In the news last night I noticed the Police and Crime Commissioner of Dyfed-Powys Christopher Salmon had set up an online poll for people about all police carrying a gun on duty. Here I address in a letter to the elected Commissioner as to why this would be a huge mistake.
Dear Christopher,
I couldn't help but notice on the news you had been asking whether the police should carry around guns on general duty and as a graduate in Criminology and the Criminal Justice System I felt obliged to write to you about this.
I honestly from my studies think there could be no worse ideas than having police with guns on the street. The idea carries one hell of a lot of risk. And here are some reasons why.
I'm sure you will agree that America isn't exactly totally unlike the UK, however this is a country where guns are readily more legal and the police do carry guns with them. Now all police having guns does enter a slippery slope of how many people actually can get their hands on guns and this leads to more murders, America for instance has a five times higher murder rate than the United Kingdom. Why? Because they have more access to firearms. And when you look at this stat regarding homicide, you also need to bare in mind that cases such as Zimmerman wouldn't count thanks to a not guilty verdict.
There is also the problem with the police having them on them if they fall into someone of the wrong hands somehow when they are out, this could lead to chaos. On top of this, without knowing every bit of detail about the personal lives of these police officers you don't know whether one could be close to cracking, again you have seen officers in America in recent months shoot innocent people to death. They could claim a hard time, but they still killed somebody, just because we are British does not mean we can rule that out from happening. In fact there have been two obvious occasions in London where people who should never have been shot, were killed by the police. Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes and Mark Duggan. The latter of those killings led to the London Riots. The reality here is that the police often get it very wrong when it comes to a gut reaction such as in these two incidents because they had guns.
So rather than listening to a pretty unrepresentative poll on your website, I advice you to think about the safety of people and therefore reject the idea of police having guns on them in general duty. We already have arguably too many armed police officers as it is.
I say these comments as somebody who once aspired to be in the police but down to the cuts it has been impossible to find a route in. I hold nothing against the police therefore, but I do regard the idea of police having guns as creating a much more unsafe community. Maybe we need more police on the streets, but for that I realise you'd need money off the Government, money that probably is there but won't be given to the police, but guns is never the way to fix something.
Yours Sincerely
James
Update - 23rd May 2015
I have received a reply from this email and will share it here
Dear Mr Martin,
Thank you for your message. I'm not in any sense suggesting the police should be armed. I'm just asking the public how they would like currently armed specialist officers to be deployed.
The survey will help me understand how the public to view the issue and inform my discussions with the chief constable. We've had a massive response and I will publish the findings shortly.
Thank you for your interest.
Kind regards,
Christopher
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