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Police Taser 7500 London police carry them

107 replies

justasking111 · 01/05/2024 17:09

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?

OP posts:
TheCoffeeNebula · 02/05/2024 14:03

Too late to edit 🙄

Police do, I'm pretty sure, have access to transportation. What they don't have access to is teleportation.

I don't know if that was an erroneous autocorrection, or whether I've been watching too much Star Trek where their teleporters are called transporters 😅

justasking111 · 02/05/2024 14:14

If someone goes crazy with a machete, knife, out of the blue people will get hurt before anyone can successfully intervene.

If walking down a street you're knifed for you handbag, jewellery, wallet, watch the perpetrator will be gone long before the police can arrive.

It's a game of chance

OP posts:
MrsTerryPratchett · 02/05/2024 14:32

Walkingwithdinosaurs · 01/05/2024 19:17

I am in Northern Ireland and I honestly find it bizarre that 95% of countries including my own carry actual guns… weapons but not there rest of the UK.

Seeing so many attacks/stabbing etc I think they should carry weapons too. It makes no sense to me why the police force are in constant threat but with very little to hand to defend themselves and the community.

Social workers, shelter workers, nurses, MH professionals all in constant threat. Last I checked several years ago nurses and SWs were more likely to be attacked than police officers. Should they carry guns and tasers?

Nurses, and police officers, can call armed response. That's a good balance for me.

OhHelloMiss · 02/05/2024 14:59

mossylog · 02/05/2024 09:20

@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

You are speaking as if it's truth....'should have' 'shouldn't'

It's just your opinion

mossylog · 02/05/2024 15:08

OhHelloMiss · 02/05/2024 14:59

You are speaking as if it's truth....'should have' 'shouldn't'

It's just your opinion

The OP asked that question, "Should more police carry", and I answered that question and gave plenty of reasons in my replies (scroll back and see). It's my opinion, yes, but it's not "just" my opinion. I'm sure if your child put their hand on the stove and you said "you shouldn't do that", you wouldn't think it was "just your opinion". We make claims about what people should and shouldn't do all the time and for good reason.

Rubyupbeat · 02/05/2024 15:15

He was tasered and there were armed police present

SharpAzurePanda · 03/05/2024 10:19

mossylog · 02/05/2024 11:49

You're just getting even sillier now. How would the police have gunned down the guy with the sword before he killed someone, when trying to kill someone is how you know someone has a sword? The killer drove his van into someone then started his rampage. We probably shouldn't shoot all van drivers just in case.

Also, there are about 790,000 roads in the country — should there be a trained armed guard idling all day on on every corner? While you might want the UK to become a totalitarian police state, most British people do not want that.

Edited

All your posts are spot on @mossylog i grew up in Glasgow and they had the most success in tackling the knife crime there using a social health model rather than just ramping up the powers and weapons of the police. That simply doesn’t work. And if it won’t be your teen or young adult son tasered that’s fine but for many people it’s a real possibility considering their kids are from a demographic that are being strip searched unnecessarily.

The irony is police would have taken one look at this violent murderous man who I believe is of Spanish /Brazilian heritage and been less likely to use violent force against him because he’s not black.

Not saying they wouldn’t have stopped him (because they did) but I’m just saying statistically they are less likely to use force (tasers, batons etc ) against certain demographics.

We see this time and time again in America. White adult mass shooters are treated with kid gloves , while black kids running from the scene of a petty crime are gunned down. It’s awful what happened but all police carrying tazers wouldn’t have stopped this.

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