‘World’s Worst Police Shootouts’ legalised murder?
The Nurse is gobsmacked by US policemen’s gung ho shootings.
The telly in the UK was shite over Christmas. The Nurse found herself hunkered down in front of ‘World’s Worst Police Shootouts’ one freezing night for the want of anything better to watch.
Expecting light entertainment, The Nuse was shocked rigid by the gratuitous legalised murderfest that ensued. And she ain’t easily shocked.
Five or six cases were shown, each of which ended in the ‘perp’ being shot, usually to death.
In one video a middle aged lady ran out of her house on a suburban street, obviously in some kind of distress, waving a short kitchen knife. The two attending cops, both in a right flap, fannied around for a few minutes then, when she ran towards one of them, panicked and shot her.
All the other cases featured followed much the same pattern.
The Nurse has always had the greatest respect for the UK’s police. If she got a bit pissed (or pissed off) and ran out of her house in her nightie waving a little knife, she could do so in the certain knowledge that she wouldn’t be shot for it.
Instead her local police would talk to her and get her to drop the knife. Or, at worst, rugby tackle her to the ground. Either way, they’d calm things down. Then they’d make sure she got some help.
The Nurse wonders where you’d rather live. In a country whose police are legally authorised to shoot rather than protect you? Or in one where the police manage to keep control with truncheons, silly hats and empathy?
She knows which she’d choose, despite the shite Christmas telly.
Simon from Rugby Training wrote,
Times like these I am happy to live in a country where our police don’t even carry guns…I know it’s the extreme opposite, but still…you can’t do too much damage with pepper spray right?
Link | July 27th, 2009 at 12:47 am
speed trap wrote,
Police officers are human beings and just as fallabile as the rest of us. Here in the US cops carry guns, sometimes several of them. Yet some people will fight and run instead of just taking a traffic ticket. No wonder some get shot.
Link | September 3rd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Jeremy from OC Mace wrote,
Well, sometimes police do use excessive force but after being faced with real dangerous criminals it’s hard to know whether the next case is a real danger or not. I guess in the reality of streets, it’s hard to always reason correctly how dangerous an attacker really is. This is why police should always try to use non-lethal weapons first whenever is possible.
Link | October 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Vik from MSPB Attorney wrote,
I totally agree with you. Some police really use excessive force. But police are humans too and they need to defend themselves.
Link | April 3rd, 2010 at 5:28 am
Herbert Lex Shallcross III wrote,
I’m showing my age, but there was a time when you’d have to go to France to find a picture of a murder victim in a newspaper. In the US and the UK it wasn’t considered seemly, and whatever the law might have allowed, it just wasn’t done. It doesn’t warm my heart to see we’ve moved beyond such delicate sentiment.
England originally didn’t arm it’s police officers because they remembered several times when the army had been used to deal with civil disturbances, resulting in weavers and bakers being mowed down. Slightly better than when machine guns were used in India. Sadder but wiser, I guess. Most U.K. officers aren”t armed, but there are armed response vehicles, similar to American SWAT units available.
Interestingly, if you look at the rules for using deadly force in the U.S. and the U.K., the rules themselves are very similar. Police are only authorized to use deadly force in the event of an imminent threat to life. There was a time when American officers in most jurisdictions could use deadly force to prevent an arrest from being defeated, but those rules have been swept away.
As far as I can figure, about two and a half people are killed per year by police in the U.K., but it’s not clear whether that includes Northern Ireland. Wikipedia has some embarrassing stories about officers “fannying about” and shooting people who didn’t pose an actual threat. These things happen. I’m not sure if it’s cultural, or exactly why it works, but I must admit that the U.K. does a pretty good job in that regard generally. I expect that if your police were dealing with as many armed suspects as ours you might not hold the kind of edge you have now. May it not come to that.
Apparently you guys see the same violent movies and TV shows we do, and you’ve got some guns, although we certainly have more. Guns generally need someone to pick them up and use them before they cause any problem. For some reason Americans seem to be statistically more likely to pick up a gun.
Personally, I think it’s because Americans are descended from people who didn’t want to put up with rigidly structured cultures, so they left.
Anyway, when somebody picks up a gun, obviously the best outcome is for them to put it back down without hurting anybody. Police usually manage to bring about that sort of conclusion, even in this country. I don’t believe that officers in the U.S. generally have any sort of “shoot first and ask questions later” mindset. I have known several police officers. I know one who was shot in the leg while disarming a suspect. I know another who was confronted by a disturbed man with a samurai sword and convinced him to come quietly without taking his gun from his holster. Most American police officers carry a weapon around day in and day out, but have never even unholstered it except on the firing range.
Link | July 16th, 2011 at 5:12 pm