Armed police deployment nearly doubles but no guns fired

THE number of armed police incidents in Staffordshire has soared to a record high.

Figures released by the Government show armed officers were deployed 330 times by Staffordshire Police in 2017/18 – almost double the 168 in the previous 12 months. But officers never actually had to discharge their firearms.

The number of officers authorised to use guns, 82, is up from 80 the year before and is the highest number seen in six years.

At the same time, the total number of officers has fallen, having dropped from 1,626 in 2016/17 to 1,590 last year.

It means Staffordshire Police has now cut one in every four of its officers since 2010, then there were 2,161 full-time officers in the force.

A Staffordshire Police spokesman said: “The force has been increasing resilience in its numbers of authorised firearms officers, which is common in forces across the country, hence the slight increase seen in authorised firearms officers.

“However, we are fortunate in Staffordshire to have relatively low firearms incidents in comparison with other forces.

“But with demand increased across the force and across all crime types, the number of firearms deployments has naturally risen too. There were no firearms discharged in Staffordshire.”

In a majority of cases the armed officers are transported in armed response vehicles, crewed by specially selected and trained officers.

Figures released by the Home Office also showed police officers used their Tasers almost 300 times in the last 12 months.

Staffordshire Police officers drew the weapon 289 times between April 2017 and

March 2018. A Taser was fired on 25 occasions.

Oliver Feeley-sprague, from Amnesty UK, said the public should “resist drum-beat of calls for all police to carry a Taser”.

He said: “Amnesty recognises that the police have a duty to protect the public and themselves from harm, but we’ve got serious concerns about the use of Tasers becoming the norm for day-to-day policing.

“Coroners have pointed to the use of a Taser as a key factor in the deaths of two people in the UK. The Taser is a potentially lethal weapon and should be treated accordingly.”

Across England and

Wales, Tasers were used more than 17,000 times in 2017-18, compared with 11,300 incidents in 2016, but However they were only fired 99 more times.