# Unarmed Policing



## Sukerkin (Sep 19, 2012)

Here is a most interesting article on the BBC about both how it is that British police are generally not armed and why it is likely to remain so:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19641398

It could do with being a little more detailed I think but it gives a flavour of the issue (and an odd difference of view between the Police and the public).


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## elder999 (Sep 19, 2012)

Intersting article, here:



> Grey was seated across a table from me at a small dinner party some months ago in Washington, D.C., saying things like, &#8220;Americans need to give up their guns. They must become responsible citizens of the world.&#8221; Meanwhile, the other writers around the table&#8212;people who know my background&#8212;were glancing at me, bracing for the counterattack.
> I stayed quiet as he described his utopian vision of a disarmed world like John Lennon singing &#8220;Imagine no possessions &#8230; I wonder if you can &#8230; . &#8221; I wanted him to be fully committed before I engaged.
> Minutes later, as he paused to view the effect of his anti-gun offensive on a table full of Americans, I opted for an attack he likely hadn&#8217;t encountered before. I didn&#8217;t think he&#8217;d be swayed by crime statistics. And if I cited the dramatic English history of individual rights&#8212;and the loss thereof&#8212;he&#8217;d probably quote Friedrich Nietzsche&#8217;s _Beyond Good and Evil_ to contend there is no absolute right and wrong and therefore no real individual rights. That philosophical discussion, as interesting as it might be, would be a smokescreen for his retreat. What I needed was a way at the truth he hadn&#8217;t encountered before, so I drew him in with the true story of a particular Springfield Model 1903.



I read my copy last night, and was going to make this a separate thread, but it seemed appropriate here.....


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## Sukerkin (Sep 19, 2012)

Tarn it - the link leads us to Page Not Found, Elder .


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## elder999 (Sep 19, 2012)

Yall have even banned American Rifleman Magazine, not just guns, huh? :lfao:

www.[B]americanrifleman.org[/B]/articles/the-&#8203;*hession*-rifles-story



Sukerkin said:


> Tarn it - the link leads us to Page Not Found, Elder .


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## Sukerkin (Sep 19, 2012)

:chuckles: I dug out the link text but cannot find it on the site .  So, nearly clever but not quite there for me :blush:

Even trying just to get in to the Articles directory by adding it to the URL still comes up with Page Not Found .


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## elder999 (Sep 19, 2012)

http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/the-hession-rifles-story/


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## Tez3 (Sep 19, 2012)

One police force outside N Ireland _is_ routinely armed. There are armed police on our streets it's just that if things go well you will never know...as it should be.


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 19, 2012)

Wait :xtrmshock

Im confused 

You have armless Policemen in England :uhyeah:


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## Sukerkin (Sep 19, 2012)

Aye they lie in the road and have a sleep ...

... sorry that might be a bit obscure for our American readers .

Ah, I see that the site takes security very seriously, Elder, by having a directory called Articles in the URL but History on the page .  That one works my friend, thank you.


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## elder999 (Sep 19, 2012)

Sukerkin said:


> Aye they lie in the road and have a sleep ...
> 
> ... sorry that might be a bit obscure for our American readers .
> 
> .



Yeah, one of my favorite signs from the Carribean: _Sleeping Policeman Ahead_ :lfao:


View attachment $thumbnail.jpg
Around here, I call 'em _Jimmy Hoffas_....:lfao:


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## jks9199 (Sep 19, 2012)

Going down the gun rights road is a red herring.  I'm acquainted with several British active and retired cops.  There are a lot of commonalities in policing on either side of the Atlantic... but some key differences.  Guns are actually only one indication of that difference.  The difference is cultural, and legal, especially in the US.  I'm going to use bobbies to describe British cops and cops for US cops for convenience.  

