Christmas shoppers and children terrified by armed police on streets with machine guns

originally posted by: Substracto
I dont see any 'machine guns' in those photos...

But yeah it can be intimidating I guess, even more if you are a thief....

Yeah I already said that my understanding of boom sticks was poor at best but out of the edit window.

Still not sure what is not scary about government conditioned egofreaks strutting round with big pointy death sticks and an itchy trigger finger caused by years of resentment but hey what do I know I'm just a loony.

a reply to: nonspecific

As someone who lives in a normal, un-Americanised, little town in Australia; I, too, would feel discomfort at the appearance of weaponry that is entirely out of the norm for our region. If I go to the mall today and everything is normal, and then I go tomorrow and everything has been beefed up... it is cause for concern.

Which is a simple concept that appears to be going over the heads of many.

It's unnatural for the region. People have the right to be unnerved at such a thing.

The militarisation of the police is "normal" in America, you're* used to it. It's not normal in the UK.



* "You're" - speaking generally

originally posted by: kaelci
a reply to: nonspecific

As someone who lives in a normal, un-Americanised, little town in Australia; I, too, would feel discomfort at the appearance of weaponry that is entirely out of the norm for our region. If I go to the mall today and everything is normal, and then I go tomorrow and everything has been beefed up... it is cause for concern.

Which is a simple concept that appears to be going over the heads of many.

It's unnatural for the region. People have the right to be unnerved at such a thing.

The militarisation of the police is "normal" in America, you're* used to it. It's not normal in the UK.

* "You're" - speaking generally

The militarizing of the police is becoming normal in America. There are still quite a few places were it is highly unusual and would make all those that live in the area, very suspicious. In fact I think they could only get away with it for a short time, if they created some type of false flag. Otherwise it would create a great amount of animosity between the police and the residents.

Living in an area were open carry is very common, I can see were this could be used as a sneaky way for the establishment to try to get restrictions on the residents to stop openly carrying their weapons. Since the residents will not feel any more secure having police officers all donned out in tactical gear, patrolling their areas, under the pretense of protection. And I don't see how those police officers wouldn't claim that they felt threatened, since they don't know who the good guys are and who are the bad guys. Of course innocent and good guy, unless proven a criminal and a bad guy, got thrown out the window, so I can see a whole lot of potential problems with this kind of insanity.

They are trying to creep this BS up on all of us. We know what happens if you give them an inch. I think it is insane for anyone to fall for the ruse. I don't care if they have 10,000 military clad police officers in a mall 10,000 sq ft in size, if someone wants to attack people, they won't be able to stop them. Their presence would only be a false sense of security.

Dear God in heaven. If we are going to live our lives terrified of every shadow, we might as well lock ourselves in our houses, and never have physical contact with any other living thing. I would rather live one day in freedom than a million in a plastic bubble.

Giving into this is insanity at its finest, and everyone of us knows what is on the horizon if we continue to go along with it.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Forget random terrorists there are countless countries that had whole armies with not just guns but bloody great tanks and fighter jets and they still got wiped out and beaten....

a reply to: nonspecific

Than I advise the UK take back their nation. Stop being puppets in a sad show, nothing in heaven, earth, hell or anywhere in the middle has the right to make a man a coward.

originally posted by: nonspecific
As I said in the OP I do not wish us to get accustomed to seeing armed policemen without actual justification for them, anything else is just conditioning us to accept it and then we run the risk of loosing all kinds of liberties with no way to combat this.

I'm interested to know how the arming (or otherwise) of the police impacts on keeping your liberties.

Every time a law gets passed that chips away at our liberties, do you know what happens? A bit of grumbling and then life carries on.

Arming the police does nothing to "risk" liberties, because nobody will do anything to protect those liberties even if the police are unarmed.

It's a bit like saying "if the police are allowed to wear red jumpers, aliens will refuse to make contact with humanity".

originally posted by: nonspecific
As I said to another member the US citizen has the right to carry the same weapons as it's police force...

That should be the case, but it isn't.

originally posted by: nonspecific

originally posted by: everyone

originally posted by: nonspecific

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: nonspecific

The fact that the officials are encouraging people to interact with the armed police seems to back up your assessment.

It is quite scary that they seem to be pushing for acceptance without any real justification other than deterring shoplifters and pick pockets I agree.

Eeh?

