Description
Book SynopsisPolicing and firearms: it is a crucial relationship. Should police be routinely armed? If so, what restrictions should be imposed on the use of firearms? Where police are not routinely armed, there is still a need for specialist armed police: how do these units operate, and are they effective?
This ground-breaking edited book explores the nexus between policing and firearms with a genuinely international focus. Contributors from Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Venezuela, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada explore the issues from a range of perspectives, including human rights, militarization, police legitimacy, and the risks police firearms pose to the community and to police themselves.
This thought-provoking collection is an indispensable resource for law enforcement policymakers and students of policing and criminal justice.
Table of Contents1. Introduction
Richard Evans & Clare Farmer
Part 1: Policing, Firearms and Human Rights
2. Unarmed Police: Myths, Rights and Realities
3. Are the Brazilian Police Forces lethal weapons?
4. The Routine Arming of the Police in Britain, the Right to Life and the Security Theory of John Locke and Benedict de Spinoza
5. Armed responses and Critical Shots: Learning lessons from Police involved shootings in England and Wales
Part 2: Policing, Firearms and Militarization
6. ‘Gung-ho’? An examination of the move to militarise policing in Australia
7. Direct and indirect militarization of public security in Mexico and gun use during arrests
8. The myth of ‘routinely unarmed’ policing
9. Racism down the Barrel of the Colonial Gun
Part 3: Policing, Firearms and Risk
10. Access to firearms – A risk factor for police suicide?
11. How do police die in Venezuela? A comprehensive analysis of the death by homicide of State security force/policing officials
12. Pathways to preventing fatal police-involved shootings of people in mental health crisis
13. ‘Facing death gave him new life’: On-screen police gun violence and Weapon Product Placement
Part 4: Policing, Firearms and Legitimacy
14. Predictors of public reactions to armed police: Findings from the UK
15. Armed police in an unarmed country: Legitimacy and self-legitimacy of English firearms officers
16. Public Acceptance of Police Use of Deadly Force: An Exploratory Study
17. Connecting officer appearance with officer safety: A survey of police officers’ perceptions of uniforms and accoutrements
