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I find it interesting that the public are far more open to the idea of routinely arming the police than the police themselves.
I think they know that if they are armed when patrolling then the criminals are far more likely to start carrying guns. There are currently guns amongst the gangs, but they're not ubiquitous yet. And very little crime in this country is committed by people with guns.
You're probably more likely to run into a criminal armed with a blade than a firearm in most parts of the country. With some areas of London and Manchester as exceptions.
I would not like to see the police routinely armed. I think we'd see a sharp increase in guncrime if they were. I also don't think the relationship between communities and police would fare well with that change. There is still a connection there in most comunities between individuals and local police teams. People in very unstable and fractured estates, who hate the police as an institution will probably at some point have stood on a streetcorner laughing with the community police officer, who's ambled over to have a chat with the group of kids he's seen loitering about.
Dixon of Dock Green they are not, and relationships between individual police constables and the local community are forged and broken at an alarming rate, as police staff are moved around and policing structures changed with various initiatives from government. But...they do try, generally. And often succeed in small ways even as their institution fucks things up on a grand scale.
Those links are fragile though. And they rely on that police officer being able to convince the person they're talking to that they are there for them not against them, at least for the duration of that conversation. I really don't think that would be in any way helped if one party in that conversation was carrying a lethal weapon.
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