To want to praise the police - London sword attack

[boozeclues]

I have just watched the footage of some very young police officers who detained the man in London today wielding a sword. Not only had he already killed a child, he was determine to kill anyone he met.

The video I watched is here: https://news.sky.com/video/share-13126428

These are mainly very young officers, not wearing much protection (e.g. their whole heads and faces are exposed), and not many of the people in the video can be more than 20 to 30 years old.

Truly heroic IMO. They all deserve a medal. The police bashing in this country also has to stop, we are not America, most of our police force is full of people who want to protect the public, bad management, lack of funding and politics aside.

I am also truly very sad for the young boy who lost his life today and his family, I hope they know the whole country is mourning their loss and want to support them.

I haven’t watched but I was thinking yesterday how brave police are responding to criminals like this

You can hear the absolute fear in the officers voice when he is yelling to people to look their doors.

Truly heroic what they did.

I appreciate the efforts of good police officers, but we should never, never forget that the Met had a serial killer serving as an active officer, who used his warrant card to abduct and murder a woman.

They did a great job

Really? Because I’ve never been a police officer and have seen this racism and sexism in every job I’ve had. Because society is racist and sexist. They are not subhuman, just members of society

Agreed. What stunned me yesterday is that samurai swords can be bought perfectly legally in the UK . The site I looked at talked about traditional craftsmanship and hand polishing etc but they're clearly still fucking swords.

That sounds very patronising doesn’t it? Almost implies that female police officers aren’t usually the brave ones. Do you think they usually stick to dealing with lost children and helping old ladies cross the road?

You very clearly have no idea on gang crime in the uk.

For eg a friend of mine attended a death recently where they couldn’t find a wound on the woman, turns out she had a knife wound in the most unfathomable place. All because she was in debt of 20£. Gang crime of course.

These are the people they deal with on a daily basis. And that’s a tame story in comparison.

calling the police a gang is insulting, disgusting, and only comes from someone with zero critical thinking skills. Usually coming from people who absorb headlines and follow whichever narrative is being thrown out

I agree, @Fears .

The handling of this dreadful event was exemplary, the officers showed great courage and quick thinking.

But that doesn't alter the fact that there are still far too many rotten apples, and that processes for dealing with them are longwinded and often not very effective.

There's always one.

🙄

Grow up!

The police wouldn’t even have to be in this position and that poor boy wouldn’t have lost his life if we had effective mental health services. This can’t go on. That poor poor boy.

It really isn't.

This thread just demonstrates how the police will never be able to get it "right" in some people's minds. Those officers literally risked their lives to save people just like you Apple.

And all you can do is insult them.

Have a big round of applause 👏 👏

Do you feel better now !

It is perfectly possible to think that the individual police officers did something very brave in this instance AND to criticise the police for their institutional misogyny, racism, corruption and aggression.

It is even possible for a racist, misogynist individual police officer to also do some brave things.

Life is complicated.

Agree. What would the world be like without brave people like these police officers. Who are putting themselves at risk for the community.

Absolutely @Hereyoume they are a perfect example of smug, sanctimonious thinking everyone will think how wonderful and righteous they are with such comments.. A child has been murdered and its being utilised as a point scoring agenda by some.. slow clap to them.

The police in the UK are probably the best in the world. If you don't believe that statement, tell me about a country which has a better force.

The officers yesterday were incredibly brave, unarmed, but literally running towards the murderer, while everyone else was running away.

We have serious issues with our Police, and we need to fix those issues before we can reasonable criticise them. They have no staff, almost no equipment, and very little training. All of that is down to money, which quit a lot of people (even some on this very thread) don't think should be spent. How you can judge someone for doing a bad job, when they don't have the right tools, is beyond me, but others would pass judgment anyway.

If we had sufficient numbers of officers, the response time would.have been considerably less, possibly immediate, had there been a officer on the street corner when it happened.

But people don't want to pay for officers standing on street corners, they think it's much cheaper to let people be killed first, and have officers respond after.

There are, when you do the numbers, one officer for every 1400 people, that's just not acceptable for a service that is so under equipped.

You can throw the misogyny card around, and drape the racist banner across your chest and go marching in the streets. But until we fix the service, we can't criticise it.

Well done to all those officers involved yesterday. I feel for all those parents, and of course the rest of their families watching that footage, and holding their breath. My heart goes out to the boys family, and the injured officers and members of public.

As the mum of a Met Police Officer it is wonderful to hear praise being given instead of the usual police bashing.
If you only knew what a month of their day to day call outs looked like.
I am so proud of the way he has handled himself, and the people he has come into contact with, no matter how they have treated him. I am also, truth be told, petrified most of the time.

The people slagging off the police would be the first to stand behind them, expecting to be protected, if a sword wielding attacker was coming for them. The police officers were very brave and I think we all too readily forget just what they deal with, day in day out.
I was in the armed forces and genuinely feel like that was a safer job than had I joined the police.

Are you really saying we can't reasonably criticise the Met for employing Wayne Couzens and failing to follow up on any of the signs that he was harassing women and a danger to the public, because the force is understaffed?

Or we can't reasonably criticise the individual Met police officers who shared pictures of the murdered bodies of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry alongside vile comments about them in a WhatsApp group full of other officers (who didn't report them) because the force is lacking some equipment?

So just to clarify until the Met police employs some specific number of officers (how many btw?) and they have all the equipment that they want, you think we should just let officers do terrible things without criticising them?

Yes, quite, her gender has nothing to do with it.
They are police officers. They were all brave.

Many years ago in a playground I and a friend were confronted with a man who also had a very large knife. He threatened us and we managed to persuade him to go away and not hurt us or the children. There were about 40 people there. It was surreal.

I called the police (twice) It took 20 minutes for them to turn up. I cannot tell you what it was like. This man did not kill anyone, and the police tasered him eventually. He was severely mentally I'll and living with his family.

Incidents like this are more common than you think. Well done to the Met.

In a world where sexism is rife, women are brought up to fear walking to the shops after dark or drive on motorways by themselves or spend a night without DH (as seen many times on MN) I see this , rather, as highlighting that women are brave, strong, capable and calm under extreme pressure. She is so assertive when she says ‘Taser’. She comes forward.

It is worth highlighting that women do this stuff alongside men, come forward.

It’s a reminder that of course women do not just mop up fluffy stuff and should not be patronised on that presumption!

Watch the video. The car the pulled up had armed police.

Well done to that lady that ran forward with her taser!!

Someone's daughter making people proud.

You know the police drove there fast when the car arrives smoking!

Overshadowed on this thread? I only mentioned it because OP suggested we should all now stop bashing the police. It's madness to think it can only ever be police "yay!" or police "boo!".

We should be able to celebrate bravery and heroism without it meaning we have to accept endemic corruption, racism, and misogyny, and a systemic failure to spot perpetrators of VAWG in its own ranks, or even ignore opportunities for improvement.