Officers handing in tasers and firearms tickets

There is absolutely zero chance I'd be a firearms officer, knowing that if I ever used it I'd likely get thrown under the bus and dragged through courts for years while people with no experience of policing/combat try to destroy my career/life.
Look what happened at Mcr Airport, and that was just a kick/stomp, but could have justifiably been a bullet - you can imagine the response that would have got.
 
Never heard this before. Any examples?
This made headlines around the world and increased our police forces reputation around the globe

as the guy says towards the end, that guy wouldn't have survived in america.

I checked the "The Return of the Great GD Sticky" before posting so sue me, it only mentions swearing and no one gets harmed in the above video so I assume its okay.

Oh its age restricted when embedded anyway so :)



UK around the globe now is known for what? phone snatching? regular knife crime? low prison sentences that aren't a deterrent, prisons so full dangerous criminals are released into the public to make way for housewife's that posted a naughty comment on facebook
I can think of other videos that show our cops in an extremely negative light that went viral, but then the thread would just descend into a police bashing thread and be closed
 
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I'm not a Police officer, but I am a firearms user for over 30 years (military & civilian) and to my mind "Tasers" have lost the original ethos/intent behind their use and now are seemed to be considered as "just another tool" like ASP/Baton, CS etc by your average Officer rather than being thought of (in training and deployment) as a "Less Lethal" weapon - not "non-lethal" but "Less like likely to kill compared to a firearm" - remembering that the original intent behind their deployment was that their use was to be considered just a seriously as a firearm deployment i.e. shooting a criminal with a taser is treated like shooting them with a gun, and as such a ton of training went into picking the right people to be issued with them.

However, decades later they now seem to be issued extremely widely, deployed for virtually any reason (not as originally intended) and the training standards shown by end users seems to be utter abysmal at times. The video I constantly refer back to is a fully "trained" (not in my universe she isn't) PC who fired her taser at under 2m without even aiming the taser first, directly into the face of an unarmed elderly man (63) who was backing away from her at the time he was shot, all whilst she did a little hop/jump as she fired - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...tol-police-taser-their-own-race-advisor-video - under the original intent of Taser deployment, this Officer had decided that she would have made the same decision if she was using a firearm, and shot this old man in the face!

Imagine my surprise when the Police later investigated themselves and she was cleared of all charges - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ed-bristol-man-who-looked-familiar-court-told

For that reason alone I believe Taser training in the UK is sub-standard, and why I would prefer to see all tasers stripped from non-firearms trained officers in the immediate term, and then slowly redeployed back once the end user is properly trained in their deployment (like its a firearm), not so much in the physical act of firing but the mental challenge of "shoot/don't shoot" which is utter dog-crap at the moment.

Now should any serving Officers get the hump with my opinion just a timely reminder that its their lax use of these less lethal (but still potentially lethal) weapons that has caused this - if they treated them with the respect they should be due in the first place (like a firearm) then I wouldn't be saying that they should have them taken away for re-training - its your fault, not mine!
 
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Our law enforcement service is too soft, too full of weak, namby pampy leaders, hiring weak namby pamby officers thinking they're there to play mediator/social worker, constantly capitulating to ethnic groups because they might get called a hurty word if they actually uphold the law with them
I think you’re referring to a wider political and cultural issue in the west, not ‘mamby pamby’ officers, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

They need political backing. Mess about? Find out. Rather than ruining the lives of officers doing their jobs under increasingly difficult circumstances.

In recent years we’ve seen politicians publicly stand up for the ‘salt of the earth, lit up the room, shining beacon of light in our lives’ thugs over the officers having to deal with it on the daily.

My politics are hardly right leaning but when it comes to crime, they should have our backing… and that doesn’t mean not coming down hard on the bad eggs and holding them to the highest standard.
 
Living in a different country for a while has opened my eyes as to how miserable the UK really is. I can't remember the last time something I care about got better there.

There was a time I was "proud" whatever that means, now I'd gladly never go back.
 
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There is absolutely zero chance I'd be a firearms officer, knowing that if I ever used it I'd likely get thrown under the bus and dragged through courts for years while people with no experience of policing/combat try to destroy my career/life.
Look what happened at Mcr Airport, and that was just a kick/stomp, but could have justifiably been a bullet - you can imagine the response that would have got.

just a kick/stomp?
hope you dont work anywhere near law enforcement!

force was definitely required to being the civilians under control but the kicks (to the head, iirc) after the person is down were beyond reasonable force. tough situation for sure but one that police have to handle appropriately.
 