Culturally, as discussed in Suk's article, the mindset of policing has a different emphasis, I guess is how I'll say it.  Bluntly, folks here in the US tolerate the police, and we enforce the law.  It's not policing by consent, as the bobbies describe; it's policing in spite of dissent, you might say.  It's a cultural thing.  The US culture doesn't like to be told what to do.  We don't like someone in authority, and we distrust authority -- especially with power.  We're a culture of troublemakers, of people who demand to know why they should comply.  I can't speak for the British culture in the same way -- but I note that many different accounts of behaviors (queuing up at a bus stop, for one example) support a different perspective on social order.  (That's obviously not to say that there are no dissenters, and please don't make more of this very broad brush than it is.)  That deeply seated perspective ends up influence policing.  Most people in the US will comply, voluntarily, because it's what they "should do" -- but a lot will still demand a reason or justification for why they should do it or why the laws are there.  

I also suspect that a more historically homogenous culture influenced the way that policing developed.  I can't help but wonder if part of why police here have become much more isolated from the populace they serve is because that populace has increasingly become isolated from itself, as more and more different cultures come here and only slowly and partially assimilate.  (I still come across people in the US *f**or decades* who can't function without a translator...)

There's also an important legal concern.  One reason that the bobbies get away with less firepower is that we have the _posse comitatus_ act.  This federal law greatly restricts the use of the military forces at home.  Where some roles are handled by military units in Britain -- we can't do that.

And then there's the simple thing that we have a lot more guns around here than y'all do... in a lot more hands.  Good and bad...


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## granfire (Sep 19, 2012)

and strangely enough, a nation with the highest precedence of accepting authority, the police carries sub machine guns in Germany....


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 19, 2012)

granfire said:


> and strangely enough, a nation with the highest precedence of accepting authority, the police carries sub machine guns in Germany....



and yet they are unarmed in China


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## Tez3 (Sep 19, 2012)

Arming the police routinely here wouldn't have saved any police officer that has been killed here.
 The situation in Manchester is a bit different from the rest of the UK. http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereve...-manchester-victims-of-a-sad-cycle-of-revenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Noonan
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...orture-man-conspiracy-supply-dance-drugs.html


However the police and the community have been fighting back. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/03/gun-crime-manchester-communities-police


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## arnisador (Sep 19, 2012)

Love this: "Arming the force would, say opponents, undermine the principle of  policing by consent - the notion that the force owes its primary duty to  the public, rather than to the state, as in other countries."


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## Tez3 (Sep 20, 2012)

The oath police officers take is, like tha armed forces, to the Queen, the state doesn't come into it. The police serve the people not the state. the Office of Constable is a very important one often not understood.
http://www.polfed.org/OC_Final.pdf


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## jks9199 (Sep 20, 2012)

arnisador said:


> Love this: "Arming the force would, say opponents, undermine the principle of  policing by consent - the notion that the force owes its primary duty to  the public, rather than to the state, as in other countries."


I don't completely agree with the phrasing, as it describes policing in other countries.  In some countries -- absolutely; the police are an oppressive arm of government force.  Here in the US, it's a lot more complicated because our policing forces are spread across so many levels.  (There's even a police department that is under the federal legislative branch:  The US Capitol Police.  I believe they're the only PD directly under the legislative branch at all in the US.)  As a municipal police officer, I answer (through my chain of command) to the Town as represented by the Town Council and mayor.  We serve the people, but we don't answer to them directly.  As I said above, there's a subtle distinction between "serve the public" here and "policing by consent" in Britain, and I think it goes down to the cultural roots in each nation.


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## arnisador (Sep 20, 2012)

It's a great philosophy if it works--but there are places in NYC that'd be hard to police 'by consent'.


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 21, 2012)

jks9199 said:


> I don't completely agree with the phrasing, as it describes policing in other countries.  In some countries -- absolutely; the police are an oppressive arm of government force.  Here in the US, it's a lot more complicated because our policing forces are spread across so many levels.  (There's even a police department that is under the federal legislative branch:  The US Capitol Police.  I believe they're the only PD directly under the legislative branch at all in the US.)  As a municipal police officer, I answer (through my chain of command) to the Town as represented by the Town Council and mayor.  We serve the people, but we don't answer to them directly.  As I said above, there's a subtle distinction between "serve the public" here and "policing by consent" in Britain, and I think it goes down to the cultural roots in each nation.



