All UK Front Line Response Police to Carry TASERs
An article in today’s Sunday times headlined : Police to get 10,000 Taser guns reports that the Home Secretary is to announce plans for all the UK’s 30,000 front-line response officers carry the weapons.
Not all the current trials have concluded, and while statistics have been produced there has been no interpretation of the results of the trial, no assessment of the public’s response to the trial and no report made to MPs.
I think this announcement should at least have been made in parliament, allowing MPs to debate it. Preferably I would like to see it held until after the general election; arming police with TASERs, bringing in ID cards, coupled with the national traffic camera network and other CCTV there’s a real danger we’ll end up living in a police state.
The Home Secretary has said:
I want to give the police the tools they tell me they need to confront dangerous people.” “That is why I am giving the police 10,000 Tasers to ensure that officers across the country benefit from this form of defence.”
The role of our democratic representatives, our leaders, is to lead and to make a balanced judgement, not just accede to the police’s requests. There is no evidence the people of Britain have made an educated decision to arm their police with TASERs. This is such a potentially substantive change to the relationship between the people and the police in the UK, even the people and the state that it should not be taken lightly.