Living in a different country for a while has opened my eyes as to how miserable the UK really is. I can't remember the last time something I care about got better there.

There was a time I was "proud" whatever that means, now I'd gladly never go back.

Yup this country is deteriorating.

Has been for about 20 years.
 
Living in a different country for a while has opened my eyes as to how miserable the UK really is. I can't remember the last time something I care about got better there.

There was a time I was "proud" whatever that means, now I'd gladly never go back.
Where do you live now, out of curiosity?
 
It's getting harder to be proud of one's country when everything about it is getting dismantled in slow motion right in front of our eyes.
And when some want to go back to the days when police corruption and beatings were "normal" and "deserved", not to mention the "falling down the stairs" and confessions from people held without access to a lawyer...

I'd much rather be with UK police today than 40 years ago when some people seem to think it was all rainbows and butterflies because things weren't caught on camera so it was automatically "the police are right" and "they've got the right guy, look at him his eyes are too close together and he speaks funny".

Oddly enough I support the police use of force, but I also fully expect the police to act professionally and not start beating the hell out of people because they've lost their temper. I tend to believe that if you want a job where you are acting with the authority of the state to use force that is not permitted to the normal citizen, you should also be held accountable for that use of force and expected to act professionally when exercising that ability, if you are unable to do so then you've probably got no place in the job and certainly not in any of the specialist arms where you might be given access to things like guns.
 
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Couldn't agree more, although my post was more about the state of our country than being solely about the state of our police.
I'd much rather be with UK police today than 40 years ago when some people seem to think it was all rainbows and butterflies
Tongue in cheek obviously..

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That'll put the fear of god into the crims won't it?
 
I'm not a Police officer, but I am a firearms user for over 30 years (military & civilian) and to my mind "Tasers" have lost the original ethos/intent behind their use and now are seemed to be considered as "just another tool" like ASP/Baton, CS etc by your average Officer rather than being thought of (in training and deployment) as a "Less Lethal" weapon - not "non-lethal" but "Less like likely to kill compared to a firearm"

Are you suggesting that an ASP/baton is any more "less lethal" than a taser if misused? :confused:

If you don't want to be held accountable for firearms, then please hand them in.

Agreed.

Unfortunately "being held accountable" these days consists of trial by (carefully edited) social media before the full facts of the case are known, followed by being judged on 20/20 hindsight, with a decision influenced by political and PR reasons.

"After several hours of analysis, our firearms technician was able to establish that the firing pin of the suspect's weapon was 13 microns too short, and would not have been able to successfully fire - therefore there was no reason for the officer to discharge their weapon"

Obviously a ridiculous and facetious example, but these officers are making split second decisions in the heat of a potential life & death situation, not with the time to carefully deliberate in a calm and low pressure environment.
 
Are you suggesting that an ASP/baton is any more "less lethal" than a taser if misused? :confused:

No. My point is about mis-deployment rather than mis-use i.e. if used correctly an ASP/Baton is "non-lethal" whereas even if it is used 100% perfectly correctly, a Taser is still only classed as "less lethal", and therefore a taser is not "non-lethal" in anyway. That is the massive difference and why a taser deployment was original supposed to be treated just like a firearms deployment.

My complaint is the poor quality training leads to poor quality users which leads to poor deployments, so until its replaced by good quality training the chain of events will always lead to poor deployments of a less lethal weapon.
 
No. My point is about mis-deployment rather than mis-use i.e. if used correctly an ASP/Baton is "non-lethal" whereas even if it is used 100% perfectly correctly, a Taser is still only classed as "less lethal", and therefore a taser is not "non-lethal" in anyway. That is the massive difference and why a taser deployment was original supposed to be treated just like a firearms deployment.

My complaint is the poor quality training leads to poor quality users which leads to poor deployments, so until its replaced by good quality training the chain of events will always lead to poor deployments of a less lethal weapon.


Yea but it's a catch 23 situation.

A lot of people looking at policing at the moment will go look elsewhere for employment, so you are never going to get the cream of the crop, so you are then trying to train people who.... Are not the best in the first place?

I'm generalising of course, but that train driver example as above is exactly my point.
 
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