Rural police left ‘sitting ducks’ by shortage of armed back-up.
The Police Federation of England and Wales has warned the government the shortage of armed officers leave the country ‘vulnerable to a terror attack’.
John Apter, chairman of the Hampshire branch of the Police Federation
Mr Apter’s concerns come at a time when armed officers are under threat from a lack of funding. 1500 ‘new’ firearms officers are being trained, of which 400 are going to ‘cities outside of London’. Should we be scared in Norfolk – could our rural plod cope if there was a terrorist outrage at a power plant?
Norfolk is the fifth largest county in England; it is predominantly rural – very rural. We have a low crime rate. Over 20% of the population is aged 65 or over, 10% over 75.
Yet we already have more armed officers than they do in central Manchester!
One good reason is that we have more ‘royals’ resident in the area than they do in Manchester…some of them, or at least one of them, insist on playing to the peanut gallery, and having a ‘day job’.
Road traffic accidents account for the majority of call outs for the ‘air ambulance’; taking place as they do on remote stretches of highway between towns that are difficult for a normal ambulance to get to quickly. Since for a mere 2.99 you can have an app that tells you when an air ambulance has landed – and that air ambulance lands in a uninhabited spot just by a motorway with a royal at the controls, firearms officers have to be scrambled to the spot to ensure that no terrorist takes a pot shot at the pilot…(no wonder he only flies 30 hours a month).
That doesn’t mean that firearms officers are scrambled from an office somewhere, for guess what? Firearms officers double up as traffic control – they are permanently mobile.
Since 2012, Norfolk and Suffolk have run a combined ‘Roads policing and Firearms Unit’, with 75% of the 190 officers being armed. Around 140 of them.
Sadly their first priority is Reducing Road Casualties; this area involves Education, Enforcement, Partnership working and other initiatives aimed at ‘preventing death and injury’ on the road.
In other words – they are first and foremost ‘traffic cops’…
Though their firearms capability is kept reasonably busy – shooting two cows in 2014, chasing a teenager with a plastic machete filming for a college project, scrambling to a coach with a ‘suspicious package‘ on board, backed up by a helicopter and ten police cars for a ‘toy gun’, and again with helicopter on comic relief day, scrambled yet again, guarding a cannabis haul.
It costs around £9,000 quid to train each of them for firearms duty initially, (to be followed by regular refresher courses). In order to arrive at traffic cops who can shoot straight at a cow.
I don’t doubt for one moment the courage of armed officers – for each of the farcical events I have referenced could well have been a genuine armed incident where they were required to put their life on the line. They must also face an inquiry each time they do pull their trigger – an inquiry which in the one case of Jermaine Baker did result in the arrest of the officer – though the 28 other ‘fatal’ cases did not.
However, my ire is directed at the Police Federation – raising the spectre of firearms officers, complete with helicopter and multi-vehicles, being unable to scramble to a terrorist event in this particular country would appear to be shroud waving. The 190 strong unit seems to manage just fine.
In between clocking up 36,336 prosecutions for speeding, using a mobile phone, not using a seat belt and drink driving. All those fines!
All perfectly laudable, but I suppose demanding extra expensively trained personnel to catch people ‘using their mobile phones whilst driving’ wouldn’t have the same emotional appeal to the taxpayer wallet…
- JuliaM
May 17, 2016 at 5:34 pm -
From the Great Cow Escape: ‘Two cows that escaped from a market have been shot dead during a seven-hour stand-off with armed police..’
A stand off? Were they negotiating for 20 grand in used readies and a flight to Cuba?
- Penseivat
May 17, 2016 at 5:50 pm -
I must admit I am surprised at the number quoted of Police officers undergoing firearms training. Even in my day (retired 12 years now) the writing was on the wall that any officer involved in a shooting and facing criminal charges would get very little back-up or support from the force until a not guilty verdict was reached and then the usual platitudes of “confident of his innocence” and “he should not have been put through this star chamber-like trial” roll out from the PR department. Any officer suspended is forbidden from contact with any other Police officer, including social domestic occasions. Being refused permission to attend a colleague’s funeral or even a brother’s wedding (as happened to a firearms officer in my old force several years ago) shows how the ‘guilty by association’ creed seeps down from the top floor, and recent events have shown that this can drag on for many months. Be a firearms officer? Not worth the trouble and pain, guv.
