This was only a few months after the similar attack on Westminster Bridge in which a man stabbed an police officer to death, and then was shot and killed by a nearby armed officer. [2]
1) Those were armed terrorists intent on killing people. Not a mentally disturbed person (like the article we are discussing).
2) The areas you are talking about are some of the most heavily policed areas in the UK. The police around Westminster are armed with MP5 sub-machine guns and assault rifles and are highly visible. Yet it is a public area, so yes you could walk up to one of them and start stabbing before one of his colleagues machine gunned you to pieces.
So what is your point? You can arm the police to the teeth, and a determined attacker could still kill one?
And the police deal with both, including trying to distinguish one from the other.
> The police around Westminster are armed with MP5 sub-machine guns and assault rifles and are highly visible.
The dead cop did not have firearm.
> So what is your point?
The opposite of yours. Police need to be armed.
But was completely surrounded by those that were armed to military levels in large numbers.
And don't look at one individual case, look at the cause why this keeps happening.
The police force is trained that there is a high possibility that there is a gun. So how are they going to go in there? With guns drawn of course.
That is the difference. The knowledge of you might getting shot is enough to be trigger happy about everything. Especially when your training says the same thing.
But then it's not enough changing the training of the police force, whilst civilians still wield guns. Disarmament needs to happen on multiple levels.
And another thing, yes there are cases where it is fairly simple to tell if you are in front of a disabled or mentally ill person then a nutcase high on crystal meth. And these are just cops, without any training in the medical field to tell the difference and they go in already on edge. No wonder bad things happen.
>> there are cases where it is fairly simple to tell if you are in front of a disabled or mentally ill person then a nutcase high on crystal meth
What are you trying to say here? It's OK to kill unarmed drug users, but not unarmed crazy people?
I don't think it is OK in either case and I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I live in the tenderloin and walk everywhere, so I get approached by aggressive people who are acting weird and scary everyday. So far I have never even considered shooting them.
In one country where gun crimes and mass shootings are rampant and are close to be every day part of life and there is the other where most of the crimes are knife, or acid attacks and are rarely fatal.
Anyway, I think there is a link between the US gun laws (or lack of them) and police brutality. Where every scenario has the possibility to go wrong, they just developed a habit to shoot first and ask questions later. Where police training revolves more around preparing to use your gun and defend yourself then actually solve the situation without violence. But whilst there is a high chance that every scene they go to will have guns involved, they're not going to change their behaviour, or training either. And this will bring more brutality from them as their not going to take chances.
Actually many people in the UK argue against routine (fire) arming of the police because it creates an arms race with criminals. I am saying that the police having guns is part of the cause of why the US has more gun violence.