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Originally Posted by Russ
If the police are to be armed then the decision and indeed the research needs to come from frontline officers <snip>.
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I agree that research should involve front line officers, however I don't believe it should be as straightforward as letting them decide if they should be armed with guns.
I recall a famous example from the Vietnam conflict regarding FAC (forward air controllers) aka "bird dog" aircraft. Its often asked why didn't the FAC spotter aircraft carry weapons? The pilots wanted weapons. It was found in the early days of the war, that when equipped with guns/rockets the aircraft were getting shot down in high numbers because they were putting themselves in positions they wouldn't have had they not been "armed".
This trend has been noted in policing too, and in various countries:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012...?utm_hp_ref=uk
From the above link:
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What's the difference between Norway and Sweden?
The two Scandinavian countries are both affluent, with a commitment to liberal democracy and the welfare state. But there's one crucial difference; in Norway, police are not armed as a matter of course. But in Sweden, they regularly carry guns.
The result? According to a 2010 study by Johannes Knutsson and Jon Strype, there are fewer injuries and deaths among Norwegian citizens.
Police lay flowers at the scene where two female officers were killed in Britain
Dr Peter Squires, an expert on gun crime at the University of Brighton, says the study is not unusual.
"Just the fact of arming the police means that they approach incidents more aggressively, there are more armed incidents, more people get shot," he tells The Huffington Post UK.
That's one of the reasons why the UK, like Ireland, Norway and New Zealand, doesn't routinely arm its police - in contrast to the rest of the European world and north America.
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