Editors Comment

On the 27th April 2006, Kenneth Callaway became embroiled in an argument with employees at an airline ticket counter in Cleveland. When the police came to intervene, he grabbed one of the officers firearms and shot him, only to be shot and killed a second later by the other officer. From the point of police intervention, this took a matter of seconds.  Naturally, the police officer who delivered the fatal shots to Mr. Callaway was not charged with anything.

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Wind forward 13 years to Chile. During a peaceful protest, police chose to break it up with tear gas and rubber bullets, blinding  a 22-year-old psychology student, after he was hit in the face by rubber bullets.

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The airport incident is admittedly rare, but only because very few people are stupid enough to walk into an airport armed and even less so, disarm a police officer. However, clearly it happens and this is the risk our armed airport police officers faced on July the 23rd. Frankly, I am amazed they only drew their tasers, given the ferocity of the attack, whatever may have caused it. Once a gun gets into the wrong, untrained, hands, then the public are very much in danger. Luckily for those 4 men, the British police are trained to appease, rather than to shoot first and ask questions later. If this had been in the USA, they would be dead or seriously injured and I very much doubt there would have been any case for the police to answer. 

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The issue for our police force is that, even our armed police, are relatively ineffective, because of the training they receive and the ethos of the British constitution. Our police force's raison d'etre is to "keep the peace". In the USA, they are "law enforcers". Those two objectives are quite different and hence, so are the operational procedures of the two police forces. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather our police were peace keepers, but in the same way Neville Chamberlain tried to keep the peace with Hitler, with dire consequences, there are a handful of people that need to be dealt with in a very different way because, like Hitler, it's probably the only way they understand. Brute force. 

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Listening to our Prime Minister on the news just now, after a weekend of rioting across the UK, I'm doubtful the people involved will be punished, as he so vehemently declares. 90% of them are wearing balaclavas. Only a handful have been physically reprimanded and the likely hood of the police tracking down the masked participants is very slim, and frankly, they have better things to do. What would be a more effective solution would be if our police force were feared, by those who should fear it. I would take a bet that if these rioters knew that they were going to be peppered with rubber bullets and tear gas, they'd think twice, but the reality is, the worst that will happen on the ground is the police will just stand their ground, behind riot shields. The reaction to the Manchester Airport debacle has further assured our anarchic compatriots that our police will not show much, or any,  outward aggression towards them, despite the fact they are breaking the law. 

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Add to the fact that we absolutely do not need any more court cases on the already overloaded system when we have rape victims still waiting for trials to take place after 3-4 years. So, instead of arresting people, charging them, holding them and sentencing them (to what will probably amount to some community service, hardly a punishment) we need to get tough on the streets. We need to take back the streets from rioters (as well as thugs, organised crime, shoplifters etc) and make the trouble makers actually think before they don the balaclava "Do I want to risk losing an eye tonight" ? Otherwise, there is simply no deterrent and I guarantee they will not get the punishment they deserve going through the lengthy and fairly toothless British "justice" system, despite Keir Starmer's statements. 

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G. Hoff - Editor