London: The head of Manchester's police force says he is proud his officers do not all carry guns, after being asked if British police officers should be armed like their counterparts in Australia to deal with the elevated terror threat.
The comments came during an exchange with an Australian caller - "Steve from Sydney" - who phoned into BBC Manchester's radio morning program to question Chief Constable Ian Hopkins. The police chief has been the face of the investigation into the suicide bombing at Manchester Arena last week, in which 22 people were killed and scores more were injured while attending an Ariana Grande concert.
Chief Constable Hopkins spent one hour on Tuesday morning, British time, taking questions from the public. Half-way into the program he received a question on the hotly-debated question as to whether English police officers should all be allowed to carry guns.
"Should the UK police officers maybe consider [allowing] police officer to carry hand guns like we do here," Steve asked, citing the case of PC Keith Palmer who was stabbed to death by terrorist Khalid Massood outside Westminster in March. British media reported that Masood was shot dead by an armed officer attached to a Government minister.
Program host Mike Sweeney said he had received the same question from numerous listeners via text.
Chief Constable Hopkins defended the current policy saying it was steeped in the tradition of the British police serving the public and policing by consent not force.
"Actually the British police service is fundamentally proud of the fact that we are in the main an unarmed police service."
"Clearly I need officers with armed capability but do I need armed officers every single time they're patrolling? No I don't," he said.
He said his officers want to be protected but agree that their current mix of tasers, batons and body armour constitute adequate protection and warned of the years of inquiries police face when they do fire.
"In cases where we have shot and people we see it goes on for years and years in terms of the investigation and inquiry afterwards," he said.
And he singled out the United States, which has relatively liberal gun laws for citizens and high rates of officer-involved shootings.
"Look at the gun crime in America, officers are armed there, you see the number of citizens that are shot, you see the number of police who are shot, you see murder rates through the roof."
"Yes I've got a duty to protect our officers, yes we need the capability to deal with serious people with weapons, but I don't want to see everybody armed."
A project by The Washington Post, which calculates the number of people who die during encounters with police, found 385 people have been shot dead by police this year. In 2016, police shot dead a total 963 people.
By contrast, Britain's justice charity Inquest says 23 people have been killed by UK in the ten years between 2006-2016.
Contacted later by Fairfax Media, 26-year old Steven Reitano, from Marrickville in Sydney's inner-west, said he found the Chief Constable's comment persuasive.
"I kind of agreed with what he said and I appreciated the answer," he said.
He said he had been listening to the BBC's Manchester station via a smartphone appand wanted to ask the question, given Australian police are armed and have dealt with fewer terror attacks compared to Britain, which has suffered two this year.
Abedi not known to PREVENT
Constable Hopkins says prosecutors are working with police and are starting to "build charges" which police have until Monday next week to lay against any of the 14 males detained since the attack.
"There's a wide number of individuals that have been arrested," he said, citing the bomber's phone and financial records.
And he said while the bomber, 22-year old Salman Abedi, was known to police, he had never been reported to the counter-radicalisation program called PREVENT.
"He was known to the police for some relatively minor matters - theft, receiving stolen goods, minor assault - those were in 2012," he said.
"Abedi was not known to the PREVENT program, he was not on any sort of PREVENT agenda," he said.
British media have reported that Abedi's views prompted friends and teachers to report him to authorities.
On Tuesday, the 980 troops called up to guard key London icons including the Palace of Westminister and Buckingham Palace were stood down from duty as police resumed their stations.
