CHIEF Superintendent Richard Jury, New Scotland Yard, is talking with a young girl, Zel. “She asks, ‘Do you ever have to shoot people?’ Surprised, he asks, ‘What? No, I don’t carry a gun. Sorry.’ She finds this incredible. ‘You’re a policeman.’
“‘Sorry to disillusion you, but we only carry guns if we’re facing a dangerous situation. And even then we have to sign out a weapon. Besides that, only certain of us are trained to use them. I’m in the Criminal Investigation Division. CID, we call it. There’s a firearms unit and they’re the only ones authorized to carry guns. And even they have to get permission from somebody higher up to use them.’ Jury wondered unhappily how long it would be until all policemen, down to the patrolling constable, would be forced to go armed.”
The foregoing paragraphs are quoted verbatim from The Old Silent, a psychological thriller by Martha Grimes. Her characters and story are fictional, but the part about arming UK policemen is based on facts. I rooted through my collection of Grimes books to find what I remembered from watching cop movies, American and British, and true enough, that’s where they differ. As Jury tells Zel, “You’ve been watching too many American cop shows on the telly.”
No offense to our policemen and soldiers who risk life and limb to patrol our ECQ’d streets and checkpoints, but do they have to be so fully armed? Cops love to say, why be afraid of us unless you’re planning something bad? But the sight of guys in combat gear guarding our neighborhoods against an invisible organism is a bit much. If a virus is the enemy, how does a bullet stop it in its tracks?
When Sampaloc came under a “hard lockdown” for 48 hours last week, soldiers and cops moved in with guns, clubs, tasers, and at least one armored personnel carrier. I couldn’t believe who its passengers were, until a reporter described them as SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), yes, SWAT! Sampaloc was lucky that the lockdown was without incident; in Quezon City, the fatal shooting three days earlier of a Marawi veteran by a responding police sergeant was an isolated incident, to use police lingo.
