Baying for Blood

L1002307 Grassy, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

I found myself shouting at the radio again last night - not at Woman's Hour for once - but at the BBC news on Radio Four.

It was on the matter of the shooting of two unarmed police officers in Greater Manchester.

So much emphasis seems to have been placed on the fact that they were female officers. Why?

One report was that someone has suggested it would be more appropriate if female officers were always accompanied by male colleagues - as if blokes are somehow more bullet proof than tender women.

Yes, most men have more raw strength than most women - but no matter what the gender of the officers involved, chances are they would be just as dead.

Other annoying prose described them as "heroic" - but from what I can see from the story they were lured to a fake burglary and then gunned down in cold blood. I'm sorry - but that in itself isn't heroic. It sounds like they were victims of a particularly callous crime.

I know quite a few serving and ex-police officers personally and have come across many, many others for sundry pleasant and unpleasant reasons and whilst I almost always disagree with their views politically, I can never help but admire people who do one of the most unpleasant jobs there is, and do it willingly.

All beat coppers know that they are doing a potentially dangerous job and my understanding is that most of them also would choose to be both unarmed and unarmoured. This is admirable - if anything it makes ALL coppers who put themselves out on the street heroic...and that's whether they get killed or not.

The fact that relatively few officers die in violent incidents on the job does make the times when they do seem all the more horrific and scary. But this doesn't mean they should be routinely armed.

How long ago was it that we were all castigating Police Officer Simon Harwood for hitting Ian Tomlinson?

How long ago was the clusterfuck that saw Jean Charles Demenezes dead of police-inflicted gunshot wounds?

How many people thought that the riot police who handled the riots in Stokes Croft were heavy-handed?

Isn't it closer to the truth that some police officers, like doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers are better and more suited to their jobs than others?

Of course that's also true of bankers, oil exploration executives...and of call centre operators and chuggers.

Problem is, when a chugger does their job badly, it mildly irritates one person...or possibly does a charity out of a small donation. Nobody dies.

Last night one of the dead police officer's father was reported as saying that police should be armed and allowed to "shoot on sight".

Now we have Norman Tebbit being wheeled out (sorry, there's an inappropriate pun there somewhere...) baying for the return of the death penalty for people who kill coppers.

I can forgive the father of the dead daughter for saying that - even though I think he's absolutely wrong - I'm not sure I can forgive the media for reporting it. After all, part of the reason for a democracy is that a single father in pain, after an unspeakable event is the worst person in the world to set policy. But a politician? In the wake of cover-up over cover-up of police wrong-doing? Seriously, get a grip your Lordship.

The very reason for not having capital punishment is the same as for not routinely arming our police. It reduces the chances of cock ups causing the death of innocent people.

So, to the people of 24 hour rolling news; politicians (including senior police officers) stop using hyperbole, stop overanalysing and for goodness sake report the facts not every comment by every person who happens to have a view.

Meanwhile - to the familes of those murdered officers: it doesn't matter whether they were daughters or sons, they died doing a job that most of us wouldn't - and they were heros for doing the job, not dying doing it.