Should the Gardai shoot first, ask questions later?

MT

What about plastic bullets. I realise that in the past these were wildly inaccurate and so only used for crowd control but the most recent version have greatly improved accuracy, apparently.

The community policing board in NI recently approved their use, again for etreme cases of riot control - but could they be used in other ways?

Could highly accurate plastic bullets be used against a lone attacker? They'd pose much less risk to the life of the offender than the real thing.

uberwolf

if you do a quick search of this forum you'll find a thread on teh topic of plastic bullets within the last month or two. This was in the context of NI, but I'm sure there are some valuable points in there for you

A Dub in Glasgo

MT wrote:

What about plastic bullets. I realise that in the past these were wildly inaccurate and so only used for crowd control but the most recent version have greatly improved accuracy, apparently.

The community policing board in NI recently approved their use, again for etreme cases of riot control - but could they be used in other ways?

Could highly accurate plastic bullets be used against a lone attacker? They'd pose much less risk to the life of the offender than the real thing.

Without some sort of Garda ombudsman, that would be unacceptable.

Plastic bullets are as accurate as the person firing them.

Sparks

MT wrote:

Could highly accurate plastic bullets be used against a lone attacker? They'd pose much less risk to the life of the offender than the real thing.

Yes, but there you'd aim for the center of mass to avoid causing serious injury or death (a plastic bullet to the head can be as fatal as a "live" bullet to the head). And it's not plastic bullets that should be used, but the "beanbag" load for shotguns (it's a heavy-duty plastic bag filled with shot and it's about the most successful less-than-lethal round that's been used in the US). Not only does it have the best record for being less-than-lethal, it also has a limited range (so that it won't go a few hundred metres past the target and hit an innocent bystander).

But again, it needs training to use, and there's no oversight of its use in the Gardai at the moment. Until we don't need a tribunal to hear why someone was shot in the back even though four investigations showed that the armed gardai were in front of the person shot, it's not really appropriate to consider issuing weapons to the ERU that have an associated risk of being used in inappropriate situations because of their perceived "harmless" image. We've already seen precedent for such abuse when one member of the ERU was badly wounded in the leg during a training exercise because another member of the ERU shot him at close range with a blank round, believing it would not cause an injury. (Blank rounds, when fired, can still expel shards of brass and other such debris which can cause serious injuries at close range).

mycroft

Sparks wrote:

But again, it needs training to use, and there's no oversight of its use in the Gardai at the moment. Until we don't need a tribunal to hear why someone was shot in the back even though four investigations showed that the armed gardai were in front of the person shot, it's not really appropriate to consider issuing weapons to the ERU that have an associated risk of being used in inappropriate situations because of their perceived "harmless" image. We've already seen precedent for such abuse when one member of the ERU was badly wounded in the leg during a training exercise because another member of the ERU shot him at close range with a blank round, believing it would not cause an injury. (Blank rounds, when fired, can still expel shards of brass and other such debris which can cause serious injuries at close range).

Which a basic lack of understanding, among firearms officers, of balistic science that boggles the mind. Half a dozen actors (most notably Brandon Lee) have been killed in unusual circumstances or mis adventure using blank rounds. You can almost understand it happening among actors (despite the presence of trained firearms experts on set) but among police officers that freaks me out.

As to the north, I was debating in UCD a number of years ago, and Nuala Ni Luan, the ombudsman, said one of the first issues she was asked to address was the use of plastic bullets. After a cursory investigation she realised that the problem wasn't the RUC usage of plastic bullets, but the frequency of the use of plastic bullets, but live ammo. The first recommendations she made was the tightening of the terms of engagement for live ammo, and better investigative procedure after the use of live ammo.

The lack of training procedure for firearms means we shouldn't arm the gardai further, and the potential lethal ramifications of "less lethal" ammo means that until we have better training we shouldn't add them to the garda's arsenal.

Also the mayday 2002 palaval. A number of the baton blows were to the head of protestors. Gardai are alledgly trained to only ever draw batons when ordered by a senior officer, no garda can recall been given the order, they merely saw colleauges with batons drawn and assumed the order had been given. Furthermore a garda should only hit a limb such as an arm or shin, a blow to the head should only ever be utilised if a garda feels his life is in danger or the life of someone else. The lack of control and discpline displayed by the force that day suggest to me that the force as it is, can't utilise the tools already available to the them in the manner they're supposed to be trained in, than we need to re examine their training in current methods before we give them equipment which can do further damage.

Dyr

mycroft wrote:

The lack of control and discpline displayed by the force that day suggest to me that the force as it is, can't utilise the tools already available to the them in the manner they're supposed to be trained in, than we need to re examine their training in current methods before we give them equipment which can do further damage.

Or cast your mind back to the cops bailing into english fans at lansdowne road, they obviously arent trained enough to override the instinctive urge to lift a stick over your head and aim it at someones noggin. And those teardrop batons arent really designed for anything else. But sure why would the guards ever have to change, aren't they grand they way they always were? Worst that could happen is someone gets killed:rolleyes: