12 year old arrested

[Pixxie7]

Do you think the police acted appropriately given that they had a tip off that a boy was waving a gun around.

are you saying
Last resort in a debate is to start positing decoy strawman positions.

Maybe it’s more difficult for Americans to understand - but the fact is, we don’t see guns in the UK. The vast majority of people in the UK don’t know anyone with a gun and have never seen one before.

@BlueLagoona
Fwiw, I am not American. I was brought up in a society where police are unarmed, and where gun ownership is severely restricted.

I have never felt comfortable in a society where guns are commonplace and police are visibly armed. It's as horrifying to me now as it was when I first moved to the US. My adult children take gun crime into account when deciding where they can live. As teens they did lockdown/armed assailant exercises in school.

This thread shows that the UK, or at least a section of the UK that considers itself law abiding, has already gone a long way toward accepting heavily armed police response and all the police attitudes that go along with that. When you accept an armed and aggressive response from police and pooh pooh the opinions of those who question it, you are half way to accepting the reasoning of the large section of the American public that believes personal protection is a civil right, with legalising of widespread gun ownership the next step.

When concern about crime gets to the point where the end of dealing with it justifies any means to combat it, the principle of a law and the fundamental right of each citizen to equal protection under the law is endangered. There is a difference between 'law' on the one hand and 'order' on the other.

And if the vast majority of people in the UK have never seen a gun, then it is imperative that the police make sure callers reporting guns are certain of what they saw. The police risk bringing policing into disrepute otherwise.

[quote mathanxiety]@Fijibikini
Are you saying the police never get it wrong?

Or are you saying that even though they get it wrong sometimes they should be given a free pass because they are often right, and security is worth any price in terms of the lives of others?

Or are you saying that even though they get it wrong sometimes they need not be accountable to the public they serve, need not operate according to principles that embody the values of society?

Or are you saying that society actually has values that are completely different from those so often trumpeted by British politicians complaining about human rights and civil rights infractions in other countries?

Your post is an example of the slippery slope into a police state in action.[/quote]
I am saying that there is a protocol that they follow for the safety of themselves. And rightly so. They are never going to attend a suspected fire arm with a friendly bobby and no back up. What if there was a person in there on drugs with a loaded weapon? Or if that person was waiting for the police to turn up so they could open fire? Because that’s already happened and caused the death of two female police officers. This is why they need to protect them selves. The police officers have family too.

No one one was harmed. They followed protocol. What should they be accountable for? What did they get wrong? A member of the public reported a male sat with a gun on the couch - they responded as per protocol. The found the gun - it was a BB gun. They did nothing wrong.

I hope the mother complaining to the press was just saving face and behind closed doors she was tearing a strip of her son for having it in view of the window

It's too late to apologise when a citizen is killed.

Yes. Which is why it was important for them to respond to a possible gun rather than waiting for something terrible to happen.

[quote mathanxiety]@Fijibikini
Are you saying the police never get it wrong?

Or are you saying that even though they get it wrong sometimes they should be given a free pass because they are often right, and security is worth any price in terms of the lives of others?

Or are you saying that even though they get it wrong sometimes they need not be accountable to the public they serve, need not operate according to principles that embody the values of society?

Or are you saying that society actually has values that are completely different from those so often trumpeted by British politicians complaining about human rights and civil rights infractions in other countries?

Your post is an example of the slippery slope into a police state in action.[/quote]
What free pass do the police need here? They followed procedure, acted professionally, no one got hurt. Good job.

Last resort in a debate is to start positing decoy strawman positions.

@PlanDeRaccordement
No, it's the attempt to say 'police are people too' that is the last resort. The resort to 'they are mothers and fathers'. The attempt to portray the general public as a force arrayed against the police, and those questioning the police as 'the enemy' is fundamentally unfair both to those doing the questioning and ultimately to the professional police force itself. It is unfair to the police because they are professionals, and they have a duty that goes way beyond dealing with each individual call. They are upholding the law. Not bagging groceries or driving a bus. They have a duty to the law.

They are police first when they wear that uniform and respond to calls from the public in their official capacity.

They have the right to detain people and apparently they have the right to bear arms and train weapons on the foreheads of people they have no reason to believe have committed a crime.

