Independent Police Complaints Commission

I have made comment previously about IPCC reports and some of the shocking things police do and that are above criticism by the IPCC. I was thinking the other day though in the context of government departments having a careless attitude to their duty to the public, that I perhaps hadn't highlighted this failing by the IPCC.

In one report I cited, a police officer discharged a high velocity round inside a house and it was lucky that the walls were brick otherwise it could have entered the next house. The IPCC couldn't bring itself to criticise overall strategy or notice the way police deploy weapons.

On the whole, I think there is a tendency to look down on US law enforcement as less civilised than what we have here, not least because US police officers are routinely armed. But quite a few officers in the UK are armed too and there is an important difference to consider. In the US, officers carry a side arm and often have a shotgun in their vehicle. These are low velocity weapons deemed appropriate, where lethal force is necessary, to the urban environment. Basically the bullets carry less energy and won't go through walls etc.

In Britain however, this wholly sensible notion is frequently ignored as our armed police carry higher velocity MP5 carbines. These military grade weapons are singularly inappropriate for the urban environment. They are compact enough to be used, but the energy of rounds discharged is too high. Think about the dramatic 'armed arrests' you see on the TV. A man is dragged out of a car and forced to lie on the ground while officers point their MP5's at him, tucked tight into their shoulder and cheek. Lord alone knows where a high velocity round penetrating right through the body and striking the pavement would end up, should they decide to open fire.

The IPCC, senior officers and firearms strategists  in the police seem to have no view, opinion or criticism of these practices. The MP5 is able to fire a round twice to four times the distance a pistol could achieve. It is interesting to note the persistent suggestion that the police receive training from the SAS and have also selected one of it's favourite weapons. Yet the SAS are not trained themselves for police actions. They are in fact trained to use extreme violence to achieve their result. Which is exactly what you want on a battlefield, though not necessarily in Bromley. We know this to be the case because of their actions in the Falklands and also in the shooting of IRA terrorists in Gibraltar. One in particular was pursued and falling to the ground was shot at close range repeatedly. The SAS train to kill and to make sure the target is definitely dead. And again, this was exactly the technique used on the completely innocent Jean Charles de Menezes.

That our senior police officers are incompetent is becoming daily more apparent (and not just because of their over-riding social engineering bias) and we let them train and equip themselves to military levels. Add to that the criminally lax oversight by the IPCC and you have a dangerous mix.