were occasionally issued with revolvers - which they were usually not well trained in using, or not trained at all in some cases. I see this in largely the same light: a specific response to a problem in a relatively restricted locality.

The question is whether it will work. I don't think it will, since the only circumstances in which the police are likely to use their firearms is if they see someone waving a gun about, and I doubt even the daftest kid in Brixton is quite stupid enough to pull out a pistol in front of a copper with an MP5. It's an exercise in 'reassurance' more than anything else IMO.
 
Roadkill said:
The question is whether it will work. I don't think it will, since the only circumstances in which the police are likely to use their firearms is if they see someone waving a gun about, and I doubt even the daftest kid in Brixton is quite stupid enough to pull out a pistol in front of a copper with an MP5. It's an exercise in 'reassurance' more than anything else IMO.
Click to expand...
It might work, if the patrols of strapped rozzers are comprehensive enough to scare thugs to keep their pistols hidden.

It would be better if law-abiding people were allowed to carry concealed weapons, as they are in that notoriously crime-ridden state Vermont. But this opinion is heretical, despite the fact that it rests on identical logic to that used to arm the police. Fanatical gun-haters like Ms McCartney have finally noticed this.

Best of all would be if people were free to carry weapons but felt no need to, as used to be the case in notoriously gun-ridden Edwardian Britain. For that to happen, armed criminals would have to fear the consequences of committing murder. But we refuse to hang murderers, so must instead impose the useless liberal alternative to the death penalty, gun control. Or rather, "law-abiding control", as that's the only people it affects.
 
Azrael said:
Ms McCartney, you don't get "fewer guns" by giving criminals, who ignore the law, a total monopoly on carrying weapons. How are unarmed police supposed to protect people from armed criminals?
Click to expand...
Yes, you only have to look at the enormous rise in sword crime since the Met stopped carrying cutlasses to see the truth of this.
 
winjer said:
I'm sure you're right, since you have such a sound knowledge of UK history.
Click to expand...
I passed on the encyclopedic knowledge of police weapons.

Way things are going, they'll be digging that book out again before too long.
 
Azrael said:
Back-up is at hand.

attachment.php
Click to expand...

During that police pursing the anarchists proper bomb throwing shooting anarchists rather than scruffy and a bit smelly ones. Borrowed handguns off passers by.:eek:
violent thugs should be afraid of the forces of law and order and of the law abiding majority its all very well having the right to self defence having the tools to defend your self would be quite handy
 
rich! said:
I think he's the only British PM ever to have fired on British citizens in peacetime...
Click to expand...
what about heath? unless you know something i don't about bloody sunday?

and asquith.

actually, when did churchill as pm fire on civilians in peacetime? he was only pm in his dotage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

editor
Cyclist killed in Brixton
2
Replies
32
Views
2K
T & P
T & P
blameless77
After work pint in Brixton?
Replies
12
Views
756
editor
editor
editor
The depressing growth of people with substance dependency on the streets of Brixton
2 3
Replies
74
Views
6K
DietCokeGirl
DietCokeGirl
editor
Homophobia in Brixton
2
Replies
38
Views
5K
Tulster218
T
editor
It's a grim Christmas around Brixton: no lights, no tree and no funfair
Replies
1
Views
732
skyscraper101
skyscraper101
Back
Top Bottom