[andy_m]

Pardon the interruption, I usually lurk around other parts of the forum, but I felt a few things needed saying! The problem with taser is its image. That's evident by those of you on this thread referring to Police carrying taser as "armed". Taser will sit well below guns (and probably alongside batons and pepper spray which are already routinely carried by our Police) in any organisation's use of force continuum.

As it stands, taser is carried by a significant proportion of "non-armed" Police Officers in this country already, but by no means all of them. The balance is probably currently about right, I reckon, and so I have voted "no".

---------- Post added at 18:01 ---------- Previous post was at 17:55 ----------

I think as well that, particularly in light of the way they handled things like pleb gate, and their appalling behaviour towards the Home Secretary in the wake of the Windsor report, it is worth cautioning against confusing the Police Federation with "the Police". From the article in the op, it is the Police Federation, the staff association for rank and file officers who aren't allowed to be in a union, calling for this.