From: "Charles Parker", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Two articles from Police Review 13/10/2000
Government Criticised over airgun licensing
by Stuart Mulraney
THE Government�s decision to reject calls for a
national licensing system for airguns has missed an
opportunity to further strengthen firearms
controls, said the Superintendents� Association.
'We believe such a system would strengthen even
further the controls and are disappointed that the
Government rejected this measure suggested by the Home
Affairs Committee in its report: said Peter Gammon,
the association�s president.
'We stand by evidence we gave to the committee that
there should be a system of licensing for airguns. They
can be lethal weapons. There are some very powerful air
weapons not subject to licensing on the market: he said.
But Charles Clarke, the Home Office minister, said a
licensing system for airguns would be�cumbersome,
costly and difficult to administer�: He said the
Government had accepted 41 recommendations made by the
Home Affairs Committee in the wake of the Dunbiane
tragedy in 1996.
These include a ban on the unsupervised use of lethal
firearms by people aged under 16; measures to deal with
the use of illegal guns in crime; comprehensive new
guidance to the police on the firearms law; and new
legislation to consolidate existing, complex, firearms
legislation and take forward the committee�s
recommendations which need primary legislation.
Other recommendations adopted by the Government include
an increase to 18 (from 17) as the minimum age to own a
lethal firearm and hold a firearms certificate, and a
possible ban on the sale of imitation firearms to under
18s. The Government is also proposing legislation that
will tighten existing controls on shotgun certificates.
�It is right that anyone who wants to own a shotgun
should be able to demonstrate that they have a good
reason to do so said Mr Clarke. �The way in which
shotguns and other fiream's are treated differently at
present is not acceptable. We propose to rationalise the
situation, while not restricting the present range of
lawful shooting activities.'
------------------------------
Sticking to their guns
In a bid to tackle increasing gun crime in central
Nottingham, armed officers are being used to conduct
routine patrols. Carol Jenkins reports.
A team of officers get ready to patrol the late shift
in the St Ann�s area of Nottingham. The officers make
no secret of the fact that they are armed, And, according
to ACC Sean Price from Nottinghamshire Police, local
residents and criminals are now so used to seeing officers
in their area carrying guns, they perceive that every
officer in the force is armed.
The force decided to put patrols of specialist armed
officers on the streets of the city, together with a
number of armed response vehicles, in both the St Ann�s
and The Meadows areas of Nottingham following a series
of drive-by shootings and an increase in gun related
crimes in January this year. According to force
intelligence, the crimes were largely drug related and
centred on rival black gangs in the areas which are
populated predominantly by black people.
The force�s operation, codenamed Real Estate, includes
a number of measures aimed at dealing with both the
long- and short-term issues related to the shootings. In
the short term, these include making sure that the
violence doesn�t escalate, and, longer term, providing
education and activities to encourage young people to
keep away from the lure of drugs and crime.
Mr Price agrees that the debate about whether officers
should be routinely armed is always contentious. However,
he believes that faced with a situation where criminals
and local residents were beginning to believe that
it was acceptable to see gun violence on their streets,
having armed officers patrolling the streets was an
appropriate response.
Although Mr Price says he is not suggesting that all his
officers should be armed in the force, there is, he says,
a particular need for armed officers in this area. He
makes no apologies for the move. �We have to show,� he
says, �that we are going to be out there to protect the
public from these firearms acts that are going on. The
most visible way of sending that [message] to the public
is by saying that our officers are armed... It is
also about sending a very strong message to those who
wanted to use firearms that we are going to protect the
public; that this is not acceptable; that we will put
armed officers out; and don�t use firearms because we
have an armed response to deal with it.�
Mr Price believes that there is a real issue for all
forces over how policing changes �if you let the threshold
rise �It becomes harder to police even where if you say
that guns are acceptable. If you don�t step on it quickly
an say this is a threshold over which you will not step
to the criminal community, it just escalates. Then you
start get into a position where once the threshold is
crossed, the threshold gets higher and higher so that it
becomes acceptable in the criminal community... What we
had were criminals who felt it was OK to drive by a blast
somebody.
�If you look at what has happened in other places which
have had the same pattern that we had - a small number
of shootings � it escalates: somebody gets shot, then
somebody gets murdered, then it becomes machine guns, and
then it becomes 14-year-olds with guns.�
Jack Tarr, Nottinghamshire Police press and public
relations officer, says regular patrols by the armed
response vehicles, which look similar to traffic cars,
has created a valuable deterrent to criminals. �They see
a Volvo drive by and they think it�s the armed response
vehicle,� he says.
Supt Marcus Beale, local area commander for D division,
says the aim of Operation Real Estate was �about trying
to break down that spiralling cycle of violence�: �One
of the objectives,� he adds, �was to prevent that level
becoming established and becoming the norm.�
Although intelligence gleaned from the gangs involved
in the shootings didn�t suggest that they were going to
target police officers, Mr Price acknowledges that in
this situation it is important to reassure officers and
make them feel they are protected. He argues that arming
them and giving them back-up from armed response vehicles
has proved effective.
