From Newsgroup: rec.arts.tv
On 2026-09-06 3:45 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
I found this video an interesting step back into the 60s. A British
journalist interviews American police in New York about the merits of
being armed vs. the British practice of officers being unarmed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdZw-VXyI2s [8 minutes]
Of course some of the factual elements of the video have changed
dramatically. American police have a LOT more than .38 revolvers and 12
gauge shotguns available to them nowadays!
I don't know the history of this. After all, as Ian Fleming was famously admonished, British spy/counterspy had already switched to the Walther
PPK a decade earlier.
These don't look like the same .38 revolvers from the '30s. What were
federal agencies using?
Actually, the pistols used in the video DO look exactly like .38
revolvers to my (very much untrained) eyes. According to one sign we see briefly in the video, John Lindsay was the mayor when this was filmed; I vaguely remember hearing of him in the 60s.
I always thought the pump-acttion shotgun was a damn good idea. Just the sound of loading the shell might get a surrender.
I think the sound of racking a shotgun is *still* intimidating under the
right circumstances. I have seen the *occasional* shotgun in recent
videos but by far the most common long gun I've seen is the AR-15. That happened after the infamous Northridge bank robbery in the 80s where two
guys with AK-47s who wore armour on almost every part of their bodies
had a lengthy standoff with at least 50 officers armed only with
revolvers and shotguns. Even SWAT was at a loss until they went to a
local gun shop and expropriated a bunch of AR-15s - apparently, they
never paid for them, during or after the event - and even then only
brought one of the robbers down by hitting the one thing that wasn't
armoured: his feet. (The other robber killed himself.) That incident
sparked a lot of police departments to upgrade their armaments so that
they could hope to handle more violent, better armed criminals.
(As an aside, there was a case of one man in the LA area, who apparently
had mental difficulties, who stole a TANK from a National Guard depot
and started flattening cars with it by driving over them. But he was
stopped remarkably easily because he didn't think to close the hatch at
the top of the tank so an officer was able to climb onto the tank and
shoot him through the open hatch. I think he just used a pistol.)
Everybody has at least a
semi-automatic pistol with a substantial capacity and most have access
to AR-15s and a number of less lethal weapons like tasers, pepper balls,
etc. Many American police forces have armoured vehicles like the Bearcat
as well. The Brits have contingents of Armed Police too, even if most
officers still don't get guns or firearm training.
I love that criminals will hold till armed response arrives from miles
away.
Actually, that *does* happen at times, especially if the police have established a perimeter, but sometimes the bad guys just keep on rollin'
until they can be stopped. I've seen videos of very lengthy police
chases where they crossed county lines and even state lines.
I don't bookmark crime videos very often but I'm certain that I saw one
where a single desperado barricaded himself in a motel room and even the
SWAT team - which had to be assembled from the surrounding small cities
which took considerable time - had a heck of a job overcoming him with
all the things they had at their disposal.
Of course, such crimes are exaggerated. Police need to be prepared for
the usual domestic violence, armed robberies, and mass shootings in retaliation, not terrorism and shootings for notoriety. The job
shouldn't have changed.
--
Rhino
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