Correct. When I copied the text I should have cut that part.
Posted on 10/30/2014 5:33:57 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Kadner: A British policeman learns much about policing in America
By Phil Kadner pkadner@southtownstar.com October 29, 2014 6:30PM
Sergeant Gary Watters, a 14 year veteran of the Greater Manchester Police department, works on the computer at the Park Forest Police Department. Officer Watters is working with the Park Forest Police Department as part of a work exchange program at the Park Forest Police Department
Much of my time with Gary Watters, a sergeant in the United Kingdom’s Greater Manchester Police Department, was spent talking about guns — or the lack of them.
I just couldn’t understand how police officers in England manage to arrest a criminal without carrying a sidearm.
Watters spent October with the Park Forest Police Department as part of a professional/cultural exchange program sponsored by the International Police Association.
At 42, Watters has spent 14 years working for the Greater Manchester PD, including a couple of years in what they call a firearms unit, which means he was among the 2 percent of all law enforcement in England allowed to carry a gun on the job.
“The attitudes toward guns is certainly one of the greatest differences in our countries,” he told me.
Handgun ownership is banned in England, and limited permits for shotguns and rifles are issued by the government.
Watters explained that the typical patrol officer is equipped with a baton, CS spray (a sort of tear gas) and “some even have Tasers.” He said that as if no other explanation for a lack of weaponry was necessary.
But he knows that Americans are dumbstruck by the notion that police can patrol city streets without a gun.
(Excerpt) Read more at southtownstar.suntimes.com ...
Correct. When I copied the text I should have cut that part.
“Cops in America don’t carry guns because it’s fun. It’s because in many localities, without a gun, the locals will fight arrest.
Brits are more docile.”
Yes.
As a side note, the police department subject of the article, The Park Forest Police is the same department where one of their officers, (since under arrest) shot an old WWII veteran with multiple bean-bags rounds at short range, with resulted in the death of the veteran.
John Kass, the only Conservitive writer at the Chicago Tribune wrote about it:
Kass: Was police killing of 95-year-old necessary?
Common sense tells me that cops don’t need a Taser or a shotgun to subdue a 95-year-old man.
August 02, 2013|John Kass
When John Wrana was a young man, fit and strong and fighting in World War II with the U.S. Army Air Corps, did he ever think he’d end this way?
Just a few weeks shy of his 96th birthday, in need of a walker to move about, cops coming through the door of his retirement home with a Taser and a shotgun.
The old man, described by a family member as “wobbly” on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.
First they tased him, but that didn’t work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.
“The Japanese military couldn’t get him at the age he was touchable, in a uniform in the war. It took 70 years later for the Park Forest police to do the job,” Wrana’s family attorney, Nicholas Grapsas, a former prosecutor, said in an interview with me Thursday.
Cop Charged in Beanbag Shooting Death of 95-Year-Old WWII Vet
John Wrana died after Park Forest police Tasered him and then shot him with beanbag rounds at close range in his senior-living facility.
http://patch.com/illinois/chicagoheights/park-forest-officer-charged-in-death-of-95yearold-wwii-vet
The next administration has a sh*tpot of house cleaning to do.
Not to worry. That happens all the time here. Captions (and especially ads) make for some strange looking articles here.
At the core of American Exceptionalism - in fact, the Exception - is the idea that rights are yours inherently simply by virtue of your existence, NOT grants from a sovereign. The Brits, for all of their (former?) reverence for Magna Carta, have never fully crossed that divide. (And we are rapidly backsliding.)
The Obama regime loves the UK liberals limiting the rights of its citizens and Obama was happy to learn that Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died so that they could disrespect her even in death.
Barack, Michelle, Biden All to Skip Thatcher Funeral to Push Gun Control
Posted on April 16, 2013 by Ammoland
I believe so. They are unarmed as a matter of routine, just like their British-modeled Dublin Metropolitan Police predecessors. The PSNI (formerly known as the RUC) in Northern Ireland are routinely armed however, largely because of the troubled legacy there.
“Cops in America don’t carry guns because it’s fun. It’s because in many localities, without a gun, the locals will fight arrest.
Brits are more docile.”
Yes.”
I wouldn’t say it is because we are more docile, just that our sentences for stuff are such a slap on the wrist compared to America that it is rarely worth bothering to resist arrest. Murdering a police officer carrying out his or her duty is one of the few crimes that is virtually guaranteed to see you die in prison however, so even if you had murdered someone else it would be a stupid move, because even your average murderer only serves about 15 years before being released on parole, but if you killed a cop trying to arrest you for it, you will most likely never see daylight again.
Waters needs to face down someone like the late Michael Brown.
I cannot help be believe that both sides in this exchange are going to learn exactly the wrong lessons.
“be believe” should be “but believe”
#13 British Bobby: Stop thief or I will say Stop again.
Whilst I understand and agree with your point, its a bit annoying to be told on here all the time that the British are subjects and don’t have guns. Both wrong.
Oh dear, you’ve never actually been here have you?.
This isn’t the first time I have correct you on this, but here goes again.
Firstly, bad gun laws and kneejerk gun laws aside, the UK did NOT ban all guns. There are 2.3m legal guns in the UK, down from 2.6m in 1996, pre-handgun ban (on the mainland).
Secondly, the guns that were ‘taken’ were actually handed over in amnesties for UK handgun owners in 1997-98. Or owners were asked to hand them in at local police stations if the police wouldn’t, post-ban, renew their handgun licence. Which still exists, as not all handguns were banned.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the Limey coppers didn’t swarm the dear old Blighty kicking in doors of normal Limeys and take their guns off of them.
No.
I love how a nation, where almost all people have never been to the UK, in fact where most have never been out of the US, tell us what the UK people/other people are like.
I know you like to live in a dream world and I don’t blame you. If I lived in the UK I would just stay on crack 24/7 to delude myself.
For all intents and purposes there are no guns allowed in the UK. By the time you go get your blunderbuss out of the lock box and load it you would be dead. Yeh you can have a handgun at a gun club locked up where you can’t get to them if you need them. But the criminals in the UK have guns.
Your ignorance is embarrassing. I am actually laughing at you whilst I write this. Sorry, but its true. I doubt you could find the UK, let alone have ever been here. Your ‘knowledge’ of the UK is clearly based on what you read here, along with James Bond films, Benny Hill and old Sherlock Holmes films. Maybe a bit of Python and the Beatles.
Firstly, I am British, ex military, and a gun owner for 26 yrs. I know my country and its gun laws. Better than you.
Secondly, UK gun owners are allowed to keep any weapons in a gun cabinet, which can be anywhere in the home. Mine is about a foot and a half from where I am typing this!. UK gun owners have a cabinet either in their living room or hall, just as YOU do in the US.
As to guns, only assault rifles and some handguns (mainland, not Northern Ireland or islands) are banned. Contrary to what Americans believe, the Brits still have most of the guns they had 20 years ago.
And yes, I opposed and oppose any UK gun bans/new laws.
I know my country has problems. I also know yours has many more, and for Americans to lecture us on societal problems is at times equally annoying and breathtakingly hypocritical, even laughable.
I also know that whilst my country has problems, that I know them better than a bunch of Americans in cyberspace who don’t live in the UK and have never even been to the UK.
I also know that whilst my country may have problems, that some of them, whilst problematic, are not as serious as the hysteria from the US of A suggests.
“I doubt you could find the UK, let alone have ever been here”
True as I am an unrepentant Fenian girl and only go to Ireland to be with my people. You know the ones at 44 Parnell Square. LOL!
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