Will more guns save lives?

WHAT would have happened last Friday if PC Sharon Beshenivsky and her colleague PC Theresa Milburn had carried firearms? Could a tragedy have been avoided or would there have been a shoot-out in which members of the public could have been injured or killed. More importantly, could those guns have saved their lives?

What is acceptable in one sector of society can be deemed unacceptable by another and, within a democracy, it is appropriate that we should embrace such distinctions. Undoubtedly, the horrific crimes perpetrated against the two police officers in Bradford have served to bring both sides together to reignite the troubled debate about whether we should accept the routine arming of our police officers.

The position today is we still have an unarmed police service backed by a cadre of specialists who can be armed for contingencies. This present compromise is considered to be largely workable, but the plain truth is that it does not allow the recognisable, traditional beat bobby to retaliate if he is attacked by armed criminals, terrorists or the mentally unstable.

We have accepted and even welcomed armed police at our ports and airports and treat as commonplace the existence of mobile armed response units patrolling our streets. Guns appear sufficiently often enough in police hands for those who wish to use it as a weapon to demonstrate the apparent state repression within our country. In the long run, it is the social context in which they work which will always determine both the acceptability and effectiveness of the police. In the present climate of terrorism and the rise in gun culture, that context will inevitably give rise to calls for the police to be armed.

Reasonable force is meant to be the criteria by which the police response to violence should be judged: put forward as an objective test, it relies on 'the man on the Clapham omnibus', the man in the street, as its balance. The problem with this concept is that it is flawed. Violence does and will always work on an escalator principle: what more do I have to do to prevent you hurting me? An armed officer may respond to protect his own life or that of another. Does that include a man with a knife? Of course it does, if there is imminent danger to life. Does it mean that he can shoot dead a man holding a table leg wrapped in a plastic bag which is pointed at him? The reasonable man would most probably say no; but just place him in the position of the police officer called upon to make a split second decision which could save his own life or another's. It becomes a little more complicated for the 'reasonable man', doesn't it?

It will always be a subjective test based upon the facts as they occur. Yes, mistakes will be made that may cost lives and that cannot be anything other than regrettable, but it would be facile to isolate the police use of firearms in this respect. Every day patients are lost in the health service, people sometimes die as a result of negligence on our railway system and such events will always occur, no matter how many safeguards are put in place.

Every day, so much so that it has become commonplace, there are reported incidents of gun crime and, inconceivable ten years ago, there is now even a dedicated unit within the Metropolitan Police which has, as its sole remit, black on black gun crime, Operation Trident. We are told that in 2004-5 there were almost 11,000 gun crimes in Britain, which alarming statistic serves to place our problem in its correct perspective. How can we control this bitter proliferation of weapons and its companions, injury, death and misery?

There is a constant and enduring circle of excuses regarding crime within this country, many justified, like fleas with little fleas that bite them. The police blame the Crown Prosecution Service for being unwilling to take cases to court, who, in turn, blame the judiciary for being over lenient, who, in turn, blame the Lord Chancellor's sentencing guidelines and so on, and so on - you get the picture. Where does the buck stop?

Well, in the case of gun crime, it stops with the copper with the gun in his hand. Aspiring police firearms users are repeatedly told that if they ever have cause to shoot anyone, they would suddenly find themselves the loneliest person in the world. Even though they might well have done the right thing and, eventually, will be exonerated, it is only after an exhaustive inquiry which may last years.

The shooting of the Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menenzes, in the wake of the London terror bombings earlier this year, is in stark contrast to the shooting of the two police officers. The actions of Commander Cressida Dick, the officer in charge of the operation, will be minutely examined and the officers who were ultimately responsible for pulling the trigger will, rightly, be called upon to justify their actions that day. The downside is that it is remarkable that any police officer would still be prepared to put themselves forward for this exacting role.

It is an accepted fact in police forces throughout the world that the British policeman is the best trained anywhere: where do organisations such as the United Nations go to find trainers for police forces in war-torn and emergent nations? They turned to us in Kosovo and Iraq because we did the job the best of anyone. We have the best judgemental firearms training in the world and there is no room for 'cowboys' who would never get a sniff of a selection programme, let alone a training course.

The commanders of such incidents are no less rigorously trained and their judgement questioned to the nth degree. There is a national standard which has to be rigidly adhered to. Within other countries, standards can be patchy, to say the least, and the question must be asked: if we accepted the routine arming of our police service, would standards drop and would we be running the risk of ratcheting up gun crime? The comparisons with America are awesome, with homicide rates involving firearms almost 50 times higher than in Britain and, in France, 17 times more people killed in gun-related incidents.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has come out strongly against arming the police and is apparently backed up by his officers. A recent survey by the Police Federation found that 80 per cent of policemen were against routine arming, although the majority were in favour of a higher percentage of officers being trained. Currently, there are only about ten per cent of the national complement of police officers trained in the use of firearms.

This weekend, Sir John Stevens, who preceded Sir Ian as Commissioner and who was formerly the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police, has called for a revisiting of the death penalty issue in respect of such heinous, unprovoked murders. Whether this would be precipitate is arguable although what is clear is that the time has come to remove the veil of secrecy surrounding the authorised police use of firearms and to examine, openly and transparently, the question of whether we go down the route of arming our neighbourhood cop.

It is easy to look back with a rosy glow upon the images of our childhood, the friendly bobby on the beat. The truth is that Dixon of Dock Green, too, was a crime fighter and he, too, was gunned down by a criminal.

* David Blackie was a firearms expert and tactical advisor for Durham Police. His first book, Death on a Summer's Day, an account of the shooting of council planning officer Harry Collinson at Buttsfield near Consett, will be published in the New Year.