The Pros And Cons Of Armed Police

Most Police officers in Britain are routinely unarmed excluding Northern Ireland; there are only some officers who carry firearms: those involved in diplomat protection or airport, border and anti-terrorism security. There are also Armed Response officers who can be quickly deployed if a problem occurs which their specialised need help. But in this rapidly changing society the question frequently arises if having routinely armed police officers would have a positive impact in deterring crime. We must take pride in the fact we are able to reduce crime without firearms. Police officers are seen as being the keepers of peace, providing them with such weapons of force could indeed negatively impact society and lead to many innocent deaths. Arming
One of the problems is that intelligence leading up to the incident may not be accurate and could result in an unarmed, innocent civilian potentially being shot, or killed. On the 4th of August, Mark Duggan, a suspected member of the Tottenham Man Dem gang was shot twice, in North London. After eleven specialist firearms officers stopped the taxi Duggan was in on suspicion that he had an illegal firearm, Mark Duggan was shot dead. Although no gun was found on him, a handgun was discovered in a sock on grassland about four metres from his body. His death ignited the worst riots of recent time across towns and cities in England. Even though, Duggan may have been in possession of a firearms at some point that night, he was not when he was shot dead so the question can still be asked if his life could have been spared and instead of being killed, he could have been arrested. If we were to routinely arm our police, more incidents like this could happen, leading to more people being wrongly shot. Arming all police officers could also mean ditching the current stringent selection methods for who is armed, and would inevitably lead to less extensive training being provided, so mistakes would become much more common and more people would be wounded or killed. However, these shootings are down to inaccurate intelligence and misunderstood
In January 2015, two unarmed policemen and ten journalists were slaughtered after the attack by three gunmen on the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris, France. It was seen to be one of the vilest security crises in decades after the three days of attacks brought bloodshed and heartbreak to France’s capital. In France, the majority police officers are normally routinely armed. During the attack Paris was put on maximum alert and a major security operation was launched. Yet a policewoman was shot down dead in Montrogue and an attack on a kosher supermarket where many hostages were taken still happened despite the vast amount of armed police on duty. The gunman involved in this shooting was connected with the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. If this were to happen in Britain would our police service be able to cope? Would we have enough trained armed police officers to control the situation? Yes, we have Armed Response units trained to cope with this sort of incident. Arming out officers routinely in case of such incidents would NOT have a beneficial factor in everyday society. It would only increase the fear factor and could still lead to innocent people getting killed in firearms being used under wrong circumstances. Increasing budgets for more Armed Response Unit training would be the best way to combat this terrorism problem which the UK could