Police Taser 7500 London police carry them

[justasking111]

The attack yesterday in which a 14 year old boy died and two officers were badly hurt did not carry tasers. I thought all police carried them these days.

7500 out of 34000 London officers carry them. Should more police carry them?

Arming police will absolutely not reduce violent crime.

If it did, why is there huge amounts of violent crime in countries with armed police? Or doesn't act as a deterrent. It makes things worse!

If it did, why is there huge amounts of violent crime in countries with armed police?

Countries with armed police are just about every country other than the UK. Some will have high crime rates, others low ones (for instance many European countries).

Tasers aren't safe. More tasers will mean more people (including innocent people) having intense pain inflicted on them, with more deaths (from heart attack, striking head on falling etc.). They're preferable to firearms, but we shouldn't encourage their proliferation.

As I said earlier, it’s about fighting fire with fire. It’s no longer adequate to send Police out on the streets with a baton and PAVA spray.

What would have happened in this situation with the guy with the sword if a taser had not been used then??

He'd have been shot perhaps

Tasers (and indeed other weapons) can be reasonable to deploy in extraordinary circumstances, such as against spree killers. But beat cops shouldn't be carrying them on routine police business.

Compare with the London bridge spree killer who had two long knives strapped to his arms and was stopped by pedestrians wielding objects they found nearby: a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk. The cops that shot him dead on the scene did so when the man was already caught (because he had a fake suicide vest).

No they should not. All arming the police does, is mean that there will be more deaths of innocent people, and criminals will up the ante. We only have to look at the US. I don't want the police armed any more than absolutely necessary.

By making sure all police have weapons on them, this will only help increase the violent crime rate.

There'll be fewer police perhaps, because some will refuse to be armed, some won't pass the necessary psych tests, some won't pass the training, and (as is the case of armed police now) if they shoot the gun, they're off for a lengthy period of time.

Why would you want this???

More people with weapons means MORE PEOPLE HURT AND DEAD.

Aren’t most police armed?
Countries who don’t arm police
Bhutan, Botswana, China, Cook Islands, Fiji, Iceland, Ireland, Kiribati, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Norway, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, the United Kingdom (except for Northern Ireland), the U.S. Virgin Islands and Vanuatu.

and you don’t think uk police should even have tasers………

Batons can kill too

I think knee jerk reactions to terrible events are always a poor idea. The police are not particularly trustworthy so I wouldn't want to indiscriminately arm them further.... maybe they need to carry tranquilliser darts!

Tranquiliser darts need to stay in to work. No use when the target can just reach down and pull it out.

oh please. Be realistic; what per centage of 13 year olds are tasered from the whole set of people tasered?

one could argue that those who have a medical condition that may result in death from being tasered are fucking stupid if they commit crimes knowing the potential for tasering

Comments like this make me laugh.

So, what wasn't trustworthy about their response to this murdering spree?

Grow up.

So, what should the Police have used to subdue a murdering lunatic armed with a sword, who had already killed a child, just about chopped a hand of an officer and the arm off another one?

Perhaps those bad wittle officers should have just spoken in a loud voice, not too loud obviously, as it might have upset the poor little murdering lunatic. Or maybe those officers could have just stood in line and let the murdering lunatic kill them, one by one, until he got tired and had to sit down.

So, Mossy. Please answer my question?

I'm sure we would all like to hear your answer.

I think you are deliberately misunderstanding me. I didn't say their response to this particular incident was poor or untrustworthy but let's face it they haven't had the greatest press in the last few years. I don't think arming police indiscriminately will help that. Only 2 days ago a MET policeman was found guilty of the rape of a child, 5 years before that he had been suspected of a different rape but not charged. You want him to have had a tazer!?

I would rather my 13 year old was tasered than seriously injured or kill someone or be killed or seriously injured themselves.

There are very tight restrictions on using tasers anyway & even more so on children.

I’m agnostic about arming the police generally but aghast at some of the comments here. Two officers have been injured and others bravely stopped a man wielding a sword with only tasers, they could have waited for a firearms unit but chose to protect the public. How is it appropriate to make comments about how untrustworthy the police are? We need people to do this difficult job and we need their safety to be taken seriously that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone should be armed but we shouldn’t just say they shouldn’t have tasers because they can’t be trusted.

Having armed police won't stop your child getting hurt if somebody goes on a rampage

I'd m in fact, I'd go as far as to say your child be at more risk from the police than a criminal if they were all armed

There's 75k police officers in London, what percentage are rapists, trigger happy do you suppose? Even if it's 10% that's 67k that aren't.

@Hereyoume I answered this in my follow up post above. Tasers are appropriate to use against spree killers, but the OP's question was whether more police should have them and the answer is no.

@VestibuleVirgin Take a moment to think about:

1. Not every person knows they have a heart condition
2. Not every person subjected to police tasering is guilty of a crime
3. A taser can miss and hit the wrong person
4. A person can die from tasering when they don't have a pre-existing condition-- for one thing, they can just hit their head when thrashing on the ground

@mossylog
it was in response to a 13yr old being tasered.
And I ask the same question about another of your points -

• how many 'wrong people' have been tasered?
• how many have died from hitting their head on the ground?