Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveinGermany
You did ! And everyone else in the UK ! He is an armed response Police officer of the Met, he's been licensed & trained in the use of firearms, which when needed will be used as required in a criminal situation.
Mark Saunders was drunk & intimidating, he was also in possesion of a loaded firearm which he'd discharged on several occasions on the day. Had this been in your street would you have felt the same ? Would you have been quite happy to let him carry on shooting randomly or would you have wanted the Police to react ?
Admittedly his wording of his after action report was in bad taste & not the most sensible thing to do & for that he deserves punishment, but it has nothing to do with the officers ability to use a firearm in the course of his duty.
|
I tend to agree ... and I would argue that being drunk, intimidating, and in possession of a loaded firearm is more in bad taste than anything the officer did. I don't think that remorse and sensitivity is a quality necessary for a member of a SWAT team. Being able to shoot straight is. PCism again.
I do find it disturbing when police have to use lethal force; but I also realize that in this less than perfect world such actions are sometimes necessary. I don't agree with all that the police do, but I am convinced that, in most cases, they do act in the public interest. You are all probably aware that in Canada police officers are armed; but this does not mean that trigger happy coppers are blowing away people at random. In Kingston, for example, the only cases of police discharging their firearms in the past year involved the mercy killing of animals hit and severely hurt by motor vehicles. However, I do know that if there were an incident involving an armed stand off, the police here might be called upon to use lethal force. And if this happened, I wouldn't give a flying you-know-what about some perceived insensibility of the officer burdened with the responsibility of firing the lethal round.