What if police officers were like bobbies?

[Rakista]

Would you spend extra money like the British to have unarmed police walking around your town?

[ydoaPs]

yes; i could rob people and use the money to pay for it.

[Rakista]

Lol, good luck bobbies break up pub fights and unless you want to be hunted down like a dog for robbing a policeman who has 20-40 bucks with a gun it would not work so well for you methinks.

 

My friend who is a long time East Londoner one night got a brilliant idea and started a fire in the middle of the street with a petrol can and his ex-gf's things. The CCTV camera pry tipped off the police and when they came he ran. This is a guy who has hiked most of the India/Nepal mountains and had legs the size of tree trunks. The bobby in his goofy hat chased him for 3 miles and cornered him tackled him and held him in some crazy kung-fu grip for 10 minutes while the paddy wagon came.

 

Too many fat policeman but you don't see many fat bobbies walking around all the time as they do.

[AzurePhoenix]

Not hostile, just curious....

 

what are they expected to do when they're called to a supposedly low-danger scene only to find drunken / stoned nutcase with an automatic machine gun waiting in his darkened house (who placed the call the the sole intention of luring the cops)?

 

And.... Would I be right to assume that there is a special armed division that gets sent out to deal with calls in which they know the enemy is carrying or could be carrying a weapon?

[ydoaPs]

Not hostile' date=' just curious....

 

what are they expected to do when they're called to a supposedly low-danger scene only to find drunken / stoned nutcase with an automatic machine gun waiting in his darkened house (who placed the call the the sole intention of luring the cops)?[/quote']

die?

[AzurePhoenix]

That's basically their only option. I wonder if nuts like that inhabit the Grand Old Empire?

[atinymonkey]

Not hostile' date=' just curious....

 

what are they expected to do when they're called to a supposedly low-danger scene only to find drunken / stoned nutcase with an automatic machine gun waiting in his darkened house (who placed the call the the sole intention of luring the cops)?[/quote']

Well, that sort of situation doesn't happen much. But yes, as yourdadonapogos mentioned, they die. One of my friends fathers was killed in just that fashion, he received a report of a man sitting in a car for 3 hours and tapped on the window to ask if he was ok. Got shot point blank in the chest.

 

Carrying a gun would not have prevented it.

 

And.... Would I be right to assume that there is a special armed division that gets sent out to deal with calls in which they know the enemy is carrying or could be carrying a weapon?

Yup. They train 1 in 4 Policemen in armed response, and they carry the equipment in the squad cars (vest, handgun, MP5 and sometimes a sniper rifle if the policeman is skilled). When the call involves high risk, dispatch send the armed response units rather than the usual units. They behave like US armed police once they arrive, rather than 'swat'.

[the tree]

what are they expected to do when they're called to a supposedly low-danger scene only to find drunken / stoned nutcase with an automatic machine gun waiting in his darkened house (who placed the call the the sole intention of luring the cops)?

Not only do the police not have guns, niether do most people. Although there are some guns in Britan, they tend to be assosiated organised crime rather than nutcases. Like Atinymonkey mentioned, the police being armed doesn't really help that much.

 

I'd say the vast majority of what the police do (dealing with drunks, controlling football riots, catching buglars, directing traffic) wouldn't be made any easier with firearms.

[atinymonkey]

I know a great policeman's bog that's on topic here:-

http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/

 

It's the musings of a middle England copper, who coincidentally is pro gun. It's a good insight into the bureaucracies of the English Police.

[AzurePhoenix]

One of my friends fathers was killed in just that fashion, he received a report of a man sitting in a car for 3 hours and tapped on the window to ask if he was ok. Got shot point blank in the chest.

I know what you mean. My dad got a call like the one I described, but since the caller was a known paranoid drunk (harmless up till this call), and it was just about the end of their shift, they let the morning squads take care of it. By the time they got there, they found the would be killer passed out in his lawnchair. Breaking down the door woke him up, he got a couple shots off into one cop's vest, then his head was blown off by the other. My only point is that had they not carried guns to this apparently non-violent situation, both woul've been killed (the next step in the guy's plan was to kill his neighbors from either side of his house, because he was convinced they were spies(they found his journal))

 

the police being armed doesn't really help that much.

I wish it could be like that here, but it's far too late to get the guns outa the people's hands. Just last night my dad's squad was called to a scene where a man was shot and killed over a lousy parking space at a Wal-Mart. Happens all the time.

[ydoaPs]

iirc, they have to worry about knives more than guns.