Paul_Shepherd

I agree its a way away yet, but with this new wave of Islamic terrorirism, i think it may accelerate the process, My brother in law is a cop he says he hopes it wont be in his career span hes 40 now, so i very much doubt that it will be, but i think sadly it may come sooner than we think, as if the PC who was stabbed had been armed, its pretty safe to say he would still been with us.

Like you say....given his duties im surprised he wasnt.

calman014

What I don't understand is how he could have been stabbed at all.. surely UK Police have some kind of anti-stabbing protection besides just those stupid yellow jackets?
There are lightweight vests/jackets used by European forces that do have this built in... such a pity that this guy lost his life.

dbd33

I don't think that's safe to say. Assuming by "armed" you mean carrying a side arm, he'd have to see the attacker coming, draw his weapon and shoot accurately. He may have been able to do that but he may not have been in time to shoot, he may have missed, he may have shot someone other than the attacker. I think he'd have been better off with body armour than a gun.

Almost Canadian

I agree. It is very difficult to become proficient in the use of side arms. So much so, that I am amazed that any police force uses them.

I thought that all UK police wore vests.

Shard

The difference here is that the PC was part of the parliament's security force. It's an obvious target, and by way of example, it wasn't that long ago that the Canadian parliament had an attacker (who I believe was shot). I think it's quite an oversight the the police authority would put a PC in this dangerous position without requisite firepower (and training).

MarkG

To be fair, police the world over are notoriously bad shots. It's not that hard to be proficient with a pistol, but it takes regular practice to stay proficient, and most police don't want to do that. Britain is probably better off because only specialist units normally carry guns, and they probably know what they're doing.

But I agree, it's crazy if he didn't even have a stab vest.

Shard

Who knows, maybe he did? I don't think they have said where or how he was stabbed.

caretaker

I think one of the witness accounts described the attacker stabbing at the neck and side, so I assumed he was trying to get around body armour. I don't remember where I heard it, but previously I was wondering the same thing.

Former Lancastrian

Dependent on the force there are 2 types of protective vests normally worn.
Ballistic and stab proof. Dependent on the manufacturer not all ballistic vests will stop a knife penetrating but will catch a smaller calibre bullet. There are dual vests that do both. I wear a ballistic that will catch a bullet but not stop a knife penetrating the kevlar fibres. Prison officers tend to wear the stab proof vests.

BristolUK

It's a common refrain that there's not enough condemnation from Muslims for this sort of thing.

The 712-page Google doc that proves Muslims do condemn terrorism

Muslims Condemn

Shard

And so they should. Yet, yesterday when Andrew Marr asks Baroness Warsi the perfectly legitimate question on why is that so many of the converted psycho killers, get converted to Islam as opposed to Hinduism, Buddhism or Christianity she completely deflects the point by saying that every religion can produce violence. And this is from a supposed moderniser.

Oakvillian

I heard yesterday that the entire attack, from the moment the car was driven onto the pavement on Westminster Bridge to the moment the attacker was shot, took 82 seconds. Within that time, how would you propose an armed police officer could reasonably be expected to identify that this is an assault in progress, rather than, say, a driver suffering from a medical emergency of some kind, who loses control of their car? By all accounts there was a large number of civilian pedestrian casualties. Who is to say, until he gets up close enough to the policeman to stab him, that this is the attacker, or even that an attack is in progress? Might he not have been an injured victim looking for assistance? What if an armed police officer had shot somebody who later turned out to have been an innocent passer-by?

It's so easy to be critical after the event. I think the fact that the whole incident was shut down in less than a minute and a half is absolutely remarkable. It is, of course, extremely upsetting that a police officer and three civilians lost their lives in this attack. But it does seem to me to reinforce the appropriateness of the current police firearms policy, rather than providing strong evidence for changing that policy.

JamesM

Is it "Islamic"???

Killing people doesn't have anything to do with Islam anymore than blowing up buildings to establish a fully independent Ireland has to do with catholicism or being Irish.

It's a radical extremism/ ideology or guerrilla war.

Do gun owners or the NRA in the US apologise when there is a mass shooting?

I find the whole apologise on behalf of your segregation choice a little hypocritical.

Paul_Shepherd

Actually yes, when you put it that way, and as DBD33 said....when you anyalise the time span of how it all unfolded, there are actually a lot of "what ifs" in whether the PC being armed would have made a difference or not. As I was saying in my initial post, im not for the police being armed, i think it will be a sad day when it does happen, but with ever increasing terrorist activity it will.

At present I personally think that the armed police unit of the UK police are way better trained and more skilled than to your average north American cop, so that can only be better for safety of the public, but we are living in a rapidly changing world to what it once was.

Almost Canadian

Has there been an escape from London Zoo?