PC Heckler and PC Koch prepare for life on the beat. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.
Let us concede that there may be problems in Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham that demand new approaches from the police. Let us further accept that perhaps there really are “no-go” areas in some of the estates in these boroughs. But even if one takes the police at their word, I think one may still be worried by the news that, for the first time on the British mainland, police officers on routine patrols in parts of London will be armed.
Because will it stop there? How long before there are calls for all police to be armed everywhere they go? The ongoing efforts to paramilitarise the police are not, I think, an encouraging step. Indeed, the lack of an armed constabulary has always seemed one of the encouraging, even optimistic, things that’s very much in this country’s favour.
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