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This is a type of gun for a very specific problem. Gun control nuts please go troll elsewhere.
Since the recent bombing campaign in London, the police have been rather jittery, and have just shot an innocent man. Apparently he looked like a terrorist because he was wearing a coat and looked arabic.
Now
various political types are promising an inquiry and saying how sad they feel, but defending the protocol. The problem is that noone really believes the armed rozzers didn't just shoot the guy without giving proper warning.
So what is really needed is a system of authentication to show whether the police behaved appropriately.
I propose a firearm for police which will enforce as far as possible the requirements, and also record sufficient data that this can be satisfactorally proved later (with viewing by selected upstanding members of the community as well as internally).
The gun incorporates a microphone and digital video camera, with some authentication system. (This isn't particularly novel.)
The gun will only fire if several conditions are met:
At least certain number of minutes have been recorded.
The image has been relatively stable for the last few frames.
These conditions may well be limiting for some gun usage, but for police use they are appropriate because armed police are expected to identify themselves and give a caution, and aim carefully, before they fire.
(update) The system can be manually overridden: the gun can be forced to fire, however the recording of sound and video cannot. This allows the officer to exert judgement and fire where necessary. Conditions must clearly be extreme for an officer to do so and escape recrimination.
If on examining the footage the police[wo]man is judged to have behaved outside the bounds of responsibility, then they can be severely punished, while if (as is usually claimed) they behaved appropriately, they can be completely exonerated and the community can retain confidence in the police.
(I know there are other similar ideas on the halfbakery, I think this system is sufficiently distinct.)
[link]
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Seems a waste to have a gun that can’t be used for self defense. |
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Agreed. Pointless workaround for proper training of police. |
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I might be willing to accept such designs on a test basis from somebody who had real experience shooting, but I don't see anything here to lead me to believe has gone through a single box of shells. |
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//Seems a waste to have a gun that can’t be used for self defense.// |
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As I said in the idea, it has a specific purpose, it isn't a general use gun. I know it was a long post, but that is the first sentence. |
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//Agreed. Pointless workaround for proper training of police.// |
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It would clearly have to be used *in addition* to proper training. You see the objective is not to make it more difficult to fire, but to prove that best practise really was followed and firing was necessary. Not just to the satisfaction of the police force itself, but to the community. |
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//I might be willing to accept such designs on a test basis from somebody who had real experience shooting, but I don't see anything here to lead me to believe has gone through a single box of shells.// |
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You are clearly a gun nut. I don't think rational discussion can be had with you. |
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"The gun will only fire if several
conditions are met"
That got my fishbone. If I were a police
officer caught in a situation where I had
to fire my weapon without having time
to give due warning I would want a
weapon that would fire. Every time. |
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If I am ever to make a decision between
losing my job and losing my life, the
choice is easy. |
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There are situations where police
officers need to use their judgement
and do what is right rather than what
the guidlines say. That is why there is a
tribunal when an officer breaks a rule:
not just to determine the evidence but
to decide whether it is right and fair to
apply the rule in the situation in which
the officer found themselves. |
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...and I haven't even started on technial
failures... ways criminals can hack the
guns... ways of preventing the officer
from following the procedure that will
allow him to discharge his gun. |
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The gunning down of an person due to
mistaken identity is a terrible thing.
This is not the answer. |
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[st3f] Well that is more reasoned. I'm glad for you to prove me wrong. I've modified the idea slightly to try and work round your reservations. |
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In practice, the cases you mention are likely to be rare indeed - otherwise the protocols would clearly be inappropriate.
Armed police here (UK) are not like yours (assuming you are in America) Their guns are rifles, not handguns, and only a few police have additional training to use them. They are only really sent in armed combat situations - they don't (generally) walk around the streets packing them. They are not supposed to put themselves (or indeed others) in exposed situations. |
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But as I said in a comment before, the idea isn't to stop police firing, but rather to ensure transparency and accountability. I think it is actually beneficial to both police and community. A few years ago a policeman was found guilty of murder - the first two bullets he fired were found lawful while the third was not. If I were competent but in a difficult situation I'm pretty sure I'd appreciate proof that I'd behaved appropriately. |
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Regarding the current case - noone who wasn't there can really have any confidence that the police didn't just run up, shout something about surrendering and then shoot him before he could work out what was happening. Indeed the eyewitness report I read in the paper this morning suggests that is exactly what happened. It doesn't take many innocent people to be killed in such a way to completely exhaust community support of the police. |
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As well as not being very keen on the
idea, I'm not that keen on the
inflammatory language in which it's
presented. To me, the words
'Apparently he looked like a terrorist
because he was wearing a coat and
looked arabic' does not adequately
describe the situation. |
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Although witness statements are
garbled and contradictory there are
witnesses that report that, at various
points in the chase, that the officers
identified themselves and warned the
suspect. One witness even reported
seeing what looked like a bomb-belt
with wires sticking out of it. |
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To me, the tragedy is not that the guns
went off. The tragedy is that the man
wasn't what the police thought he was
and the situation not as they assessed
it. |
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The 'inflammatory' sentence may be a little unfair to the police, but I'm basically quoting the news reports. This is basically the point I'm trying to address - if that is all people have to go on, they aren't going to trust the pigs* at all, are they? Even if someone is scrape-goated, it'll be months or years and the damage is already done. |
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(* as a law-abiding citizen I find it amusing to use slang for the police. Theres no malice in it.) |
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I've also been reading news reports on the BBC and Wikipedia since posting this. There was more of a chase than I thought, but it doesn't make the police actions any more explicable. |
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You are following a suspected suicide bomber from his home. Do you:
A) Stop him as soon as possible in a clear street out of sight of his home, identify yourselves as police officers and ask him to surrender from a distance, or
B) Follow him in plain clothes onto a bus, then chase him in numbers in plain-clothes to a station before wrestling him to the ground in a crowded train, before shooting him in the head (at least five times), then identify yourselves? |
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You are also right about witness statements being garbled and contradictory. Witnesses are actually really unreliable. So wouldn't a video camera or two right up against the action come in useful? |
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I understood it to be Ken's new 'get
tough' policy on the Congestion Charge. |
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I only now got back here and found I've been pronounced a gun nut, and therefore incapable of rational discussion. [Loris], I hope you were joking when you wrote that (slowly puts hand inside jacket :-) |
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And your own experience and training is...? |
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Loris, I don't know much about normzone, and frankly, I'm not sure I like him, but I can assure you, that expecting you to pump a few rounds through a firearm once in your life is no reason to call him a gun nut. Most of his suggestions, this one included, are quite valid, but not always possible. |
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Indeed, being adverse to ever popping off a few rounds in a controlled enviroment is likely to open you up to the charge of being an "anti-gun-nut" |
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As for the idea, I suspect it would be very easy to install a camera onto a gun so that there would be video imagery, and maybe even a microphone, but putting in a complicated system to keep the gun from firing would, in my mind, be worthless. If the police know their shots will be recorded, there is not much reason to prevent them from shooting as they judge fit in the first place. Indeed, even with the risk of a few unrecorded police murders, there is still little reason to do so. I'll stay neutral as long as the idea includes a gun override, and once you take it out, I'll start seeing about finding gun scopes that already include video cameras. |
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Now I suppose I'll be called a gun nut. Not so, for I own no guns, although in a previous job I had to walk around with a shotgun or a 9mm every now and then... but that just made me into a nut. |
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On that note in the idea of the gun can be forced to fire, I read a short story where a police officer's gun was overridden in such a manner and while responding to a crime he was used by a higher authority as the vehicle for a politically motivated shooting. I'm not comfortable with carrying something that could be used in such a manner. |
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