Armed police NOT a deterrent

I talked to two armed policemen patrolling Central Station. They are there for “reassurance” but they don’t reassure me!

How do they make me feel safer? It might be argued that they put “the fear of death” into attackers. That is exactly wrong.

Such attackers mostly want to be killed. They want to commit suicide (dressed up as “die a Muslim warrior”), and provoke the police to pull the trigger. They don’t want to be taken alive, serve a prison sentence and to be released rehabilitated. There is a lot of evidence for this.

The only weapon the attacker carried into Westminster Abbey was a dagger, not a weapon he can have hoped to kill many with. I don’t believe there was a particular target.

At the killing of Lee Rigby, the attackers effectively taunted the police to kill them, but the police disabled them with gunfire and took them prisoner.

The London Tube and bus attacks were suicides by their nature.

Most “terrorist” attacks in Europe are designed to end in the attacker’s death. In the attack at the Stade de France, two of the attackers were so carried away that they set off their suicide belts unprovoked.

Such attackers do not want to be taken alive. So, it would be a good idea not to “shoot to kill but rather to disable using tasers. If a device is unreliable we can MAKE it reliable.

In the confusion of an attack a policeman who is unsure of his target and his aim might be more willing to pull the trigger of a Taser than of a firearm. And an attacker might be less willing to attack if he thinks that his action will NOT end everything. MICHAEL BELL Forest Hall