Over at the Edinburgh Evening News, Lib Dem MP for Edinburgh West and former police officer himself, Mike Crockart, has a piece on an issue on which Liberal Democrats in Scotland have been leading the debate in recent weeks.
Here’s an excerpt:
Look up Edinburgh Division on the Police Scotland website and it proudly boasts that the city was ranked recently by YouGov as “one of the top five safest cities in the UK”. In 2013-14, officers in Edinburgh only had cause to present or discharge weapons, including Tasers and baton rounds, 13 times. There are nine such incidents for this year – roughly one per month.
Undoubtedly our police officers face very real dangers, but serious incidents make up a minority of police call outs. Are we really prepared to arm our officers routinely to deal with a tiny proportion of cases? As an officer I didn’t believe that we should and as a MP I certainly don’t.
The far-stronger case is to issue non-lethal options like CS or pepper spray to frontline officers. By doing that we answer the threat they face on our behalf without destroying Peel’s fundamental principle.
Some people, including serving officers, will disagree. I respect that. But we need to have that conversation. So whatever we decide to do, whatever we accept as a society as being reasonable, it must only happen following a proper public debate and it must be proportionate to the threat officers face on our behalf.
You can read Mike’s full piece here.
