The views expressed in this blog are mine, all mine and don't necessarily reflect those of the Police Service!
I hope that you wont be offended by anything I say, because no offence was intended.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Speedy Resolution

Have you noticed how many more incidents, turn into armed sieges, nowadays?

I remember an incident, not long after I joined the job. We were on night shift and colleagues got sent to a domestic. When they arrived, a woman was stood in the road, tears streaming down her face. She had been out for the evening, with her husband. He had got very drunk and upon their arrival home, wanted to fight the world. As my colleagues appraoched the garden gate, he came to the front door and proceeded to throw all the kitchen knives at them. Luckily, they all missed hitting anyone. They called for backup and we were on scene pretty quickly, but by the time we arrived, the chap was almost out of knives to throw and resorted to spoons and forks. We all stood and watched as he ran out of ammo. He then went back indoors and slammed the door shut. By this time there were six of us, but no supervisors, as we hadn't asked for any. We decided that bloke needed to be nicked and it was too cold to stand around, so we rushed the door. We were soon in the house, but he barricaded himself in the sitting room. With a second surge, we soon smashed that door in and jumped on top of the chopper. Time from first call to cuffed and stuffed, 12 minutes. No 'Trained Negotiators' in their Gucci Kit needed or Superintendents called out bed. Just 6 coppers doing their job.
Now I realise, that it could have gone horribly wrong, but we all agreed that it was the best course of action.
I do wonder, if we don't dilly dally about too much nowadays. Sometimes, a quick aggressive response will achieve the right result, sometimes it might be inappropriate. But lets not dismiss the option altogether. Otherwise this might happen.
I've even been at an incident where the offender wanted to give himself up, but the chief inspector wouldn't let him, because the firearms unit weren't ready!

4 comments:

girlieresponse said...

The days of rushing in have long past though haven't they?
Health and safety of officers is paramount and after a few high profile police deaths - justified.
I cringe when I think of the situations I stormed into 20 odd years ago without a second thought to my safety, it's more luck than judgement that I am still here!

Anonymous said...

Just found your blog, like the post. Less faffing and more action needed in my view. Thanks for the link.

Anonymous said...

But without highly-trained negotiators, it wouldn't be possible to handle sieges as successfully as this:
http://tinyurl.com/5s4hxa

Anonymous said...

Tell me about it. I spent a very cold xmas day waiting for a bloke to come out of a house when we were in a position to take him out within 20 minutes of turning up at the address. At least he got hot food sent in though, unlike my team who got nothing as they wouldn't authorise catering to be turned out..