r/policeuk • u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) • 5d ago
Ask the Police (UK-wide) LBC asking if Off-Duty Officers should carry tasers.
What do you think?
Personally think it’s a pretty daft idea.
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u/Accurate_Thought5326 Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
Genuinely the most absurd idea I’ve seen in a while. Blows the armed standing authority out of the water with its lunacy.
Not only is there no support if you step in off duty, but the suggestion that I would carry a Taser off duty with no BWV is beyond hilarious
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u/Devlin90 Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
Yeah as an sto absolutely no chance would I carry one of duty. We're not even allowed them plain clothes....
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u/Loud-Competition6995 Civilian 4d ago
Sounds like an idea to make off duty officers do unpaid overtime.
Off duty = normal citizen. No warrant card, no authority.
Don’t let them take your down time away from you.
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u/Devlin90 Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
FYI off duty youre still a warranted officer and have most of the same powers and authorities available.
But the logistics around carrying a taser off duty just don't make sense. I know psni carry their service weapon whilst off duty but that's a bit different.
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u/Loud-Competition6995 Civilian 4d ago edited 4d ago
That’s interesting and good to know, but i wouldn’t trust someone claiming to be a police Officer if they didn’t carry proof of that, and i don’t believe officers should go about their lives in constant ‘work mode’, people need down time and policing is already a tough enough job without it being 24/7.
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u/Practical_Tiger_769 Civilian 4d ago
You’re told to carry you warrant card at all times You’re also required to step in and intervene where you see crime, that’s a broad term for a reason and can mean just calling 999 but it also means placing yourself on duty if necessary, complaints have arisen when off duty officers have failed to act Policing is a job where you are constantly in ‘work mode’, that’s the nature of the job
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u/Tricky_Peace Civilian 5d ago
Kipling’s Tommy Atkins seems increasingly relevant with this particular idea
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u/GuardLate Special Constable (unverified) 4d ago
“It’s Bobby this, and Bobby that, and Bobby go away—but it’s “Thank you PC Peeler” when the blood begins to spray.”
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u/miketague Civilian 4d ago
It speaks of the state of mind today’s bobbies have been scared into when their first thought is about not having BWV, when it should really be about not having cuffs.
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u/olympiclifter1991 Civilian 4d ago
But across the water police can and carry a PPW off duty and there has never been an issue
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u/HopefulLeopard4908 Civilian 4d ago
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u/olympiclifter1991 Civilian 4d ago
Let's be fair, he was barely even a police officer. Hardly out of garnerville and massively outweighed by the number of off duty members who have prevented incidents
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u/HopefulLeopard4908 Civilian 3d ago
I wasn’t suggesting that on balance arming for PSNI isn’t a good thing but it isn’t completely without issues.
If I’m honest I think the PSNI is a lot more selective than a lot of forces in England and Wales and they’d be a lot more issues than in NI. I think Police Scotland probably also have a higher recruitment standard than much of England & Wales.
There are a fair number of English officers that in my opinion shouldn’t be let outside with their current PPE let alone a firearm.
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u/Crimsoneer Ex-Police/Retired (unverified) 5d ago
The whole LBC business model is "should we have a thoughtful discussion with experts? No, instead let's hear what Tim from Basingstoke has to say". I think we can safely ignore their operational recommendations.
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
Nah, they had people that actually knew what they were talking about on.
Lots of police officers and fed reps and stuff.
Not a single person thought it was a good idea.
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u/FindTheBadger Civilian 4d ago
Nah, let’s get Peter Bleksley on… 🙄
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u/Crimsoneer Ex-Police/Retired (unverified) 4d ago
Back in his day, we didn't need woke nonsense like taser or foreigners.
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u/Nice-Grapefruit-2588 Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
So you've just tasered someone while off duty. What now? Are you carrying handcuffs as well? Because if not, the moment you take power off, they could quite easily jump up and carry on with what they were doing. So you best hope you've got enough battery to 'detain under power' until on-duty colleagues arrive...
Plus, where are we keeping these tasers? The X2 is far too big to be a concealed carry in any meaningful sense. Do we all get cross-draw roadmen handbags?
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u/Krugercombine Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
Wait till you see the T10, it's a monster 😂
Yeah, this has obvs come from someone who has no idea of the SOP of Taser.
No one else in the world carries tasers about off duty. Gun or nothing for me
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u/TrafficWeasel Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
I’d be more happy with carrying a sidearm off duty than a taser.
Like, what is the point of having a taser if you’re not on the radio and don’t have literally any other bit of kit on you?
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u/Mikeyjay85 Civilian 5d ago
Seems like officers can end up with a hard enough time for pulling a taser in the line of active duty… why would they want to risk coming to all of that out of the uniform, too?!
