Off the chart

[kpete]

:large

[Gothmog]

1. Great Meme

[jwirr]

2. And we thought that the old wild west days were over.

[bvf]

3. Shocking. n/t.

[polmaven]

4. Absolutely embarrassing!!

Do we know the stats or white vs. non-white (and percentages)?

[Paper Roses]

5. Shame. n/t

[treestar]

6. Probably has a lot to do with guns

and the police perception that people have guns.

[Shamash]

10. Respectfully disagree

This is what police look like where the police have an expectation that the population does not have guns:







I would say the problem we have is some combination of arrogance and attitude by some plus unaccountability. This said, I am not going to stereotype all police for the actions of a minority. Anyone who has to put on a gun and armor to go to work gets my respect by default. An individual officer has to actively do something wrong to lose that respect.

[Agschmid]

13. What a meme...

Why don't you indicate where these photos were taken and when?

Sure looks like London, sure looks like high value targets and it sure could have been right after a terror attack.

Context is everything... I doubt every bobby in the UK is decked out like that.

[mwooldri]

17. for the record, here's the info on the photos in question.

1. For some British Bobbies, a gun comes with job. - NBC news story on the London Metropolitan Police in 2009 forming a new specialist armed response team.

2. Was a stock image on the defunct Picture Nation. Used notably in this article: Should the British police force be armed?

3. Armed police plan angers Met authority - The Guardian - Elected members of the then Metropolitan Police Authority, which supervised the work of the Metropolitan Police Service, were unhappy to learn of plans to deploy armed officers on routine patrol. Subsequently, the Met chief said "Armed police patrols were a misjudgment".

To give this some perspective, Wikipedia states that there are about 31,400 police officers serving in the London Metropolitan Police Service. SC&O 19 is the armed police response division. This reference (Police Firearms Unit - CO19 (SCO19) states that there are about 550 people in SC&O 19. Therefore 1.75% of all police officers in Greater London are armed. It's not a hard stretch to imagine similar numbers across England, Wales and Scotland. I can't say anything for Northern Ireland though.

If you're interested into finding out exactly how many times they used their guns lately, the Met have a nice Statistics Page where you can find this out, borough by borough. I'll save you the agony and advise that 10 shots total were fired for 2013 per their statistics page. That's two less than that used by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO on August 9th, 2014 - around noon local time.

[mwooldri]

18. Fantastic pictures of the 1.75% of armed police officers.

I can assure you that this is not the face of policing in the United Kingdom. Plus the cellphones they are wearing date the photos considerably.

[Agschmid]

21. Exactly...

[Dont call me Shirley]

7. Who gave the orders?

[Plucketeer]

8. See! See how well it works?

All those "Good guys with guns" pays off. They ain't packin' jus' for show, ya know!

[RoccoR5955]

9. Netherlands also ZERO. n/t

[Agschmid]

14. I see what you did there...

[cwydro]

11. What is truly sad

is that my first thought was that looked like a low figure.

[cstanleytech]

12. I'm willing to bet though our lax gun laws have alot to do with this.

Mind you its not the only cause of course there is the other elephant in the room which is the fact that there are some police officers that shouldnt be police officers because they either lack the training, are overly abusive assholes who think a badge makes them gods or they are incompetent idiots.

[pampango]

15. Total population of Japan, UK and Germany - 275 million. US - 320 million.

Not that different. Deaths from police shootings - 57 times greater in the US.

Here's who is killed by group.

[Bonobo]

16. Add gender to that and you will see that it is men being killed by and large.

That actually does matter to some of us, though it puts us in danger of being called an MRA nut for some reason.

I would prefer no one be killed but I cannot help but notice that who is being targeted nor can I pretend that it is not significant in ways I often do not elucidate well.

[panader0]

19. Damn--Native Americans too...

[mwooldri]

20. Crazy, crazy, crazy America.

In the UK, it is more likely that you will die by being struck with lightning than at the hands of a law enforcement officer. You're more likely to win the National Lottery jackpot prize too, I bet.

Data to back this up: http://www.torro.org.uk/site/lightning_info.php - about 3-4 people die a year from lightning strikes in the British Isles. Wikipedia - list of killings by UK law enforcement - 20 from 2005 to present... 2 people a year on average.