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 17, 2016 at 6:28 pm -
Norfolk and Suffolk have run a combined ‘Roads policing and Firearms Unit’
Steven Fry once said that the big danger on Norfolk roads is village lads speeding down the B123456 thinking they are the Dukes Of Hazard running ‘shine. Thanks to Norfolk + Suffolk’s policy I now have a vision of PC Ross McColtrane in ‘Hawt pursuit’ of Kev & Nev in their lowered Astra, taking pot shots with his side arm out the squad car window….y’all. Although in the Norfolk version ‘Daisy’ would be their sister, in the North Norfolk version their mother….and don’t even think about the ‘uncle’ in Uncle Jesse.
I’m long out of touch but as far as I was aware all the really sensitive sites in Norfolk/Suffolk have their own “armed response”, Bacton supposedly has an SAS squad on 24/7 alert. Sizewell will no doubt be policed by the armed BNP (or whatever 3 lettered acronym they now go by). Brenda’s hubby no doubt packs heat at every available opportunity and the Young Farmers are known locally as the ‘Armed Wing Of The Tory Party’ . Pity any heathen terrorist what attempts to make his getaway from an outrage across the fields of Norfolk, the surviving badgers are bit psychotic ……and there’s that nice Mr Martin’s farm. So I would be surprised if we really need more armed officers .
- Retired
May 18, 2016 at 8:42 am -
From my time in the police I would say that people should be very worried about the threat to the National Critical Infrastructure. You mentioned Bacton, I don’t know if it has permanent armed security but you should remember the SAS will not do static guarding. In all likelihood they would only be deployed when intelligence had shown an attack was probable. They are not an emergency response to a spontaneous incident. Like it or not you will need the police as initial response. I am assuming ISIS/AQ whoever have attack planners who follow the news and have therefore taken into consideration the need to stretch first responders.
The IRA looked to attack the power supply in the late 1990’s. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/how-ira-plotted-to-switch-off-london-1266533.html. We were told afterwards that the parts of the transformers they planned to knock out were not replaceable in the short term. They don’t wear out and are fairly substantial so only one or two were kept in stock ‘just in case’. The person from the power industry said that the grid would cope with even one or two of these transformers going down but after that power would be lost to most of the country for at least 24 hours and that London could have lost power for over a week with power then restored on a rota basis. As I subscribe to the belief that we are only three square meals away from anarchy you can imagine what would happen.
The infrastructure is fragile, we are a more connected society, and that are lots of points that could be attacked and would cause untold chaos.- The Blocked Dwarf
May 18, 2016 at 1:59 pm -
Retired, you raise interesting points. My own personal take is that it should be up to each individual officer to decide whether or not he should be armed (and trained and PAID accordingly). I have lived abroad long enough not to have any real concerns about an armed police force but I do think it has to be a matter of conscience for each officer, the officer’s decision not the Great British Public nor even the Chief Constable.
The moment you strap on a gun you are saying that you are prepared to kill (in the right circumstances blah blah etc etc) and that’s a big step for any one with a working conscience .
- Retired
May 18, 2016 at 4:28 pm -
Agreed. People who go an about how they would hate to see routinely armed police in the UK and say how terrified they would be by armed police happily travel abroad to where the police are routinely armed and, dare I say it, training is not as good. I think it was Sir Paul Condon who said that a couple of significant incidents would cause the arming of the UK police.
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 18, 2016 at 4:52 pm -
they would be by armed police happily travel abroad to where the police are routinely armed
Somewhat counter-common sense, when I went to live to live in Germany -when the UK police were still very much ‘wooden tops’ with proper uniforms, hollies and bearing- I found it difficult, and bear in mind i was a fairly active criminal, to take the Polizei seriously. I felt, often, their authority came only from wearing a gun and not because they embodied The Law. Kind of ‘you can draw your gun and threaten to shoot me, but you can’t tell me what to do’- late teenage bravado in part i grant you but as I was myself habitually over-armed, it did raise some issues along the lines of ‘I can draw my knife and slash your carotid in about 4 tenths of a second, you’ll still be undoing your holster’.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Retired
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Retired
- Mudplugger
May 17, 2016 at 8:23 pm -
One potential solution to an understandable reluctance of some Plod to carry guns lies in body-cameras. If all armed Plod, and any co-piloting colleagues, were compelled to have operational body-cameras at all times, that would provide some irrefutable evidence, from at least two prespectives, of the circumstances surrounding any use of the official firearms.
