Great Britain has been Reducing and Disarming the Police

Image from theguardian.com

In a recent article in The Guardian, it was reported that police chiefs in England and Wales are considering offering the possibility of being armed with a handgun to all frontline officers.  From theguardian.com:

Police chiefs will consider the possibility of offering a gun to every frontline police officer in England and Wales, to counter the threat of a marauding terrorist attack, the Guardian has learned.

A discussion paper on the subject has been drawn up for the next meeting of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which wants to look at how to boost armed police numbers to deal with a crisis, following the atrocities in Manchester and London.

The paper is intended to start a debate on the issue among police leaders at the two-day meeting that starts on 12 July – although it is thought at this stage unlikely that any wider arming will be agreed upon. Routine arming is controversial within policing and many do not support it.

The chart in the Guardian gives us some numbers from the UK government.  These are numbers that I have not seen elsewhere.

 They tell us how many authorized firearms officers there are in England and Wales. Government sources were relied on for the total number of frontline officers. The total number of frontline officers has dropped by 11 percent from the high in 2010.

The peak number of operational frontline officers was 125,799 on 31 March, 2010. The number of authorized firearms officers is not as precise. It was measured from the chart. Armed officers were about 6865, or 5.5% of frontline officers.

There were 113,134 operational frontline police officers as of March 31, 2015.

There were a little over 5600 authorized officers as of March 31, 2015.  The number is essentially the same in 2016.

About 5 percent of frontline officers in England and Wales are armed.

The number of frontline officers has dropped by 11 percent from the peak in 2010. The number of authorized firearms officers has dropped about 21 percent from the peak.

Officers have to be available for coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Given work hours, sick leave, and vacations. I would expect no more than about 1/5 of the officers to be on duty at any one time. At any given time, in England and Wales, there are about 1,100 authorized firearms officers on duty. 

The United States has about 20% more officers per capita than England and Wales. But virtually all of them are armed.

©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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