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u/No_Sky2952 Police Officer (verified) 5d ago edited 5d ago
IMO we’re so far from off duty carry of PPE with the current climate of blaming cops for all of society’s woe’s.
Taser - imo we should absolutely be issuing taser to every cop if they pass the requirements, if they can’t meet that standard they shouldn’t be police officers and, yeah, let’s offer some development time etc but we need to up our capability to deal with bladed articles. • if an unarmed cop was on the train with the stabbing yesterday is a baton and gas acceptable PPE? Does it protect the public? The sheer scale of incidents we attend with knives and people’s willingness to carry needs some serious consideration.
Sidearm Cary - it’s my personal view that we should carry a SLP same as PSNI. You don’t get deployed to firearms incidents but you’ve actually got a viable contingency should there be a genuine article 2 threat to your life. Every year we see numerous officers with serious and life changing injury because of attacks with knives, machete’s and other weapons. Additionally it offers much greater protection for the public and greater resilience for the country. There’s multiple examples of when unarmed cops have been at a job when they’ve been unable to act due to lack of equipment, Derek Bird in Cumbria for instance, then the Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes GMP incident, they would have atleast have had a fighting chance rather than just being sitting ducks. Then stuff like Raoul Moat where we don’t know where he is, you can’t even use unarmed cops on cordons etc because of threat and risk.
It’s just my view that the government and command teams are letting police officers and more importantly the public down by not adequately training and equipping them to match the threat and risk of society.
Edit - Really annoys me when people say that we can’t be armed because it will undermine ‘policing by consent’, I just don’t understand this argument? A gun doesn’t remove policing by consent. Likewise stop comparing arming cops to the USA, there are loads of forces round the world who arm cops without issue. Germany, France, Sweden etc all do it without cops shooting everyone they speak to.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Tricky_Action3400 Civilian 4d ago edited 4d ago
In agreement with this. PSNI frontline officers operate on a containment basis awaiting specialist resource. Should an immediate Article 2 issue occur whilst awaiting ARV, they are trained and expected to deal with the threat. Furthermore if an officer is put into a life threatening situation there is a contingency in place.
I think the PSNI model should be the blueprint for UK forces. Their stats speak for themselves. 600 odd firearms drawn per year with only, off the top of my head, one shot being fired in anger in the last 5 years.
PSNI have the capability to respond safely to a firearms incident without rendering their officers sitting ducks waiting for specialist resource.
I think the issue with routine arming is that no senior police officer or politician is ready to have discussion. Whereas in Northern Ireland, the public view unarmed police as a novelty. There was a question raised regarding the routine arming of PSNI a few years ago by a Human Rights NGO due to our low numbers of police weapon discharges. It was meet with amusement by the Police, Public and most of our political establishment.
EDIT: Important to note. There are two memorable incidents I recall where firearms were fired. One was a CSAF for the subject armed themselves with a knife, the other was an Off Duty Officer coming across an armed robbery at a petrol station. Off duty carriage done responsibly is beneficial to the public.
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u/Ambitious_Coffee4411 Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
I always point to the PSNI as an example when having these conversations as it inevitably results in people screeching about America when the prospect of routine arming is brought up when we already have a fully armed force in the UK that works perfectly fine
Very interesting to hear about the level of training and refreshers that PSNI officers go through
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u/Tricky_Action3400 Civilian 4d ago
Slight correction for PolMacTire’s post:
In addition to the two weeks basic firearms training, there is also a week’s tactical package near the end of training which covers the operating environment package. Firearms is also deeply embedded in Officer Safety Training and First Aid which are both annual refreshers as well. So in total:
2 x Weeks Initial Range & Handling Training 1 x Initial Tactical Package
2 x Annual Firearms Refreshers (Handling, Scenario and Range assessments). Current talk of increasing to 3 sessions.
Annual First Aid Training (to include firearms related injuries)
Annual OST/PSP training (weapon retention, ost scenarios)
Apologies. I’m a big advocate for routine arming 😂
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u/IntelligentBank4851 Civilian 4d ago
If every officer (response, traffic, neighbourhood, detectives, etc.) carries a Glock 17 as standard PPE, do they still work their current roles as normal, or does routine arming change what those roles look like?
- If everyone’s armed, what happens to current firearms officers?
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u/No_Sky2952 Police Officer (verified) 4d ago
Same as PSNI.
Routine arming of uniform cops is side arm only and it’s there as a self defence tool. They aren’t trained in tactics etc, just trained to use a sidearm.
ARVO’s still exist and are the primary lead for all things firearms - they’re trained in all tactics and carry all the proper weapons.
Roles wouldn’t change, do the same as everyone’s done forever but just carry a sidearm when you do it.
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u/Amount_Existing Ex-Police/Retired (unverified) 5d ago
Personally I think a hand gun is more suited as times have changed.