But then, a compulsory body-camera may prove to be an even greater disincentive than a gun – at least a gun doesn’t tell tales on what you were really doing all day……- JuliaM
May 18, 2016 at 7:00 am -
Not necessarily. Did you see the released body cam footage of the US cop shooting the knife wielding mentally ill woman as she chased one of her relatives?
Said relatives now demanding answers as to why deadly force was used!
- Mudplugger
May 18, 2016 at 8:19 am -
And rightly so, a camera can work for either prosecution or defence, sometimes both, but at least it adds some indisputable facts into the application of justice.
Much harder to collude with orchestrated note-books after the event when there’s real-time footage of sound and vision available – see South Yorkshire Police for operational guidance on that matter.
- Mudplugger
- JuliaM
- binao
May 17, 2016 at 9:02 pm -
A Police Federation rep acting up, the BMA still fighting 1948, all as normal, forgetting who’s paying the wages and for what.
To quote a friend, whisky tango foxtrot.
And yet, there’s the RSPCA saying they’d lost their way.
Perhaps there is hope. - David
May 18, 2016 at 7:50 am -
I notice that Norfolk has joined ‘Operation Traverse’ which is part of a coordinated approach to illegal fishing activity which occurs across the Eastern Region. Norfolk Constabulary is the latest force to commit to the operation, joining forces with Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Humberside, Nottingham and Yorkshire Police. http://mynorwichnews.co.uk/featured/nofolk-constabulary-tackles-illegal-fishing/
Every force has it’s ‘priorities’. Kensington & Chelsea, part of the Met are concentrating on dogs that are not on leads in Brompton Cemetery, Earls Court, which is officially the only Cemetery in the country owned by the Crown and managed by The Royal Parks on behalf of the nation. However it ‘cannot’ be patrolled by ‘parks police’, and is patrolled by Met Police from Kensington & Chelsea.
Every day, two vans, and four to six Policeman patrol the cemetery, they are real policeman, not community police. They concentrate , mostly, old ladies, with poodles, ignoring the drug dealers with dangerous dogs off leads, who meet clients. They also ignore the many men who gather every day to have sex in the buildings, which are a copy of the Vatican buildings in Rome. Often hiding behind trees, police Officers rush out and accost someone. After taking them to Court, most of the cases are then thrown out.
This cat and mouse game is played out, every day, on the side path, well protected by trees, and shrubs, leaving lots of places for Policeman to hide and wait for their quarry. I suppose if they were armed, they could tackle the dealers, and the dangerous dogs, but gun shots going off in the cemetery would upset even more people.
- Retired
May 18, 2016 at 8:23 am -
Not the Met, but this mob – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Borough_of_Kensington_and_Chelsea_Parks_Police.
- David
May 18, 2016 at 8:33 am -
No they do Kensington Gardens, Holland Park etc, but not Brompton Cemetery
- Retired
May 18, 2016 at 8:45 am -
I stand corrected. https://www.royalparks.org.uk/park-management/policing-in-the-royal-parks
- Retired
- David
- Retired
- Richard
May 18, 2016 at 9:31 am -
The police should be armed as a matter of course; their job is to protect the public and a firearm can help them to do so. The other thing the police should have is a university degree course for constables with emphasis on common law, dealing with the public etc AND psychiatric testing to weed out undesirable personality traits. A Constable is an essential part of a free society and his job should be to detect and prevent crime, keep the peace, and preserve the safety of the public. There are too many instances, as David mentions above, of Constables picking on easy targets, behaving as armed revenue agents, and misusing their authority. It should be a profession for intelligent and ethical people who by definition are the types who can be trusted to use a firearm correctly.
By the by, I also agree with the system of concealed carry for members of the public, trained and vetted, as applies in the USA. The right of effective self-defence has been lost in the UK. There was a local businessman who was attacked and stabbed close to where I live, when being robbed; had he a firearm he might be alive today. But he wasn’t even allowed a pepper spray, under laws produced by those who can count on armed protection themselves.- Moor Larkin
May 18, 2016 at 9:37 am -
Robocop is what we want but we always end up with Cain.