He says: �Unless officers feel they are being adequately
supported principally with armed response vehicles, they
don�t go about their normal duties.�
Both Supt Beale and Mr Price agree that the decision to
put officers onto the streets overtly armed could have
alienated the community. They also acknowledge that
their plan could have backfired, leading to an
escalation in violence among the criminal fraternity.
�It would be very easy, when you put a lot of police
in the area doing a lot of proactive activity, to
actually turn the public against you,� says Mr Price.
However, they say their gamble paid off. Within days
of the officers being armed the shootings eased off,
they say. Prior to the start of the operation, there
were five shootings in two weeks. Since the operation
began nine months ago, there has been 10 shootings, a
figure they believe would have been much higher had
they not taken the decision to arm officers. Since
the operation started, police have made 140 arrests.
Community reaction to seeing armed officers on the
streets has been positive, says Supt Beale � although
he admits there has been some scepticism from members
of the public about the sustainability of the operation.
�There was an expectation in the community that: �We�r
really pleased we�ve got armed police here but in two
weeks you�ll be gone and then it will all go back to
normal�: We were actually getting feedback from the
criminals who were saying: �Well, we�ll lie low for a
bit because the police will run out of overtime and
resources and will go away�.�
To date, armed activity has continued and will continue
indefinitely, says Mr Price, who adds that no officers
have been required to fire a shot and all officers
operate within ACPO guidelines for firearms.
Internally, one of the main issues surrounding the
increased use of firearms and armed response vehicles,
says Mr Price, is one of cost and the sustainability of
the operation. �We were also pulling officers in from
around the divisions, which also caused friction among
divisional commanders: he says. �There was pressure
from other parts of the county into the centre saying:
�You�ve taken these officers away�: So we went round the
entire force and did a road show and covered every shift.
It was about saying: �This is a force issue�: It was
about saying: �If we let it get out of hand for the
firearms issue then it gets out of hand for the whole
force".'
Right from the start of the operation both officers say
it became clear that the force would have to back up its
high-visibility policing with a number of different
strands of activity, and that arming officers wasn�t
enough on its own. Operation Real Estate is coordinated
at force level rather than at divisional level, says Mr
Price, and briefings are being held daily with the
involvement of representatives from the whole force and
coordinated by Mr Price.
DI Nick Holmes, who leads the intelligence arm of the
operation, says he believes that it is �the first time
that we are truly intelligence-led�: �We had a live
document and that was updated continually day and night
he says. �The real bonus was that we�d had an awful lot
of people feeding back information to us, whether that
be sources in the community or officers. The amount of
intelligence we got back was almost overwhelming.�
Officers, he says, also felt safer and more confident to
do their jobs because they were updated daily on the
force intranet system. Public meetings and regular
contact with community figures was seen by the force as
vital to the operation, says DI Holmes. The majority of
the areas were predominately black and the force
identified that it didn�t want to stigmatise the area
and make it feel that it was being targeted by the
police, he says. The force recognised, he adds, that it
had to gain the confidence of the community in order to
get witnesses to come forward and glean valuable
intelligence. Central to this was the decision to send
out regular briefings to every household informing them
of police activity.
Mr Price says this became increasingly important to
explain why the force took the decision to carry out
road blocks and make use of its stop and search powers.
The force was conscious, he says, it didn�t want to
alienate the community. Mr Price says; �We were using
stop and search powers and section 60 powers to stop
search vehicles and it was very important that the
reasons that this was being done were put across to the
community. There were personal briefings with community
leaders saying this is why its happening.�
Cooperation from the community was an important issue as
officers did find it difficult to gain intelligence from
them, says Mr Price. As a result of this reluctance to
come forward, he says that the force resulted to what he
described as the �Al Capone� approach to arresting those
who they believed were involved in the shootings. �In
some of the shootings says Mr Price, �the victim was as
uncooperative as the offender would have been in relation
to carrying on the inquiry because in many cases they
were drug dealers themselves and they didn�t want to get
involved in reporting anything to the police.
�We were very keen to say: �Yes, we�ve got good
indications of who would be responsible for the shootings
but because of the lack of cooperation and lack of
additional evidence we might not be able to progress�:
But we wanted to impact on unlawful activity so we were
actually looking to get them for whatever we could. If
they were involved in criminal activity, we would go
for whatever criminal activity we could get them for.�
The force has for the first time produced an impact
assessment � document which has been recommended by
ACPO to allow forces to look �in a structured way about
how an operation or a series of events has impacted
across a whole range a activity�: The force has
published copy of its own impact assessment
fo other forces to learn from.
In the long term, Mr Price says, like other forces, his
force realises that the link between drugs and crime is
permanent challenge and won�t go away. �That�s why we
were quit anxious to set up the right intelligence
links,� he says. �At the start at this operation, from
a force intelligence situation, we were not prepared. We
want to be in a position in the future to know that we
have the potential for this to happen before the shootings
actually happen�
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