There is a massive amount of responsibility and accountability that goes along with all of that power, and the privilege of being given the benefit of the doubt by the general public is not one that should be abused.

And if the vast majority of people in the UK have never seen a gun, then it is imperative that the police make sure callers reporting guns are certain of what they saw

That’s impossible to do. And unrealistic and unattainable expectation that police should make sure callers are certain that an imitation gun is a real gun. It is also not without risk of an untrained person ending up in a deadly confrontation with the person they are calling about.
An example is when the police asked George Zimmerman to follow a suspicious person walking through his neighbourhood who he though had a gun to “make sure”, he ended up shooting a killing an unarmed black kid by the name of Treyvon Martin who had just gone out for sweets.

What free pass do the police need here? They followed procedure, acted professionally, no one got hurt. Good job.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras
The problem here is the procedures and the assumptions on which they are based, and the reasoning that the end justifies the means.

And if the vast majority of people in the UK have never seen a gun, then it is imperative that the police make sure callers reporting guns are certain of what they saw. The police risk bringing policing into disrepute otherwise

So how should the conversation go?

Passerby by - hello I walked past a window twice and seen a man sat with a gun on the couch’

Police - are you sure can you describe it?

Passerby by - well, it looked like a gun..

Police - yes I know but can you describe it more?

Passerby - err no, just that it looked like a hand gun

Police - yes I know that but make and model?

Passerby by - err no

Police - ok sir we’ll just leave it there then ok? We’ve not ticked enough boxes for us to respond. Please call back when you have make and model.

Passerby by - err ok

Yeah can see how that would work

They have the right to detain people and apparently they have the right to bear arms and train weapons on the foreheads of people they have no reason to believe have committed a crime.

Yes because police are there to prevent crime not just arrest criminals. It would be stupid to require that a person must commit a crime before the police can take any actions. After all, think how many terror plots would have become actual attacks if we all suddenly told police, stop aiming your weapon at and detaining people unless they’ve been proven to have already committed a crime.

And if the vast majority of people in the UK have never seen a gun, then it is imperative that the police make sure callers reporting guns are certain of what they saw

The caller was certain they saw a gun. As indeed they had..it's not as though it turned out to be a TV remote, a Wii controller, a vibrator, a banana, a tin of beans masquerading as a Glock. It was a gun. They were quite right.

What no one could have verified was whether it was real, imitation or a BB gun. A BB gun should have been brightly coloured and this one wasn't thus hindering identification. Who will you scapegoat for that?

I think @mathanxiety, your view is prejudiced by your experiences with and knowledge of US police which have a long history of abuses of power. You can’t really paint U.K. police with this same brush.

@mathanxiety

What free pass do the police need here? They followed procedure, acted professionally, no one got hurt. Good job.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras
The problem here is the procedures and the assumptions on which they are based, and the reasoning that the end justifies the means.

Yep.

Reason - person with gun
Means - armed police sent to safely detain suspect and identify weapon.

Job done. Well done our boys in blue.

No, it's the attempt to say 'police are people too' that is the last resort. The resort to 'they are mothers and fathers

They are they are not robots. And just because they wear a uniform doesn’t mean they have to literally put themselves in the firing line. They are not cannon fodder.

@PlanDeRaccordement

I think *@mathanxiety*, your view is prejudiced by your experiences with and knowledge of US police which have a long history of abuses of power. You can’t really paint U.K. police with this same brush.

I agree with this.

I'm volunteering mathanxiety to spearhead the door knocking initiative for any reports of potential illegal firearms. They can go in with the softly softly approach that they seem to favour.

We'll call it Code name Darwin.

I don’t agree with children being allowed to play with toy guns or replicas or whatever that was. But why arrest him? Responding to a report is one thing, but arresting him, taking him out to a van is totally disproportionate particularly as it can’t have taken them long to ascertain it wasn’t a real firearm. I don’t think that would’ve happened to a white boy. Sad really.

