The Bridge

This week, the Chief Constable of Northamptonshire Police, Nick Adderley has decided to give every one of his frontline cops a taser...if they want it.
This comes in the wake of the death of Police Constable Andrew Harper on 15th August. Dragged under a vehicle after investigating a burglary he died of multiple injuries at the scene.
Durham Constabulary later followed suit with the same promise. Every cop in that force who wants a stun gun will get one.
As uplifting as it is to see a Top Boy do the right thing this is something that is 15 years late in coming.
During my brief tenure as a British Bobby, both Special and Regular Constabularies (20 months with City of London then 19 months with Kent), I had it impressed upon me that using violence in the course of my job was...well, a bit naughty.
We were trained in only the most basic of restraints, pushing techniques (to the chest with both hands while shouting "GET BACK!!!") and spent about 1 hour on how to use pepper spray (in the UK a class 5 firearm) and about 4 hours on the nuances of the extendable baton. We weren't shown anything that might actually cause injury to another person and everything we were shown was "reasonable". No kicking, no attacks to the groin, no punching and no headbutts. The whole thing was designed to show us "safe" techniques. Not safe for us but safe for our Chief Constable, (or in COLP, the Commissioner) in that he couldn't be sued if someone got hurt while we were using one of the force approved techniques that he had blessed as appropriate for us to learn.
During Angry Man training (big bloke in a bright, padded suit coming at you relentlessly) you had to use a rubber baton and verbal commands to get him to back off. While the scenario wasn't difficult it was fairly intense with the Angry Man punching, slapping and grabbing us, as we went up one by one to show we could act "appropriately". This meant only striking to approved "safe zones" which were the upper arms and outer thighs. Reason being that they can absorb more trauma than other bits and are more likely to result only in severe bruising as opposed to a crushed skull or broken wrist. During my debrief after my test the instructor said:
"Well done, good use of voice, you didn't back down but one small problem. When he went onto his knees for the second time you hit him a couple of extra blows with the baton."
"And?! He'd just got up after being told to stay down and punched me in the face!"
"Doesn't matter, at that point he wasn't a threat so legally that was an assault".
Once a year we were meant to "renew our ticket" meaning come back and get retested on the core techniques. This didn't include baton, or the takedowns we'd learned, only use of cuffs and pepper spray. It also included the farcical "slap each other's faces" training (or as I called it The Fish Slapping Dance) where you were meant to lightly smack your partner's cheeks while they attempted to block you. I was partnered with a fat, middle aged female Detective Sergeant in jeans who specifically (albeit quietly) ordered me to not slap her face. Her ticket was 2 years out of date and even though she hadn't done street duty since John Major was Prime Minister, her Inspector had made her come back.
During the "aggressive arrest" scenario me and another probationer had to try and nick a lippy, violent and confrontational actor who was an ex army boxer turned police safety trainer. I ended up getting slapped hard in the face, punched in the ear and thrown in the mud. As I sat there in the debrief with my clothes caked in dirt and my face glowing he asked why I'd been such a useless pillock and why I hadn't sprayed him in the face (with my water pistol-esque pepper spray substitute) as soon as he slapped me.
"Well...it didn't hurt".
"PARDON?!!"
As we went through training we were constantly told that violence to secure an arrest was an absolute last resort and repeatedly warned off the dire, dire consequences of using force. We could get suspended, sacked, arrested or even imprisoned. This made us hesitant of everything and was one of the reasons I was initially so hesitant during the role plays. When I retested "aggressive arrest" two days later my adrenaline was through the roof but I passed, more assertive and less fearful of "going too far". My desire to get involved was never in question. My phobia of not following the mnemonic of JAPAN** was however, constantly floating about like a teacher near the cycle sheds where the 5th formers are having a crafty fag.
Out on active duty and it was amazing none of us got hurt. Back in my tenure with two forces from 2004 to 2008 there was nothing like the amount of attacks on cops that you see today. But we still had horrendously dangerous attitudes to approaching dangerous situations. I was once with a tutor constable who, upon hearing "There's a bloke up there with a gun!" ran towards the vehicle, found it empty and then pulled a pistol from the footwell and went "Oh, it's OK it's a replica"** Arresting violent people had to be done mob handed due to both officer safety and the duty of care the police have to the public. Ironically this makes the arrest look worse, as ignorant people watching will assume you are being "heavy handed" and moan about "excessive force" when they see 6 cops arresting one man or woman. The reason is that with 6 they can't struggle too much. With 2, something might get broken.
