Have they opened the boot of the subaru yet?
Weight. So the police are expected to carry a radio, hand cuffs, baton, pepper spray, tazer and a widow maker, then, within milliseconds decide which politically correct weapon to pull from their arsenal based on an unpredictable assailant.
Sorry, call me a red neck but I say shoot the bastard.
no, if they merely carried around a brain and some humanity we'd be a lot closer to a reasonable solution
bring back beat cops, local bobbies; that'd help solve crime at source (and make the bastards walk instead of getting fat handing out speeding tickets for the IRD)
Maybe, but while your Government focuses its spending on low life's for vote catching, the Police are left high and dry. Given that recent memo in CHCH about "just shoot the bastards" you can really start to feel the discontent within the force.
Did you realise that WINZ give away the equivalent of the annual Police budget in just 4 weeks? There's the problem right there.
my government?
don't leap to conclusions, i didn't give them my vote
as for police moral; that's no excuse to allow them to kill people for traffic and property offences
The Napier cops was a different scenario. They attended a gathering of people (read: disorderly behaviour...) The axe man appears and they have no weapons... If they had firearms, my bet is they would have shot him too... but in the Napier case, at least his mates were there to take the axe off him, unlike the CHCH daisy pusher...
TUI.... TUI.... Like it happens every day or something? WTF?????????? Blame the cops for the car chase that ends in a crash, blame the cop for the drug taker who tries to smash the cops head open with a hammer...
The solution was reasonable... he wanted to go home to his family in one piece. You clearly don't want this to occur. Can you explain???
Drugged out madman intent on stoving in an innocent cops head verses a cop out doing his job....
"Did you realise that WINZ give away the equivalent of the annual Police budget in just 4 weeks? There's the problem right there."
that's a fallacious argument: a red herring AND a Cause/Effect fallacy in fact
start another thread if you want to complain about dole bludgers
There is a grey blur, and a green blur. I try to stay on the grey one. - Joey Dunlop
The distinction between Monaco and Monte Carlo is a pedantic one. Monaco is certainly a sovereign state with a distinct and independant sociopolitcal policy. It may be argued that their economic destiny is controlled by others, but the same criticism would apply to almost all the Pacific nations (including ours).
One might add most of the homonymic gentleman's Northern socialist democracies to the list of places that arguably "have it right".
Apropos of the original question, a point touched on by the excremental gentleman deserves wider voice.
I am old enough to remember when we had an unarmed police force (except in special circumstances). Now, the police are routinely armed. This has occurred without any mandate from the public (or , indeed, from parliament).
Whilst I am as keen as the next man to eliminate parasites, and certainly would have no hesitation in shooting someone who came at me with a hammer, the change to an armed force does engender two negative consequences.
One is that the gun becomes the method of first choice rather than the last. And, by corollary of something Mr Scumdog said, if a cop is to use a gun, he needs both hands for it. Which means that as soon as he considers even the possibility of shooting, means of less lethal force become impractical.
The other is that , by slow degree, the gun becomes a means of the police asserting authority, rather than a means of defence. ("You'll do as I tell you, I've got a gun"). The law at present gives very little special exemption to a police officer in the matter of shooting people. He may not shoot people to make his job easier, or to effect an arrest. Only to protect himself or others. Yet little by little (and I think i see the first signs of it in some of the comments here), the case will alter.
And, if the criminal element come to realise that the first response of the police is likely to be lethal force, is it not logical that they will also arm themselves and "get in first"
If the arming of the police force be justified (as it usually is) on the basis that "nowdays we have more criminals, and they more violent", then the counter of that argument has also been expressed here: that if the police require to be armed because of the greater violence of society, then so too do the public. There is nothing new in this . I remember as a boy that all bank mangers kept (by law) a loaded revolver in their desk drawer.
The logical case for allowing the public to carry firearms if the police do is incontestable IMHO. But it is not the society I would wish for this country. The homonymic gentleman is correct. America is not the pattern we should model ourselves on.
Originally Posted by skidmark
Originally Posted by Phil Vincent
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Bookmarks