Wednesday, November 23, 2005

COPS


Care of Police Survivors (otherwise known as COPS) is a UK registered charity dedicated to helping the families of police officers, who have lost their lives in the line of duty, rebuild their lives. It aims to ensure that survivors have all the help they need to cope with such a tragedy, and that they remain part of the police family.Care Of Police Survivors (COPS) would like to see every police officer in the UK wearing a COPS lapel pin, in remembrance of a fallen colleague.

Please visit COPS.

36 police officers have died in the line of duty in England, Scotland and Wales in the past 20 years - 11 shot, 10 stabbed and three beaten to death, while 12 were killed by vehicles.

PC Sharon Beshenivsky was the sixth woman out of 1,600 officers to die in Britain since the formation of the modern police service in 1829. The last female officer shot dead was PC Yvonne Fletcher, 25, outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. Women make up 21% of the 43 English and Welsh forces.

COPS

Police Memorial

Police Roll of Honour Trust

Police Officer Killed

Well as im sure you are all aware by now PC Sharon Beshenivsky was killed whislt attending a call to a personal attack alarm at a travel agents in Bradford. Her crewmate PC Teresa Milburn was shot and injured in the incident.

This is quite an alarming storey which has provoked some debate over the arming of police and the increase of armed incidents in many forces. Only the next day in my area there was an armed robbery where shots were discharged, but luckily no rounds hit any body.

This is on another point frightening as the weapons being used are live and not replica weapons and are loaded with live amunition. Also the seeming willingness for people to use the weapons against police and the public.

Also other weapons are being used, mainly knives and suspects seem to be only to willing to have a go at the police in an attempt to "get away".

What is this country turning to where the poeple who are there to protect you are coming under increasing threat from suspects which in all honesty we are not trained to deal with. Our numbers are so low backup is not always nearby (read upto 20 mins away on immediate), Our ARV's are to low in number and are streched out over the whole force, suspects no longer wait on a scene which is contained to think their way out, they just fight and shoot their way out before extra units can get there as they dont want to face armed police.

So what is the solution.

There are groups who dont want police to be armed because of the risk of innocent people being hurt or killed, they cite fatal shootings by police as the main reason why police shoud not be armed.

There are groups who feel that we should be armed by routine as if the criminals are willing to shoot should we not be able to protect the public and ourselves.

People say if we were to arm then we would become like the USA and armed crime would soar as more criminals would up the anti to compete with us.

I am more in favour of having more avaliable armed officers, not dedicated ARV but your standard PC who is firearms autherised, has acess to weapons and is trained in their use, who has passed the psycological testing, physical testing and firearms testing.

The same would apply to Taser, by giving us more options both lethal and non-lethal we could become more effective, this would instill more public trust as they would know we CAN deal with the more increasing violence, the criminals would know we can deal effectively with the incident and may think twice about carrying weapons, let alone using them.

Also we need proper deterants in the courts, if you carry a weapon then you will be punished properly, if you use a weapon then likewise.

No one wants armed police walking around with machine guns, but discrete arming may be the only way ahead.

JS

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Comments

Hi to anyone who reads this site.

Please leave me some comments so it seems i am not writing this for only me to read.

Positive or negative appreciated as it gets quite lonely over here!.

JS

CPS

Anyone who works in policing knows the perils of the CPS. I have stated before how much of a nightmare they can be in trying to get an offender charged.

So i found this over on another blog (thanks to DC)

Short Update

Well, I had one week of nights following my driving course where to be honest not a lot happened apart from one night where I got into a bit of a fight and also went to sort out a rave with the rest of the shift.

My scrap wasn't too bad to be honest but I radioed for Urgent Assistance basically because I had a crew of Specials with me and a lot of unhappy people who were keen for this person not to be arrested. Luckily its was kept relatively controlled until my backup arrived and the group of people made off when they saw all the other crews attending.

Then we had a rave to shut down in the early hours which was not fun as dealing with 200+ drugged up people who were not keen on us shutting down the rave. With about 15 officers. Needless to say we gave them 4 hours to go or we come back mob handed as we needed a lot of officers to deal with this by force, but they did shut up shop and moved off. Ill have to give more details another time.

My main grip is my Assistance shout, one crew cannot be trusted to the extent that you hope its not this officer attending when they are the only backup. Absolutely shocking the fact that this person is allowed to operate the way they do, constantly critical of other officers even to the point to slagging the driving off while actually on a blue light run. At long last its not just me this person keeps on criticizing and they engineer a situation where they think they are untouchable, but 2 can play that game.....

Sorry for the short or cryptic post but i will expand in other posts what i am actually getting at!