Obviously.

I think Jon's explanation makes more sense.

Eh? what on Earth could Moat say that would embarrass the police? The guy was patently a wacko, had attempted to kill his ex, had killed her new boyfriend then decided the police were the issue and tried to kill one of them. He then ran about the Northumberland countryside for a week and held the police off for a few hours by the tactically astute act of threatening to blow his own head off with a shotgun. There's no chance in hell of Moat being a credible witness on anything, should have actually have survived.

I've heard some conspiracy theories in my time... if the police wanted Moat dead, they could just have shot him and hardly anyone would have blinked an eyelid.

Jon

Appararently, and I'm succumbing to the speculation of the media, he was tasered and managed to hurl some abuse at the Police before he shot himself.

Err, no you can't jump to that assumption.

They were one of the first Forces to get tasers, therefore more have been trained in their use and therefore there will be more instances of them being deployed.

Aside from that you have to look at the crime involved in the different Force jurisdictions. I would hazard that more Met area responses would require armed Police whereas that would not be the case in Northumbria.

Okay so they have had them longer and are better trained. Yes they have more tasers used than a metropolitan area many times its size and with considerably more crimes than a rural area. While the London police may have more armed response vehicles the mortality rate is lower.