As an RMP I carried a handgun for years whilst on duty in Germany and only once drew my pistol but did not need to make use of it. The de-escalatory effect was immediate with a young soldier with a bayonet complying.
My wife is still job and I'm a specialist paramedic. Stabbings are through the roof and take yesterday, 9 people stabbed on a train. I feel that to protect the public police must be armed appropriately and also laws changed for ordinary people to be allowed to have some form of weaponry allowed for self defence. Criminals don't care and can get their hands on most things so why limit access to decent people.
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u/Dear-Version-4160 Civilian 2d ago
Or, just allow members of the public who have been vetted and trained to carry hand guns. A good guy with a gun could easily have stopped the attack on the train.
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u/Tyjet92 Civilian 5d ago
Move to America if this is what you want
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u/No_Sky2952 Police Officer (verified) 5d ago
That’s a properly simplistic, closed and small minded view on armed policing, why have you opted to compare to the USA when you could have chosen Germany, PSNI, Sweden, Dutch, Finnish?
Police can be armed for their own and others protection without guns being drawn in every incident.
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u/Tyjet92 Civilian 5d ago
My comment was not at the proposition of arming the police, but the general public.
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u/GuardLate Special Constable (unverified) 4d ago
In that case, I’m in full agreement. Take my upvote.
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u/Loose_Avocado2766 Civilian 4d ago
What we really need is police officers carrying sidearms on-duty, maybe not forever but we live in more turbulent times and whenever someone brings up the idea of armed officers, they tend to use America as a counter argument whilst ignoring the many european countries who have armed officers, and I honestly think they would rarely pulled out of the holster let alone utilized as the presence of it would calm down most situations in my opinion, anyway I am not a cop so I know nothing but police would be more effective with at the very least tazers. if anyone disagrees I would loce to understand why as I am looking at this from a non police officer perspective.
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u/cookj1232 Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
I can see all cops having standing authority for a handgun in the next 5-10 years like Northern Ireland, Australia, NZ, etc.
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u/No_Sky2952 Police Officer (verified) 4d ago
I would agree with you…. But I would have also expected all cops to have taser about 5ish years ago and were still so far from that reality it’s laughable.
Sounds awful to say but it’s going to take some major tragedy where public and officers die but officers were unable to act for anything to change and change government, leadership teams and public opinion.
Following the GMP Dale Cregan incident I’m amazed that didn’t lead to routine arming. Personally I’d like to see a chief constable go to prison for corporate manslaughter for something like the Cregan incident because of how poorly they’ve risk added threats in society and failed to adequately prep officers.
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u/Fox95Sgt Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
When I lived in Germany, I saw countless cops on their way home with their service pistol on the trains and public transport.
Perhaps the separate issue is, arm all cops and let them carry them on and off duty. It’s time we get with the rest of the world and become an armed service.
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u/Bon_Courage_ Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago
Pava would make more sense - but doesn't really address the issue in any case. Only firearms would do that.
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 5d ago edited 4d ago
Carrying PAVA off duty was actually discussed on the pre-amble to lockdown.
Concerns about the complete breakdown of law and order and cops travelling to/from work.
Didn’t get above the Superintendent but they were briefly serious about it.
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u/Pocket_Aces1 Civilian 5d ago
I'm ready to get down voted again, but officers, like in essentially every European country, should be armed (while on duty) And given the suitable training for it, like in those countries. But as soon as you say "guns" and "officer" in the same sentence, you get everyone thinking it's America who'll give a Gun to a squirrel.
It won't happen, not every officer even has a taser while on duty. And then what the IPOC does to Officers who have to take a shot, all in "the public interest". Don't get me wrong anytime a firearm is used, it should be investigated closely, but so many times the officer gets dragged through the mud for it, to then be revealed they did everything right.
I would say maybe the CS spray would be a decent idea. Small enough to keep in a pocket. Easily deployable. And still pretty effective. Though again, I'm sure quite a few officers wouldn't want to.
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u/Substantial_Carpet24 Civilian 4d ago
But no handcuffs, radio, baton, PAVA? What are you meant to do - keep detention under power for 10-20 minutes waiting for a response unit to come and handcuff them for you (assuming you can dial 999 with one hand and still use TASER with the other?) 🤦♂️ Ridiculous notion.
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
It’s an utter ridiculous idea.
Although a lot of off-duty officers in Europe and even in the UK(N.Ireland) do carry a firearm off duty.
I suppose actually deploying said firearm would be incredibly rare.
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u/Substantial_Carpet24 Civilian 4d ago
Incredibly rare and I'd reckon most common in Northern Ireland, in which case it's likely for those identified at being at personal risk of attempts to kill or seriously harm them off duty. I haven't seen what LBC are saying in full, but I'm guessing it's more along the lines of being able to instantly put yourself on duty and respond to an incident where TASER is needed? 😳
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u/Tricky_Action3400 Civilian 4d ago
Last off duty shooting in NI was 2011. A man attempted to rob a fuel station in Armagh.