- Penseivat
May 18, 2016 at 12:01 pm -
“…the Police should have a university degree course with emphasis on common law…….”. That’s 3 or 4 years at university to obtain a qualification that can only be used in one profession, only to find that there are no vacancies for a profession which offers a starting salary less than can be obtained working in a fast food chain, with much less hassle, plus there’s the many thousands on student loans to be paid back. Also, never mind emphasis on common law, what about emphasis on criminal law, which is more important for the role? The Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom ‘Walter Mitty’ Windsor wants a minimum of 3 ‘A’ levels for Police entrants, though what good art, home economics, and drama will do when faced with a mob of yobs, unless an offer is made to act out painting a Sunday roast! The current recruitment process covers physical fitness, psychology, general education, diversity and ability to think on one’s feet, amongst others. Once appointed, there is a continual screening of abilities, discipline, and attitude for 2 years, during which the probationers’s service can be dispensed with. People with degrees and numerous ‘A’ levels will not necessarily make a good copper, while some without those qualifications can do well.
- Retired
May 18, 2016 at 12:26 pm -
‘Common Law’ ‘Police acting as revenue agents’ = Freeman on the Land alert.
- Richard
May 18, 2016 at 1:12 pm -
Good points, which do make more sense than mine. On reflection I argued from ignorance and off the cuff.
Mr. Retired, I believe that I did indeed hear the term “revenue agents” from a freeman video so it’s a fair cop, although I believe that they are barking up the wrong tree. If they were on to something then they would have succeeded in court and I have yet to see any evidence that this has ever happened. It was because of a comment above, which said that dog walkers with no leads were being fined instead of arresting tougher customers, that brought it to my memory.
However my main point about the carriage of firearms still seems a valid one. Or is it?
I shall shut up now…
- Richard
- Mudplugger
May 18, 2016 at 1:30 pm -
Absolutely right about the mandatory degree-level entry – working for nursing, isn’t it ? Thousands of potentially excellent nurses are dissuaded from entry, but most of those who do take the uni-route then emerge convinced that cleaning up bodily outputs is beneath them. Grad-Plod may improve the resolution of the occasional complex city fraud but it won’t help much outside the boozer on a Saturday night, where most of their public order role is enacted.
- Fat Steve
May 18, 2016 at 2:30 pm -
@Penseivat …the Police should have a university degree course with emphasis on common law
Which sparked a thought …..why is there no degree in Policing? (no not criminolgy) ……one can study all manner of specialist subjects (I personally know of two ‘Graduates’ one in Equine management , the other in Formula One racing …..yes promise) . Although I would probably have made a lousy copper I did think of the Police simply because it seemed an interesting way to spend some years of ones life ….a Law Degree would not be a great way to train Policeman save to make sure the paper work was faultless .Come to think of it had there been a Degree in Policing I might well have elected for it …..and in my day (gosh I sound an old fool) when one started in the law it was at the bottom even if one had a reasonablish degree so i would suggest a couple of years on the beat after graduation…..and of course one could climb the academic ladder in Policing …..a Masters in specialist subjects and even a Doctorate .- Fat Steve
May 18, 2016 at 2:36 pm -
There is a War Studies Department at KCL where my daughter took her Masters in Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (no she didn’t go on to be a ‘spook” as far as I know but some of her colleagues probably did) which raises the question once again of why there is no dedicated Policing Degree.
- Mudplugger
May 18, 2016 at 5:27 pm -
By contrast, a pal of mine was a military ‘spook’ in Cold War time & Cold War places and held a Masters in Conflict Resolution: how often he used that sophisticated negotiating approach rather than his other various ‘skills’ remains unreported. His OBE on retirement for ‘unspecified services’ said enough. That said, now that I’ve blown his cover, albeit retired, he’ll probably have to kill me. Gulp.
- Mudplugger
- David
May 18, 2016 at 2:42 pm -
A degree in Policing, would be a degree in ‘Common-Sense’. Maybe leading to a Masters, and becoming a Doctor of ‘Common-Sense’.
I believe that most Policeman already have a degree in Divinity.- Fat Steve
May 18, 2016 at 3:20 pm -
I find not for the first time I am out of touch ….there are indeed degrees in Policing but only from Plate Glass Universities (the Old Polytechnics) ….A shame really that a few of the Russell Group don’t think about it …..bet it would be a hit with overseas students (special modules in enhanced interrogation techniques studied in a year abroad perhaps Guantanomo or Abu Ghraib). But more seriously in my day the thicker Public Schoolboys went into the Colonial Police (made of the right stuff to keep the wogs in their place) but for a bright Graduate in Policing from a decent University the world could be their oyster
- Fat Steve
- Fat Steve
- Fat Steve
- Retired
- Moor Larkin
- Jeremy Poynton
May 18, 2016 at 10:40 am -
I run Speedwatch in the village where we live. Last year, talking to a cop from Avon & Somerset about running it, the talk got round top policing in general, and armed response teams. He believed that were another Hungerford to occur today, it could be four hours before armed police were there.