There is the United States Government Printing Office Police who also fall under the legislative branch. However the majority of Federal police fall under the executive branch. 

And then you get into State Police, County Police, City Police, College Police, etc., but you already know that


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## elder999 (Sep 21, 2012)

jks9199 said:


> Going down the gun rights road is a red herring..




Yes, but not a complete one.

From the article I posted:



> So disarmed, I pointed out, that law-abiding residents were helpless when Tottenhams gangster youth decided to loot stores, mug residents and vandalize automobiles in August 2011 after police had shot and killed a person following a car chase.
> 
> Tottenhams High Road was ground zero for the riots, which have an interesting tie-in to the history outlined here. The Tottenham Outrage of 1909yes, the same Tottenham where the 2011 riots took placewas a famous gunfight that exhibited a very different English character.
> 
> ...



I completely agree wit the rest of your post, though, in re: _cultural differences._ Frankly, I think it will be a sad day when all the police there go about armed, routinely-as ours do. 

A sad day, but one that is probably inevitable.


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## Tez3 (Sep 21, 2012)

Did we give up the right to bear arms or is this based on American perceptions? People only see the surface of what happens here and base what they think happens here on what they know of their own country. It seems strange that non Brits feel free to post that we, the Brits, are less than them just because of this gun issue. Whats right for you is right for you, it doesn't make it right for us. 
It seems strange that the police are criticised for not carrying weapons when the article quite plainly states that the police shot and killed a gunman! Riots are riots, they don't need people coming out shooting all and sundry just because they can. Would someone standing with a shotgun have saved his shop from being looted or would the mob have attacked him regardless? It's all very well criticising events thousands of miles away based on values that are yours but not ours.


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## Xue Sheng (Sep 21, 2012)

Tez3 said:


> Did we give up the right to bear arms or is this based on American perceptions? .



Is this a trick question...of course you gave up the right because American perceptions are NEVER wrong.... or at least that is our perception of things Global


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## elder999 (Sep 21, 2012)

Tez3 said:


> Did we give up the right to bear arms or is this based on American perceptions?




What other kind of perception would you expect me, as an American, to have, Irene? :lol:



Tez3 said:


> People only see the surface of what happens here and base what they think happens here on what they know of their own country. It seems strange that non Brits feel free to post that we, the Brits, are less than them just because of this gun issue. Whats right for you is right for you, it doesn't make it right for us



Where did I post that Brits are less than we are? I posted an article, and a quote from an article-I really had read it in my hard copy of _Americn Rifleman_ the night before, and I was going to make it a separate thread elsewhere, but it seemed appropriate here in Mark's thread.

It likewise seems strange to me that so many Brits and Australians feel free to post that we, the Americans, should give up our guns._What's right for you is right for you_*;* it doesn't make it right for us.:lol:

 I said as much when I pointed out what I see as the inevitability of all your police being armed, though not necessarily in our lifetimes.


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## Tez3 (Sep 22, 2012)

elder999 said:


> What other kind of perception would you expect me, as an American, to have, Irene? :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



And it was the article I was arguing against....

You will find I have never in all the time I've been on here ever posted anything about guns in America, I've never said once that you should give up your guns , for one thing it's none of my business and another is that I don't think about it or actualy care what you do with your guns or not. Give them up or keep them, it's of no interest to me.
will our police be armed eventually, probably no more than they are now and they are armed probably more than you think they are.


