Carry toy weapons and you could be shot, police officer warns



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9655489/Carry-toy-weapons-and-you-could-be-shot-police-officer-warns.html



So idiot police officers cannot recognise a storm trooper as an outfit and so appreciate that the gun will not be real? Wow if the police are that thick they should not have guns in the first place. Even in the US with armed and trigger happy cops they have not shot any storm troopers (yet).

What about if your a blind person using a white cane

Or perhaps you could just ask the person to justify themselves before deciding to shoot them.

It's yet another example of the increasing trend for the police to wish to take no responsibility for the actions of it's officers but to blame any misdeed on the victim (ref: Hillsborough etc). If they shoot you it's not their fault, it's because you asked for it.

Jon

Mattel's lawyers will have a field day with them. No more sales of plastic guns for the kids at christmas.

The rapists defence?

I fully expect them to try it should the worst happen.

Of course you cold go out in Star Wars storm trooper costume with a real gun and then wreak havoc. The police could argue that the Star Wars theme was sufficient for them to so nothing. So they get beaten, again, for doing nothing.

Look - this is an idiot's charter being written. If you go out with a toy gun then you must assuredly accept that you may be mistaken for some nut job with a real gun, and be dealt with as such, REGARDLESS OF WHAT FILM/TV SPACE SOLDIER COSTUME YOU ARE WEARING.

Worst thing is that they will not be convicted even if they kill the person carrying the toy gun.

Yes but the availability of guns in the UK is very low so the odds of a storm trooper with a real gun is pretty small. Also what about tazers? The police have them now and so they should be using them if they absolutely have to as a first resort rather than a shot first ask questions later.

Sadly, you can wreak just as much havoc without the costume, as numerous horrible examples even in the UK have shown.

The reality is if the police shoot someone who doesn't have a real gun, they've been doing their job wrong or the person in question is crazy. Because unless they have an intelligence tip off that someone is going to be using a gun and is intending to harm the public, this is what happens

1) Person with real gun starts wreaking havoc. Innocent members of the public then lie around the floor in pools of their own blood.
2) Some member of the public who isn't currently indisposed in a pool of their own blood rings 999
3) 999 operator takes the call and dispatches nearest normal police unit to the scene with instructions to assess the situation, an ARU will most likely be dispatched but will probably be further away (if the ARU is the nearest unit you're really, really lucky).
4) Police unit arrives, assesses the situation and feeds further intelligence to the incoming ARU. The normal bobbies SOP is to stay out of the line of fire unless there is immediate obvious danger to a member of the public.
5) ARU unit arrives, grabs it's gear and approaches Person with real gun. If Person with real gun has already killed or injured members of the public (as observed by the normal unit that arrived first), the ARU pretty much has a 'shoot on sight' mandate. If there are no injured or dead people, the ARU is required to challenge the Person with real gun and to give them an opportunity to surrender. If they do surrender, they have no mandate to fire. If the Person with a real gun shows no sign of surrendering, they then have a mandate to fire.

This specified legal procedure. They can't skip steps or take short cuts. If they do, they could end up on a manslaughter/GBH charge.

if the Person with a real gun is actually a Person with a fake gun there aren't going to be any dead or injured members of the public, so the only circumstance where the ARU has a mandate to fire is if, after being challenged by the ARU, the Person with a fake gun does something that looks like they're about to open fire on the ARU or a member of the public.

if you're wandering round town in a stormtrooper outfit and you suddenly find yourself face to face with a couple of coppers pointing G36's at you, pointing your toy gun back at them will get you shot. Doing anything else at all shouldn't. Therefore assuming the person in question isn't actually suicidal (there is a phenomenon called 'suicide by cop', particularly in America), wandering around with a toy gun should not get you shot. if you are shot, you're either suicidal or the police haven't done their job properly.

There have been far too many such incidents in the UK. The case that triggered the riots last year is one such case. Though they might have some justification for being cautious.

The law allows the police to open fire if they feel their own lives (or indeed someone else's) is in immediate mortal danger. That's pretty much the only circumstances where it's legal to do so. There have been several cases though where the post-facto justification of that has been very iffy, that's certainly true.

However, I don't think any justification at all would get a copper off a manslaughter charge if they shot somebody who was patently wearing a fancy dress outfit in broad daylight. And they do know that.

It's a matter of training in reality. Training is basically the suppression of the effect of the adrenaline that's inevitable in that situation through familiarity and repetition. The problem is if you get a copper with a gun who had to intents and purposes let the situation get the better of him. Then there's likely to be serious trouble. I can't help feeling recently the training for firearms officers hasn't been everything it needed to be.

Or very stoned / immature and think it's funny they want to play too

There was the case of the man who was shot by the police carrying a table leg in a plastic bag. Then the police tasering the blind "samurai". In both cases no one was at risk, yet one person died at the hands of ARU officers. No one was sacked or charged. The police go into coverup mode.