XPost: 24hoursupport.helpdesk, alt.politics.scorched-earth, uk.politics.misc   
   XPost: uk.legal, alt.politics.uk   
   From: burfordTjustice@tues.uk   
      
   Might the officer have been killed anyway? Yes, but he also might have   
   at least had a chance with a gun.    
      
   Britain’s Response To Terror Threat: Keep 90 Percent Of Police Officers   
   Unarmed   
      
   The officer stabbed in Wednesday’s terror attack in London was unarmed, like   
   more than 90 percent of the British police force.   
      
   Ketih Palmer, 48, was stabbed to death while guarding the entrance to the   
   British Houses of Parliament unarmed. Just 2,800 out of London’s 31,075   
   police officers are armed, which the police force considers a safety measure.   
      
   A cornerstone principle of the Metropolitan Police in London is that guns send   
   the wrong message to communities by provoking crime rather than preventing it.   
   Most officers are only equipped with batons, handcuffs, a mace and in some   
   cases, stun-guns. A    
   small number of specially-trained officers are the only ones carrying guns on   
   patrol. These include counterterrorism police and some officers in high-risk   
   areas like the Parliament.   
      
   While countries such as Germany, France and Belgium have put more armed   
   officers on the streets in response to a wave of terror attacks around the   
   continent, the United Kingdom has maintained its “policing by consent”   
   approach to security. The    
   Metropolitan Police increased the number of armed officers by 600 after the   
   truck attack in Nice last July, but the total number is still a mere 9 percent   
   of the entire force.   
      
   “Our neighborhood officers — the ones who know their streets, who know   
   their environment and who know many of the names of the people in their   
   communities — are our major weapon. They are our eyes and ears on the   
   street,” Bernard Hogan-Howe, the    
   previous commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said in 2016, adding that it   
   “gives us a far healthier relationship with the people we police.”   
      
   Wednesday’s attack sparked a debate among lawmakers about whether security   
   needs to be enhanced around government buildings, particularly the “weak   
   spot” where Palmer was killed.   
      
   “It’s a terrible, terrible day for Parliament, the one weak spot on our   
   estate is those carriage gates,” member of the House of Commons Mary Creagh   
   told The Telegraph. “We have four police officers there, two on the gate   
   going in, two on the gate    
   going out, we see them every day, we are friends with lots of them.”   
      
   Former Minister Ian Duncan Smith asked why an armed officer wasn’t assigned   
   to the gate, saying it was a “little bit of a surprise that there was not.”   
      
   France put thousands of armed soldiers on the streets after suffering two   
   terror attacks in 2015. The approach may have prevented a terror attack Feb. 3   
   at the Louvre Museum. A man tried to enter the shopping center at the museum   
   with two briefcases. He    
   pulled out two machetes when he was refused entry and attacked a soldier,   
   shouting, “Allahu akbar.” Another soldier responded by opening fire   
   against the attacker.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)