But I digress...
Sir Robert Peel's 5th principle of policing states "To seek and to preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustices of the substance of individual laws; by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing; by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life."
What this basically means is complete and total, impartial service to the law without political influence.
In 2003 the documentary The Secret Policeman aired on the BBC in the UK. A journalist went "undercover" in Greater Manchester Police and uncovered some quite horrendous racist behavior by cops. The day after it aired a lot of people got fired. The police, instead of doing what they should have done, which was extracted, adapted and moved on, decided to ignore Peel's 5th principle and pander to the politicians, media and public by drastically altering police recruitment and training. When I joined the Specials in 2004 the interview was conducted by an Asian man and white woman who were civilian staff for City of London Police. The very first question I was asked was "When did you last hear a sexist racist of homophobic remark and what did you do about it?" At no point was I asked "Why do you want to be a constable?"
As Specials' training is condensed we would come in for Saturday and Sunday lessons, once every two weeks. An entire weekend was taken up with professional actors performing for us in classroom 11B, pretending to be racist, sexist or homophobic and asking us what we should do to solve the issues.
When I joined Kent 2 years later as a Regular, my assessment day had about 50% of the emphasis on Race and Diversity. I had to role play 4 separate scenarios with professional actors with written instructions before I started that said "You are NOT a police officer. You are a customer services manager in a fictional shopping centre". I had to deal with alleged homophobic bullying, an argument over a parking space that was potentially racial, sexist remarks and someone getting bullied by a superior.
In the Metropolitan Police there is a woman called Denise Milani who is the Director of Business Change and Diversity. Her entire remit is to push diversity within the Met. During cutbacks in police budgets from the Conservative government that reduced the thin blue line to the broken blue line, she kept her job.
Back in the day cops in the UK were proudly unarmed. The word of law was (usually) enough and attacks on the boys in blue were few and far between (not to mention carrying automatic custodial sentences if you got caught). The image of the unarmed Bobby, whose word was Law and whose word was enough was something people were proud of. During the Iranian Embassy siege in London in 1980 PC Trevor Lock who was guarding the embassy, was taken hostage, had a pistol but never drew or revealed it until the SAS stormed the building.  After the siege ended he was awarded the George medal for his gallantry. Police historian Michael Waldren said that this was a "defining example of the power of the Dixon image" referring to 1960s TV show Dixon of Dock Green about a lovable old copper that used to walk off each episode whistling "Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner". While his restraint was admirable, in reality Lock didn't draw his weapon because it would have been suicide to pull a revolver out against several armed, determined terrorists wielding machine guns.
Tourists, politicians and most of the public LOVED unarmed cops. At Buckingham palace, No.10 Downing Street and Heathrow Airport armed police were a necessary and ironically welcome sight. I vividly recall my Moldavian friend asking for a photo with an armed cop at the palace.
"Photo madam? No problem. Please don't touch the gun. Cheeeese!"
And then society got more violent
In the last year alone there has been a 48% increase in assaults on police officers in Northamptonshire. The figures nationally are roughly the same. As respect for the word of law and what the police represent has waned and eroded over the years, people realise there is less to be afraid of. One of my other jobs after I left the police was a postman and there was one dog at a particular house that used to go mental whenever I turned up. It would follow me growling, barking and slobbering and after about a fortnight of this I decided I'd had enough and walked back to face it. It surprised me big time by simply rolling on its back and wanting its belly rubbed.
When local nominals (violent repeat offenders), travellers, and chavs on dire housing estates finally stood up to the police they realized that the police were supremely limited in how they could handle themselves. A Krav Maga instructor I know told me he wanted to approach Warwickshire Police to offer them classes. I pointed out that he'd be able to teach about 2% of what we learned as civilians. With examples like Simon Harwood and Sergeant Smellie cops became afraid of using ANY force at all. In Simon's case his use of force was deemed unjustified and he got sacked, albeit acquitted of a manslaughter charge. In Smellie's situation, the baton strike on the leg he administered to violent, aggressive gobshite Nicola Fischer was deemed appropriate....after waiting a year for a criminal trial.