It is december, christmas is at our doorstep. Radical islamist have been killing people and threatening countries all over the E.U for quite some time now and they especially dont like christmas.

If they do not enchance security and another group of wabibi's comes out and kill hundreds of people including children i'l bet you would make a thread that they didn't do enough to prevent it and that they should have had more police on the ground around christmas and then probably add it was a false flag which is why they did not reinforce their security.

Yep those Muslims sure are crazy this time of year.

BBc news article

Sure are.

You would almost think that someone at some point would snap and try to take the law into their own hands after all that.
sadly there were to many photo's to choose from from to many terror attacks to post and most were to explicit to post here but you get the general idea.

a reply to: nonspecific

I can see why folks might get upset.

I lived on a military base overseas (husband was army) after 9/11 so I'm kind of desensitized to that sort of thing though.

a reply to: Shamrock6

I admit they may be ridiculous questions lol, they are meant to be to respond to the ridiculousness that is the police in the OP.

Here in America, id walk up and ask them those questions.

originally posted by: Lagomorphe
Although I understand and respect your opinion TrueBrit,

So, if the UK was hit as we were in France last year by armed terrorists carrying AK 47s or equivalent automatic weapons and the police arrived on the scene unarmed (or having much less firepower in comparison to the terrorists) and scores more innocent civilians were gunned down what would be your reaction?

Would you not have wished that the plod retaliated in order to neutralise said terrorists if they had the possibility?

Warmest

Respects

Lags

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: nonspecific

Those individuals who feel safer for their presence ought to remember this:

If you are so fearful that you need an armed policemans presence to make you feel secure, you are a pretty pathetic sort of Briton, and need to grow yourself a backbone.

As for not being alarmed by their presence, as the Police Force Facebook recommends, of course not! Why would British citizens feel at all concerned about the presence of heavily armed police walking around the streets of major cities? It is not as if we are waiting for evidence of a fascist undercurrent in government after all. We already have that. We have no right to privacy, we have no freedom from surveillance what so ever, we are not permitted to prevent our money being used for immoral military activity, the peddling of influence around the world, in places that most Britons would rather our government stayed the hell out of. They control us with laws we do not agree with, with courts who dispense injustice, with propaganda we paid for but is a threat to our freedom, our liberty, and the manifestation of our will as a people.

But the armed Police? Who is worried about them? After all, the Police are nothing more than paid agents of the crown, whose job is to do whatever they are told to do, to ensure the continuity of the establishment, under the guise of protecting the public and having an eye to our security as a nation! And let us ignore that the Police Forces around the country have been involved in undermining the democratic process in this country, by sending undercover agents into otherwise peaceable protest groups, and goading them into illegal activity. Lets ignore that these individuals have, under their assumed names, started relationships with women in those groups, resulting in offspring no less, and then sneered at them after their true nature has been revealed! What POSSIBLE threat could arise from armed members of an organisation that the people cannot possibly trust if they are informed enough to form an opinion at all, walking the streets of our major cities, or anywhere else for that matter?

I find all this PRECISELY as disturbing as the facts insist that I must. When we have a government I trust, I will trust its agents to the point where I would permit them walking about armed to the eyeballs. But until I trust my government, I refuse to accept that a population which is not generally armed itself, ought to have to put up with a police force which totes rifles around without their being an active situation which demands a tactical response.

a reply to: everyone
Unfortunately, fear, acquiescence, or locking yourself behind closed doors, will not stop terrorist that are determined to attack innocent people.

The terrorist that attacked all those innocent people in Nice on Bastille Day was stopped by the regular police doing their job, and doing it quite well I might add. A hundred local police dressed as combat soldiers would not have stopped those people from being attacked, and I doubt they would have done a better job than those officers that were on scene.

"A person jumped onto the truck to try to stop it," Eric Ciotti told Europe 1 radio. "It's at that moment that the police were able to neutralize this terrorist. I won't forget the look of this policewoman who intercepted the killer."

