Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Mumbai Police: Criticism Somewhat Mitigated Due To Budget Cuts

The police did not fire on the gunmen in the train station as I mentioned previously.

Now Uncle relays the very bad news that the policemen on-scene may have not been the best of marksmen, due to a complete lack of experience with their weapons. The official policy was that they should fire their weapons on a firing range for training annually.

The problem:

Most of them, including 10-year veterans of the force, have never fired their weapons at all, due to budgetary constraints. They may have had a rifle and 30 rounds for it, but that was all they got, ever, and it's apparently possible that those 30 rounds were loaded in the magazine a decade ago. Wow.

Rule 1: Police should have guns.
Rule 2: Police should be comptetition-level marksmen due to regular practice with their guns. Pistol AND Rifle, EVERY policeman, from recruit to Chief.
Rule 3: Police should have sufficient mental conditioning to open fire on active criminal shooters without hesitation.
Rule 4: Police should face no negative consequences from killing same.
Rule 5: If your department is not going to allow live-fire training, hand out billy clubs and stop pretending, it only makes you look incompetent.

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