Great idea to cut the cops and the army, Dave. Isn’t our safety your No. 1 priority?
- JohnM
May 22, 2016 at 6:10 pm -
“it could be four hours”..
It was…and more…the armed squad were training 40 miles away…999 was swamped…the police helicopter was having a bad day.
And, if you remember, the police did nothing anyway until after he shot and killed himself.
Ryan owned, legally, multiple firearms (including a few semi-automatic rifles).
Still, bringing up a massacre or two is good PR..
I seem to remember several people being shot by police for next to nothing, including one who was, apparently, shot for running.
They need less armed police, not more!!
- JohnM
- Fat Steve
May 18, 2016 at 11:58 am -
I am not sure I have a great deal to contribute to the discussion but I incline to the view that once one arms the Police for everyday duty its something of an admission that battle lines are drawn between an adequate number (if not the majority ) of Society and ‘Authority’ (an ugly word which doesn’t quite convey the point I am attempting to make). The two camps form and intermittant armed skirmishing (the first response) commences with the odd battle (well they are called riots).
The reality is that in certain parts of the Country have probably come to that point and its probably more a matter of trying (but failing) to keep a lid on things. Doesn’t seem that way in Sussex (though perhaps things are less brazen) but my increasingly infrequent trips to London lead me to think its just a matter of time there. Not sure my analysis is congruent with the Police being armed in many socially cohesive European Countries but then they armed their Police from the start before it became necessary.
But the flatlands occupied by Dwarves and Raccoons having loads of armed coppers? Good Lord there goes another of my illusions imagining a rural idyll where the Dixons of Dock Green transferred to for their final years of Service to keep a watchful eye on the Village Green and collar the local poacher when his Lordship thought the bag on the shoot was poor because of him..- The Blocked Dwarf
May 18, 2016 at 1:43 pm -
Good Lord there goes another of my illusions imagining a rural idyll where the Dixons of Dock Green transferred to for their final years of Service…
When they said ‘move to Norfolk & die‘ it wasn’t just an allegory for retirement . NB Dwarf has just spent half an hour behind a tractor still whose ‘driver’ (“I’m from Naaarfuck n I’m alright, I can’t read and I can’t write but i can drive a tractor & has a shotgun) was still fighting Ketts Rebellion in his head…
- Retired
May 18, 2016 at 1:54 pm -
I had a colleague who went from Norfolk to the Met (Peckham). He said he received a couple of kickings when he was working in Norfolk because help was so far away. He never felt really unsafe in London because back up was close. He said you developed your negotiating skills very quickly and you rapidly learned that revenge was a dish best served cold i.e. square the scrotes up at a time and place of your choosing. Good old rural policing.
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 18, 2016 at 2:43 pm -
London mate of mine, back in the 80s, always reckoned the bar fights in Norfolk were nastier than in Bethnal Green…back when a punch up of a Friday night was still considered character building. Something, so my mate, to do with the ratio of available females to males or the Norfolk lads didn’t like you hitting on their sisters ….Norfolk boys being quick to jealous anger if it looks like their Sis might be spreading her favours outside the family.
- The Blocked Dwarf
May 18, 2016 at 2:53 pm -
Appositely someone just tweeted that. Bloke gets stabbed in the head and then (not mentioned in the paper) beats up the 3 who stabbed him. Norfolk. Anywhere else he’d have suffered a brain injury…. (probably why they also tried stabbing him in the arse).
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Retired
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Gaye Dalton
May 18, 2016 at 3:57 pm -
Traffic control are ARMED????
Jaguars, firearms and testosterone…I think there may be more immediate threats than future terrorists around…
I used date an armed Irish cop. he was a head case…
- Fairly Sane
May 19, 2016 at 2:30 pm -
My first thought about this story was, why on earth announce it to the world? Why would anyone tell terrorists what the nations vulnerabilities are?
- Moor Larkin
May 19, 2016 at 2:40 pm -
I think they call it whistle-blowing, and it’s a sign of virtue.
- Moor Larkin
- Cuffleyburgers
May 29, 2016 at 7:07 pm -
Of course if law abiding citizens were allowed to make arrangements to defend themselves there would be no need for armed filth and they could go back to directing traffic.
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