Shocking suprise in Oxford today

[Kennyeth]

Originally Posted by Darcydog

Such a sight has totally the opposite effect on me. When you have monstrous people targeting young girls at a concert such that 22 people are killed and 60 injured - many with life changing injuries - then for me, having an armed police presence is a sensible, logical and welcome response.

I agree, even to having the armed forces on the streets.
It may not look very nice but I bet millions of us are feeling safer because they are there.
The "real" safety work though is going on behind these sights, intelligence services will be working around the clock "digging and routing out" the evil enemy.
As shocking as the events in Manchester were, am I alone in thinking I was not as shocked as I should be??
It seems that every couple of months there is some death and destruction that happens in some city in the world.
Do not get me wrong, I have shed real tears reading about what happened in Manchester to those children.
Are we getting immune to the shock?
Keep safe everyone.
Ken.

[MSS]

Armed police have been visibly present in London for some years.

Personally, I think the world we now live in makes their presence a necessity, to enhance public confidence in going about their lives and to deal with any threats that do get through intelligence operations.

As a Sikh with a proud military ancestry, I always find this photo an excellent example of what the Uk now is - well integrated with equal contribution by majority of the citizens in all walks of like. The exceptions are far and few.

Source http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/w...0236766426.jpg

[VVC-Geeza]

Originally Posted by neilbaker86

I have to ask the question what are they there for? It can only be to make the public 'feel' safer, although it has the opposite effect on me. As if someone were carrying a bomb about their person, the first the police officers would know about it is when it's gone off.

I have to agree with this.How would armed police/soldiers patrolling have prevented the Manchester tragedy?Almost impossible to stop these crazed individuals unless the intelligence is good enough.I too think it's more to do with being seen to try and reassure an anxious public.

[Arryhall]

Let's not discount other forms of attack though. Bombs are indeed problematic, but what of the soldier, Lee Rigby, attacked and killed. Armed response would have prevented that.
Crazy people are crazy and predicting what they will do is to get into the mind of a crazy! Best you can hope for is to be able to react best as possible when their crazy comes out.

CLF, maybe it is 40 virgins. I must be obsessed with the number 75 for some reason!

[Madderz]

I see this quite regularly in Meadowhall in Sheffield.

It's a sad sign of the times, but reassuring non the less

[Astraeus]

If terrorists and other types of criminals ( they are all criminals) carry and/or use weapons the Police woukd not need to carry weapons.

Unfortunately they do so armed Police get my support.

Agree they wouldn't stop some atrocities but they may stop some or prevent worse carnage. Think of the recent Westminster attack. Armed police brought that to as swift a conclusion as possible. Much, much worse may have happened if they had not.

It is a very difficult debate/problem with both sides of the armed/unarmed debate having valid reasons for their point of view.

Not an easy or 100% correct answer alas.

[Rooney]

Originally Posted by VVC-Geeza

I have to agree with this.How would armed police/soldiers patrolling have prevented the Manchester tragedy?Almost impossible to stop these crazed individuals unless the intelligence is good enough.I too think it's more to do with being seen to try and reassure an anxious public.

The Manchester tragedy happened because a coward exposed a loophole in event security that was so glaringly obvious the following day none of the so called experts picked up on it.

That loophole is this : think of every football match/concert/cinema you ever went to. At the start of the show someone checks you should be entering. As the show draws to a close every exit in the place is flung open and unguarded. Nobody would want to walk in after the show/match/movie had ended right? Wrong as it turns out. How we leave such events is going to have to be rethought and quickly before someone else walks into a football ground as 60,000 fans walk out.

Armed police wouldn't have stopped that tragedy unless they got super lucky and realised what he was going to do before he did it.

However.

The terrorist who stabbed the police officer outside the houses of parliament - the very seat of political power in England - would have been shot and killed the moment he pulled the knife and advanced towards a police officer in Belfast or anywhere in Northern Ireland for that matter.

In England, armed response officers took six minutes, six minutes that was tragically enough time for another coward to kill a police officer. Arguably that particular coward would have been shot before he even got out of the car had it happened here.

Northern Irish police had a different policy to drivers using vehicles in the way he used his on the bridge - their policy would have been to shoot him through the windscreen. The English police believed that to be too dangerous as it would leave the vehicle free to run out of control. Sadly for all involved they didn't revise that policy until the day after he mowed down all those poor civilians.

Armed police can't prevent every terrorist attack - nobody can, but until the terrorists agree to only carry a baton why on earth would anybody want their police to take a baton to a knife or gun fight?

There used to be a lot of good arguments for not arming the police - right now I can't think of a single valid one - especially when you can look at the warzone that northern ireland can be and see years of proof that arming ALL police officers does not increase the number of police involved shootings at all.

[Gate Keeper]

Originally Posted by Rooney

Fairly normal here - all our police are armed.

I've been based in Oxford, (Bicester, Witney and Kidlington come to that) for varying periods with work so I get why you'd be shocked at the sight of police with guns.

The first time they're needed you'll be glad they were there - semi-interesting stat, there have been fewer police firearms discharged in the whole of Northern Ireland (where all cops have guns) in the last five years that records are available than in England alone.



From an Oxford perspective maybe.

Northern Irish residents had soldiers and armed police and couldn't walk home from the pub without going through a checkpoint.

Similarly we have the same in Kenya, road blocks with vehicle searches and armed police etc, on patrol. One feels reassured in seeing them. About 6 - 12 months ago, the Kenyan government issued a "shoot to kill" terrorist policy and since then, the number of atrocities has dropped significantly, with the suspects and terrorist rings being rounded up and executed on the spot (evidenced in the media).

Could the same happen in the UK, if things got really bad?