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## aedrasteia (Sep 22, 2012)

jks9199 said:


> Here in the US, it's a lot more complicated because our policing  there's a subtle distinction between "serve the public" here and "policing by consent" in Britain, and I think it goes down to *the cultural roots in each nation.*




cultural/social anthropologist here sighs w/relief, bows w/respect and thanks jks greatly!

our cultural history is often very inconvenient, but explains almost everything that puzzells us about ourselves
and others

with respect


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## geezer (Sep 22, 2012)

aedrasteia said:


> cultural/social anthropologist here sighs w/relief, bows w/respect and thanks jks greatly!
> 
> our cultural history is often very inconvenient, but explains almost everything that puzzells us about ourselves
> and others
> ...



Yep. And here's another cultural observation gleaned from my older brother who's an Oxford and Ivy educated western redneck elitist liberal Obama supporting gun nut (owns over a hundred of the damn things) and a hunter to boot. People are complicated and all generalizations about a nations culture are probably as wrong as they are right.

Now I don't know squat about British culture. I've only been over there once when I was a kid. My family loved to travel abroad, but being downwardly mobile, I can't afford to travel like that. Still, as I mentioned, my brother went to grad school in England, and traveled a good deal on the continent. He also made some friends whose fairly well-to-do families enjoyed hunting and shooting sports like trap and skeet. He was surprised to find that sports like hunting and shooting tend to be elite in Europe while they are the domain of the common folk over here. Historically, in England and most of the rest of Europe, game belonged to the lord of the manor, and hunting was for the aristocracy. Guns, of course, were weapons for the armies of monarchs and toys for the aristocracy. Think of fox hunting for example. Over here, by contrast, guns were how the common frontiersman fed his family and protected himself. Think Davey Crockett. Also, guns were useful in taking land from _Elder's_ ancestors. So for us guns represent or pioneer history, freedom, liberty, and sticking it to the man. Or being sure that he doesn't stick it to us. And if you gotta cling to your guns and religion, personally, most find guns a lot more dependable, and  more _fun_ too (I always fell asleep in church, but never when out shooting!).

Of course, all this is a gross simplification. Both the UK and the US are tremendously diverse nations. Still, it sheds a bit of light on our differing attitudes towards guns. How this relates to the OP, I'm not sure. But where I live, pretty much anybody except convicted felons can carry firearms openly or concealed without any training or license. And with an armed populace, you pretty much have to have armed police.


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## Tez3 (Sep 22, 2012)

geezer said:


> Yep. And here's another cultural observation gleaned from my older brother who's an Oxford and Ivy educated western redneck elitist liberal Obama supporting gun nut (owns over a hundred of the damn things) and a hunter to boot. People are complicated and all generalizations about a nations culture are probably as wrong as they are right.
> 
> Now I don't know squat about British culture. I've only been over there once when I was a kid. My family loved to travel abroad, but being downwardly mobile, I can't afford to travel like that. Still, as I mentioned, my brother went to grad school in England, and traveled a good deal on the continent. He also made some friends whose fairly well-to-do families enjoyed hunting and shooting sports like trap and skeet. He was surprised to find that sports like hunting and shooting tend to be elite in Europe while they are the domain of the common folk over here. Historically, in England and most of the rest of Europe, game belonged to the lord of the manor, and hunting was for the aristocracy. Guns, of course, were weapons for the armies of monarchs and toys for the aristocracy. Think of fox hunting for example. Over here, by contrast, guns were how the common frontiersman fed his family and protected himself. Think Davey Crockett. Also, guns were useful in taking land from _Elder's_ ancestors. So for us guns represent or pioneer history, freedom, liberty, and sticking it to the man. Or being sure that he doesn't stick it to us. And if you gotta cling to your guns and religion, personally, most find guns a lot more dependable, and more _fun_ too (I always fell asleep in church, but never when out shooting!).
> 
> Of course, all this is a gross simplification. Both the UK and the US are tremendously diverse nations. Still, it sheds a bit of light on our differing attitudes towards guns. How this relates to the OP, I'm not sure. But where I live, pretty much anybody except convicted felons can carry firearms openly or concealed without any training or license. And with an armed populace, you pretty much have to have armed police.



A perceptive post! Guns indeed are more for the upper classes and even if not so much now they are certainly for country people rather than 'townies'.


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