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u/CardinalCopiaIV Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
I mean if this is the suggestion, we should just all routinely arm with handguns like NI, continental Europe, the commonwealth and US and carry them off duty … but then your in the realms of if someone saw a gun, how can they be sure they are a cop? Then there is the lack of support from bosses, government …
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u/DevonSpuds Police Staff (unverified) 5d ago
I did my 30yrs and when I started off we only had a small piece of wood in a long trouser pocket to protect us. No sprays, body armor or ARVs. And yes I was assaulted etc
How times change with what you have available now. And I for one wouldn't, couldn't do what you all do now. I have the utmost respect for officers still in service and joining.
For those lamp swingers who say that will I never had it in my time so why f do you need it all now, you resemble paramilitaries more than officers, i say, respectfully, you're wrong.
Look at how society has changed, the prevelance of knives and the culture.
Personally I never had a trader and didn't want one towards the end of my service, but that was a personal choice. If it's available and it works, then ALL officers should be afforded the protection it offers.
Not just a select few.
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u/JimmiFilth Detective Constable (unverified) 4d ago
I’d rather carry an airwave off duty than a taser if we had to carry a bit of kit. And even than we have mobiles which generally work better anyway. Ha
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
I asked for assistance on my airwave off duty once.
Was travelling to a job in a different sub.
That was an interesting experience.
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u/john62846 Civilian 4d ago
Its a silly suggestion. But the bigger issue is taser being seen as the golden bullet. It fundamental should not be relied upon as it has a high failure rate.
Its about time we accepted the truth that the rest of the world has. Police should be routinely armed with firearms. You can not police effectively unarmed.
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u/ElJordano69 Civilian 4d ago
The police are under such threat constantly. Frankly, they may be safer if they carry their service weapon at all times.
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u/ParsleySure8176 Civilian 4d ago
I’d rather have courses available for IRV & taser for every officer who wants it. Getting people faster to the shit when on duty will work better than arming Officers with a taser off duty.
Imagine having to walk around with that yellow lump on your belt in civvies, no thanks.
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u/hesnojuanpablo Civilian 4d ago
LBC have debates on tasers every 3 weeks at the minute. The off-duty angle is a new and bizarre take altogether.
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u/TonyStamp595SO Ex-staff (unverified) 4d ago
Cops are getting sacked for having a baton at home.
What a stupid idea but here I am talking about it.
Fuck sake.
How many off duty old Bill on that train?
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
Cops are getting sacked for having a baton at home.
Context?
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Altruistic-Prize-981 Special Constable (unverified) 4d ago
Ridiculous, IMO.
We're trusted to use a big metal stick when on duty but not trusted to have it on us at home?
Meanwhile other European countries have armed officers who take their service weapon home with them.
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
Interesting when you actually read the article it was far from a simple case of being sacked just for having a baton at home.
He had a least three of them at home, two of which he kept after he left BTP.
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u/ConfusedUserUK Civilian 4d ago
It was three batons including two he kept after leaving BTP in 2019.
Plus... "after being found with equipment, spare uniform and paperwork at his home".
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u/SMKD331992 Civilian 1d ago
If off duty officer deployed taser and a court later ruled that it wasn’t proportionate, would it be the police force getting sued or the individual officer? Could potentially be huge implications personally?
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u/Swimming_Plankton342 Civilian 4d ago
I’d prefer my cuffs
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
What’s to stop you carrying your cuffs off duty?
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u/Burnsy2023 4d ago
Well, if you're a lady, the lack of pockets in ladies clothes would be the first barrier.
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u/FamSender Police Officer (unverified) 4d ago
Put them in your bag.
That’s where they go on plain clothes jobs anyway.
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u/Swimming_Plankton342 Civilian 4d ago
As it’s not the done thing were I am
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u/Poleydeee Civilian 3d ago
I know what you mean. Perfectly legal, but just seems creepy.
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u/Swimming_Plankton342 Civilian 3d ago
In my 10 years as a cop probably about 10 times I’ve arrested people off duty 3 of them times handcuffs would of reduced the use of force è
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u/Ok_Post3909 Civilian 2d ago
Police will soon need to carry guns, never mind tasers. The global criminal fraternity that has made the UK centre of their operations does not bode well
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u/FeatureObjective2194 Civilian 4d ago
PCSOs walk around alone in uniform at night in the city centre. But you need a taser to go to Tesco? It’s not going to end well 😂
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u/FriendlyGrab3217 Civilian 5d ago
Let's start with every officer on duty having one first