Apart from the fact that many many people questioned the attack as staged, but let's assume it was not staged. What could an average police officer have done with the semi automatic rifle unless, by incident he would be quite close to the alledged terrorist. There has been a huge crowd. And didn't the police bear arms in France anyway but they were just not there?
a reply to: kreidebrei
I think in America it is simply overkill and many people die each year because everyone including the police are heavily armed. I donot believe that more arms does anything to more safety. I think a gun belongs to the countryside were you have to kill one of your animals, a fox a stray dog but not in heavily populated areas. The figures in the UK show that unarmed (or less armed) police is better. This is one of the few things the UK are doing right.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
a reply to: everyone
Unfortunately, fear, acquiescence, or locking yourself behind closed doors, will not stop terrorist that are determined to attack innocent people.

The terrorist that attacked all those innocent people in Nice on Bastille Day was stopped by the regular police doing their job, and doing it quite well I might add. A hundred local police dressed as combat soldiers would not have stopped those people from being attacked, and I doubt they would have done a better job than those officers that were on scene.

"A person jumped onto the truck to try to stop it," Eric Ciotti told Europe 1 radio. "It's at that moment that the police were able to neutralize this terrorist. I won't forget the look of this policewoman who intercepted the killer."

There were only about a handful of police officers at the scene when they tried to stop the truck, half of them next to it. I am pretty sure if there had been 15 extra ahead of it firing into the cabin they would not have gone so far and kill almost a hundred people including children.

You think the police did a great job but respectfully i do not share that opinion. Not one of the hand full of cops there was smart enough to fire at the tires at any point. Chances are if more had been there at least 1 or 2 would have had the bright idea and if this had been the U.K without the armed police you see here there would have been 0 cops to kill the driver.

Or what about the other attack ? If there had been this many armed officers at the scene like how we see here in the op before they could start killing people they would have never been able to get as far as they did.

a reply to: kreidebrei

So, if the UK was hit as we were in France last year by armed terrorists carrying AK 47s or equivalent automatic weapons and the police arrived on the scene unarmed (or having much less firepower in comparison to the terrorists) and scores more innocent civilians were gunned down what would be your reaction?

I know you didn't ask me for my two cents worth, but of course any officers responding to an attack would come prepared for the event at hand. In fact where I live, I guess because it such a boring little place, there will likely be 5 times more responders than needed, which really isn't always a good thing.

Arriving as repsonders to a call, is much different than patrolling the malls and streets in combat gear, that is just overkill, unless you have good reason to believe otherwise. If the area is so high risk that the police need to be combat ready at all times, than the place is not safe period, and action should be taken to correct that problem.

The police are not super heroes and militarizing them will not correct the problem, nor will it make the community or police any safer. If there is a threat in the area, this will only provide the residents with a false sense of security and possibly put them in greater danger. The only sound solution is to eliminate the threat.

a reply to: everyone
I understand why you think that but I have been face to face with a danger that was unexpected, fast, and unheard of. Your mind doesn't process an unfamiliar danger that rapidly.

It is easy to look back and find all the faults in how the event was handled, because we know more of what was supposed to have happened. Those people one second were enjoying a pleasant stroll down a closed street, and the next minute a truck was speeding towards them. Even the police had nothing more to go on for more than a split second, than there was a runaway truck on a closed road filled with pedestrians. By the time some people even realized something was wrong, the truck had passed them by or had struck them. Trying to shoot a runaway truck on a road filled with injured, frightened, and running people would have been a disaster, even if the police knew what was happening and had had the time. Considering the circumstances, yes I think they did a good job.

a reply to: nonspecific
The problem with all this is human nature. We try to be civilized but we are all actually savage AF imo. Almost everything on TV and video games revolves around violence, and why is it the walking dead and zombies are so popular? Because it gives you the chance to shoot someone with no remorse, no repricussions, and most importantly no legal recourse. It's like walking around with a stick of dynamite and never having seen an explosion. People want to use these consciously or subconsciously doesn't matter. Hell I sold all my guns cause when I get drunk I'll find any reason to let off a few rounds into the air or into a target doesn't matter. It's addicting and thinking any different is just neglecting all the instances non lethal force could of been used and wasn't. We constantly strive to make shooting targets more "life like" only because shooting a piece of paper is boring we want blood and guts just surf through your TV channels and count how many times you see a gun fired on another human being. I stopped hunting and can't take the life of any creature anymore, but I am the minority on those terms. I know they are trying to protect the people but it only takes a second to make a mistake and allow the primal part of the brain to trigger on an undeserving target.

screw this - i blame the parents [ still ] - its hysterical paranoid mongs who instill thier own fears in thier children - nonspecific - i am looking at you

get over it