A Terribly Sad Day For My Hometown

With the arrest, charges, and hopefully subsequent conviction of Dale Creagan and his co-conspirators, another heinous crime can be added to the history books of my local town, and indeed, my own high-school.

Like Moira Hindley and Ian Brady (The Moors Murderers), and Dr. Harold Shipman years later, Creagan joins a select group of serial killers that just happen to live round the corner from my home in Stalybridge. It really is great to have your hometown known nationally for breeding such notoriety.

But, pyschopaths can emerge anywhere, and the local area is actually full of great people who will just pick up the pieces and carry on, always remembering those who lost their lives in a fight to make Tameside a nice place to live.

The tragic loss of two police officers, two women (though gender is really immaterial in the police force in this day and age), will never be forgotten. They died doing something they did on a daily basis, just patrolling the area and dealing with crime as it arose. It's a terrible reminder of the value of life, and the valuable work the police do every single day. They really do never know what could be around the next corner.

Thankfully, deranged, dangerous nutters are few and far between. Yet inevitably in cases where police officers are murdered, talk turns to the question of whether all police officers should carry firearms with them, as they do in countries like the USA.

For me, this a no brainer. No way.

Reporting to a standard incident, these women had no idea what was facing them. If they'd had guns at their side, would it have made a difference? No, it's extremely unlikely they'd have even had time to draw their weapons. In other cases...more weapons just means more injuries, often including innocent bystanders.

Violence should not beget violence. Arming the police on a regular basis simply hardens criminals to further arm themselves. So begins a war of beating one another, developing better weapons, stronger bullets etc. etc. until suddenly you're squaring off with nuclear warheads. Perhaps this is a bit of an exaggeration, but the Cold War proved that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD-as it was), simply didn't solve anyone's problems, but just generated more fear.

I just wouldn't feel safer with more guns on the street, even if they were in the hands of the police. Specific armed response units are another matter...a sadly necessary added precaution, but regular officers don't need weapons. Having watched numerous police documentaries where they arrest drunken, angry idiots on the streets, I could just see one them getting the slip on a cop and taking their gun, causing unimaginable problems.

Having lived in the US for two years, the daily presence of guns was somewhat disturbing, even if you do get used to it. It's certainly intimidating and frightening to see police officers stood next to you with a big pistol strapped to their waist, and then you learn of people you know who have licenses to carry weapons whenever they want, often hidden on their body somewhere.

Is this really the kind of culture we want to turn to in Britain, where suddenly the police need guns, then ordinary citizens need weapons too because the streets are so dangerous? We've survived for hundreds of years without the need for a "citizen militia" as it could be called. We don't need to change that now.

The two fallen officers