Peter Cox was on his way to carry out some landscaping work at a friend’s house in Bridgwater in Somerset when he was pulled over by police on (false) suspicion of driving his BMW without insurance. The officer in question decided that Mr Cox was acting aggressively, and pulled out his Taser gun. Seconds later, Mr Cox had 50,000 volts delivered to his groin. It is a chilling sign of how the British police have changed.
The officer discharged his weapon by accident. But at what point did England license police to draw guns on motorists suspected of traffic offences? For generations, unarmed British police have found various ways of dealing with people whom they regard as aggressive. It is doubtless far easier to point a gun at people, and requires far less training. Our officers do not carry arms because we, as a country, regard it as unacceptable to treat people in such a way.
We have seen coverage from America of police behaving appallingly: one policeman shot a pensioner with a Taser gun when he did not like the way he was being spoken to. We should not take a single step down this road. It is not just that the use of Tasers is a lazy option, which leads to bad policing: there are fundamental questions to be asked about the relationship between police and society.
This magazine opposes identity cards in part because there is the world of difference between a policeman asking, ‘Can I have your name?’ and one demanding, ‘Can I see your papers?’ Britain is not a country where it is acceptable to say to a motorist ‘Shut up, or I’ll shoot’ — whether talking about bullets, or electronic darts.
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