Arming the police by stealth
'Our police are wonderful' has long been a partly jocular, Partly complacent British attitude. Like many generalisations, it had more than a grain of truth. It was of course a Class attitude: the working classes here as in every country have always hated the police, and the whole apparatus of the law, which two things they confused, as in the use of the colloquial expression 'police court' for the magistrates Court But even towards the working classes the British Police were much less oppressive than the police in any Other European country. And for the upper and middle classes the police were indeed wonderful. In part, this was a Consequence of England's freedom from bureaucracy. If Other countries, even democracies such as France, were in a sense 'police states', it was because the police it was who administered the whole form-filling, identity-card-carrying
sYstem, , But the best reason of all for admiring the British police, Was always argued, was that they were as little violent and brutal as a police force could be. This was epitomised by the fact that they did not carry guns. It is still said: the British Police are unarmed. It is still said, but but it is simply not
We do now have an armed police force, and the worst !lung about it is that the police have, though not of course trom malice aforethought, been armed by stealth. There is lio doubt that most policemen regret the change that has then place. No one welcomes the developments which kiave impelled the change: the increase in armed crime, the '°ssoming of terrorism which has affected London twice over, through the IRA's campaign of anti-British terror and as a side-show to the struggles in the Middle East. But whatever the cause, the result is lamentable: a sizeable body of armed police guarding numerous embassies and, with assassination in the air, following many of our leading Politicians. It is difficult to discover how many policemen care on any day carrying arms in London or elsewhere in the 11°tiliqrY (and the police forces have plausible reasons for
-" giving figures), but it is clear that the proportion must now
be a significant one, especially in the Metropolitan Police area.
The truly alarming development is that once the psychological barrier is broken and the police accept that they may carry guns, they tend , to do so more and more frequently, and not only to carry them but to use them. This is not a vague impression: it should not go unrecorded that within the last four months three men have been shot dead by the police in England. The police may think themselves lucky that public opinion is still on their side and that to date coroners' courts have all but applauded these fatal shootings. This approbation may not survive the insensitivity of such policemen as the Deputy Chief Constable of Essex who said after his officers had killed a man, 'It is no good simply disabling somebody so that they might still be able to harm others. We believe that a policy to wing or lame can only lead to escalation in the use of firearms by the police.' When that confused and semi-literate prose, is sorted out, it would appear to mean that there has been a policy decision that when in doubt the police will shoot to kill. It is a sorry day for England., It is easy to criticise the police, easier than suggesting a way out of their impasse. Of course the police, especially the Metropolitan Police, are under extreme pressure. They will be blamed if terrorists get away, literally, with murder, they will be blamed when there are shoot-outs between obscure Arab factions, they will be blamed when armed gangsters rob supermarkets and banks; and they will be blamed when deranged men are shot dead by police officers. We should pause before censuring them in terms too round. Yet, when all is said and done, it does seem to be the case that the police as a body have been coarsened; it may even be, as Mr Patrick Marnham has suggested, that violent television programmes have as insidious an influence on the police as on the criminal classes. That may be a question for the police themselves. The continued and increasing use by them of lethal weapons is a question for the public, and Parliament.
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