Allegations against officers can result in cases that drag on for months or even years making officers fearful of doing anything.
The irony of this approach was never made more apparent than in the 2011, nationwide riots where cops let buildings burn to the ground rather than intervene, wary of the Sky and BBC helicopters hovering overhead and being denied written assurances that they wouldn't be punished for using force if necessary.
In 2012 Greater Manchester Police officers Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone were ambushed by Dale Cregan with grenades and a machine gun. He killed them both. Both were unarmed. Within 3 hours of this story becoming news, then-Prime Minister David Cameron stated on TV that no, it was not time to arm the police because a domestic burglary did not normally warrant an armed attendance (repeat that last line to yourself, slowly).
As recently as 4 years ago, documentaries on TV about police carrying Taser routinely were met with scorn, despite it being shown that their mere presence at a violent or potentially violent incident had a calming effect on ne'er do wells. Rarely was taser fired, the red dot on the chest was enough for most people to not want to get shot with electrified barbs.
Nick Adderley, the Northants CC, stated in his interview about arming his officers, that EVERY week he has to deal with injuries to his constables. One had a finger bitten off, another lost an ear. Very rarely are the people who do this ever punished appropriately. A case where someone spat in a police officer's face was dropped this week due to "not being the in public interest" despite recent changes in the law regarding attacks on emergency workers.
The British police should have been armed with taser 15 years ago. There is a scale of force that cops use. It starts with verbal communication, then hands on, then cuffs and then pepper spray or baton. The problem is that currently the next step is firearms after baton. The bridge, which has been needed for a very long time, was taser. The ability to keep someone at a distance, without having to engage.
Cretins like lawyer Sophie Khan (who specializes in representing people who've been tasered by the police) harp on about how police tactics have failed to engage the community and that verbal reasoning should be the way forward. She also said that a cop faced with a deranged person holding a sword should ask them why they'd got it and tell them to drop it.
The public don't generally want fully armed police. 95% of viewers of This Morning when Nick Adderley was on the show about his decision, agreed that rolling out tasers is appropriate. It took the death of Andrew Harper to act as the catalyst for this (plus new Prime Minister Boris Johnson's promises to beef up the police...after he got the job, which suggests he might actually mean it). Harper probably wouldn't have been saved even if he had a taser that night but after so many stories of cops getting hurt in the line of duty, the story of a young, handsome officer who'd only been married for 4 weeks and was about to go on his honeymoon...struck a chord across the nation and Nick Adderley did something every force should have done back in 2004.
I'm all for routine arming with actual real guns.
This would mean retraining every cop. Making sure that their Officer Safety Training was no longer a bunch of tick box bollocks. Having them learn the beauty of the reactionary gap (currently a guideline rather than a rule). Attempting to debate this issue with the average person in a pub usually goes like this:
Other Person: "Ooooh, no. Just look at America!"
Me: "Look at Australia, Germany, Italy or France. Routinely armed police and no problems with that".
Other Person (after a pause): "Ooooh, no. Just look at America!"
The situation got well out of control a long time ago but like a broken marriage, where one side won't accept that it's time to move on, the police leaders were too scared to unilaterally move to even tasers...until Nick Adderley. My own theory as to why the UK police are routinely unarmed boils down to the investors in London (which has BILLIONS a week going through the City) want to believe their money is safe. And what could prove that better then cops without guns. But that's an argument for another blog.
The danger police officers face on a daily basis was not addressed properly. Looking good and being liked mattered more to officers over the rank of Inspector than actually solving crime or being safe at work.
Now, hopefully things have started to change for the better after so long.
Nick Adderley, I salute you.
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** JAPAN. Justified, Authorised, Proportionate, Auditable, Necessary. 
** This tutor was one of the most gormless individuals you could ever meet. She thought Ginseng was an illegal stimulant.


Lance Manley is the author of STAB PROOF SCARECROWS, a memoir of his time in the UK police from 2004 to 2008, including the July 7th and 21st 2005 terrorist attacks in London.