From: Rusty�Bullethole, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date : Thu, 20 April, 2000 Publication : EVENING CHRONICLE
Section : Local News Edition : 1 Page : 7
Headline : Armed, and out on the streets
ByLine :
by Peter
dickinson
Text :
ARMED police were involved in hundreds of gun dramas on the streets
of the North East in the last three years, shock figures have revealed.
Latest figures from the Home Office show Northumbria Police officers
were issued with firearms on more than 2,200 occasions between 1996 and 1999.
A spokesman for Northumbria Police stressed officers are only given
the go-ahead to arm themselves when public safety is being endangered.
He said: "There are strict Home Office guidelines for the use of
firearms. The situation has got to involve a suspect who is suspected of
being armed or be very dangerous before authorisation is given."
In comparision, Durham Police, who protect Tony Blair's constituency
home around the clock with armed officers, responded with armed units on
400 other occasions during the three year period.
Siege
In August last year armed police sealed off Durham's Dryburn Hospital
after a man walked in and told staff he had a gun. Officers overpowered the
man by using CS gas.
In November armed officers were involved in a 57-hour siege at a flat
on Tyneside.
Gary Broomhead, 35, spent three days holed up in a flat in Russell
Street, Jarrow, after police went to arrest him about a firearms incident at
a pub in Hebburn.
Officers succeeded in flushing him out by hurling CS gas canisters into
the property.
In June last year armed police cordoned off part of Sunderland after a
man was seen brandishing a gun in the street.
Two men were arrested following the operation involving about 40 officers,
many of them armed.
A Northumbria Police spokesman said that on all six occasion guns were
fired in the last two years, they were used to destroy escaped wild animals.
No Durham officer has fired at a person since 1992 when gunman Keith
Pringle was shot and injured by officers at the end of a three-day siege.
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