Monday 8 August 2011

Tottenham

The first thing to say about this situation of course is that the rioting has nothing to do with the shooting. If some incident can get enough people onto the streets, then the 'entitled' will use that as cover for theft and 'entertainment'. It isn't that they don't fear the police, they don't fear the judicial system. Being caught means that you might have to put one of the laptops you stole on ebay to pay the fine (with a little left over naturally). Then we come back to the chance of being caught. Not high, not when you consider the ineptitude of those running the police.

The amount of looting and destruction by fire was more due to the late response of police in numbers (apparently) than the volume of the mob. Whenever senior officers are forced into public view they do seem to have been promoted on the principle that no one brighter than the man (woman) above should be elevated. This is even more evident when they talk about incidents. Curiously the shooting on Thursday of Mark Duggan has had scant space in the papers, no detail available. That is the first alarm bell ringing; the police love to talk about shooting people when they get it right. Then there are the strange press releases, prone to 'amendment'. In one of the first reports I heard on the shooting it was said that 'police don't yet know the order of shooting, just that one of their officers was shot and they returned fire'. Sounds like an order of shooting to me. Then, later we learn that the officer's injury could have been more serious if the bullet hadn't hit his radio. But still no word about the gun Duggan was carrying, why he was targeted for armed arrest whilst in a cab nor how many shots he fired. Now we understand police have, at last, found a gun that was 'not a police weapon'. What curious terminology and why mention this on Sunday, when the shooting occurred on Thursday? When the police don't mention stuff like this, they are trying to get their story straight. OK so we have moved on from the days of Ian Blair and smear campaigns against those wrongly shot, but still, why admit that you made a mistake?

Again, if this does turn out to be a mistake on the part of armed officers, it will likely be down to the planning and tactics, rather than the actual quality of the individual armed officer (though there is room to be cautious about police quality full stop). Did we have another situation where officers were sent out, wound up to arrest someone likely to be carrying and not afraid to use a gun? Did they encircle the cab, thus increasing the likelihood of shooting each other? Why this perpetual love of the dramatic arrest in the street (in a cab!) at gunpoint, rather than catching someone alone and away from other people?

I am no friend of the criminal and would rather see them shot than police officers, so I have no problem if the police open fire first. When they know they are in danger and also when their training and tactics have given every opportunity for them to stay safe, the public to be reassured of their safety and the criminal the chance to surrender peacefully, then they should move in. But all of us are put in great danger by the gung-ho and militaristic mentality of armed police officers. They are deployed too readily, to unproven 'armed incidents' and always assume a guns pointed attitude. I'm sure in their defence the police would say that in a country where guns are banned, only bad people would be carrying them. Which doesn't explain the reckless endangerment of a man's life, when he has guns pointed at him because a member of the public has said he has a gun, which is completely unverified and it turns out to be a child's toy. Or the actual killing of a man with a chair leg in a bag. In the US where in many places the carrying of a gun is legal, officers trained the British way would approach everyone with their guns drawn. But they don't because a) they don't know there's a danger until they know there is a danger and b) because they know how easily accidents happen.

It would be most useful if the training of armed police in the UK became more professional and oriented towards protecting the public rather than shooting people and if the police generally understood that mistakes do happen and it is how you respond and learn from experience that matters and on which they will be judged. Currently, cover up and lie is their first option (remember of course, that the current crop of senior police are from the era of Tony Blair, so are merely copying the style of government they have been brought up under). Of similar utility would be an Independent Police Complaints Commission that actually investigated and pointed out faults and options for improvement. Instead we have a supine body that seeks to minimise public knowledge of police ineptitude. They are lucky that we no longer have investigative reporters in this country (well, non celebrity obsessed ones anyway).

No comments:

Post a Comment