That’s impossible to do. And unrealistic and unattainable expectation that police should make sure callers are certain that an imitation gun is a real gun. It is also not without risk of an untrained person ending up in a deadly confrontation with the person they are calling about.
An example is when the police asked George Zimmerman to follow a suspicious person walking through his neighbourhood who he though had a gun to “make sure”, he ended up shooting a killing an unarmed black kid by the name of Treyvon Martin who had just gone out for sweets.

@PlanDeRaccordement

The responsible advice to an untrained and unarmed person would be to get away from the location as quickly as possible.

I am not sure why you think the introduction of Trayvon Martin into this discussion in any way adds to your argument.

Surely he is the poster child for what goes wrong when racial profiling and institutionalised racism on the part of both civilians and police result in the murder of the innocent?

Just as in this case the disproportionate response of the police resulted in the victimisation of a black youth and the terrorising of his family...

There is no indication whatsoever that the boy answered the door with the gun in his hand or that he threatened the police in any way. They did not know when they arrested him if he were a younger relative of the 'black male' reported by the caller or the subject himself. If they did know he was the individual the caller reported then they must have understood that they were dealing with a child, and they did not deal proportionately with him.

If it is impossible to require that callers to the police be sure they have seen a gun and that they have reasonable concerns about the danger it presents then the police need to figure out questions to ask to flesh out the report for credibility and to determine the level of force needed in the response.

This is because the police are carrying real, loaded weapons guns, and people can and do get injured or killed by the police, and because that matters.

The responsible advice to an untrained and unarmed person would be to get away from the location as quickly as possible.

Then how will they provide the police with the highly detailed and accurate intelligence you require to be asked?

Maybe we all need to carry high powered binoculars on our nightly walks in case we spot what looks like a firearm in a sitting room. Then we can retreat to a safe distance whilst spying through said binoculars in order to report details to police operator.

The responsible advice to an untrained and unarmed person would be to get away from the location as quickly as possible

And then what? What do the police do then? Leave it? Send a PCO round the next morning?

The met have terrible form

The inclination on MN to trust the police totally is really interesting and this is not the first thread it's been going on for years.

The met have shot and killed people and lied about it afterwards.
They were colluding with the press/ corrupt.
Massive failings in really serious cases eg John warboys.
They had to close down the sapphire unit because of massive failings.
My personal experiences with them have been very mixed and very much the response you get depends on their perception of you.

A PP said going in 'all guns blazing' was the best course.
It isn't. Clips of police in UK talking people down have had a response from usa viewers saying wow he'd be dead that's incredible.

This boy was 12, in his own home
The police over reacted massively and I'm personally in no doubt that the report that he was a 'black male' contributed to that.

I think mathanxiety, your view is prejudiced by your experiences with and knowledge of US police which have a long history of abuses of power. You can’t really paint U.K. police with this same brush.

If you think there is something special or different from US police about the disproportionate use of force and the attitudes of maximum suspicion that the UK police brought to bear, then I am here to tell you you are deluding yourself.

Armed and aggressive and essentially racist police response was normalised in Northern Ireland for decades, and completely accepted by the British public, fyi.
cain.ulster.ac.uk/hmso/hunt.htm
It seems no lessons have been learned from what happens to a society that turns a blind eye to policing gone awry.

@Fijibikini

The responsible advice to an untrained and unarmed person would be to get away from the location as quickly as possible

And then what? What do the police do then? Leave it? Send a PCO round the next morning?

Maybe they could write a letter?

Dear householder,

Terribly sorry to bother you but a passerby thinks they might have seen what could be described as a gun in your sitting room a week ago last Friday. Please don't be alarmed, they might have been mistaken - it might have been the TV remote, or maybe it's an illegally held firearm that you were planning to rob the bank with?

Anyway, if it's not too much trouble would you mind awfully dropping us a note at the station clarifying which one of the two it is?

Many thanks and sorry again for the inconvenience

PC Plod.

@Fijibikini, are you disagreeing that the police should tell an unarmed person to leave the location immediately if they feel they are in the presence of someone who is armed?

[quote mathanxiety]@Fijibikini, are you disagreeing that the police should tell an unarmed person to leave the location immediately if they feel they are in the presence of someone who is armed?[/quote]
We all think this is sensible advice. It's you whos insisting that the witness provides police with serial number of the gun and inside leg measurement of person with gun, as a minimum.