Quote:
Originally Posted by Will21st
I've lived and worked in Germany for 25 years and have seen a burglary in progress while working as a night porter at a hotel.I called the police.They drew their guns after climbing the roof of the property next door and shouted:'Police,come out with your hands in the air',or words to that effect
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"Polizei, kommen mit den Händen in der Luft" ... or something.
What you're describing here serves to underscore the fundamental difference between policing in the UK and just about everywhere else.
If you advocate a similar approach by British police, then you're calling for far more than simply allowing them to wear a side arm as a matter of routine. You're calling for a serious shift in the rules governing the use of police firearms, and that in turn calls for a shift in the relationship between the police and the public.
AFAIK at present firearms are not deployed unless there's a reasonable suspicion that the suspect is armed. It's the same basic principle of meeting force with comparable force that allows a British homeowner to blow a burglar's head off with his own shotgun. It's the same because Peel's of model of policing by consent, with the police officer simply a uniformed civilian with few powers over and above those of anyone else. Allowing police officers to draw a firearm without any cause other than to force compliance on a suspect puts things on a totally different footing.
In many other places policing is a paramilitary operation. It's not uncommon to see police officers in Europe routinely dressed in the sort of gear you don't see in the UK unless there's a full-scale riot in progress. I don't think we need to create that kind of separation between those of us who wear a uniform and those of us who don't.