Abstract
Police in England, Scotland and Wales operate largely unarmed and have done since the formation of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829. Yet, despite the long history of unarmed policing in Britain, terror attacks in the UK and Europe and a putative rise in serious violent crime have led to an increase in the deployment of firearms officers and calls for the routine arming of more police. In this chapter we present findings from an online study exploring reactions to armed police among the British public. Participants were presented with a series of images of armed and unarmed police and were asked to make a number of judgements about the officers in the images. We test five sets of predictors of reactions to armed police: prior levels of trust in police, political orientation, social identification, worry about crime and terrorism and socio-demographic factors. We find that trust, political orientation and ethnicity were the strongest predictors of reactions to armed police: those who trust the police and have authoritarian or right-wing political orientations respond more positively to armed police, whereas those from Black and Mixed ethnic groups respond less positively. We conclude by outlining some of the wider implications of our findings.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Peel founded the London Metropolitan Police Service in 1829.
- 2.
Firearm operations ‘involve the authorised deployment of armed officers where they may have to protect themselves or others from a person who: (a) is in possession of a firearm or other weapon; (b) has immediate access to a firearm or weapon; or (c) is otherwise so dangerous that the officer’s use of a firearm may be necessary’ (Home Office, 2019:13).
- 3.
Northern Ireland residents were excluded because the police there are routinely armed.
- 4.
All materials used in this study can be found on the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/ywezg/
- 5.
Participants were also randomly assigned to one of three prime conditions where they read a short news story about an attempted terrorist attack (Islamist or right-wing) or a control story. Because there was no effect of the prime in our previous study (Yesberg et al., 2021a), we collapse across prime condition here.
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Appendix A: Item Wordings and Factor Loadings for Constructs Used in this Study
Appendix A: Item Wordings and Factor Loadings for Constructs Used in this Study
Item wording | Factor loading |
|---|---|
Trust in police | |
To what extent do you agree with these statements about the police in your area? | |
They are dealing with the things that matter to people in this community | 0.824 |
They listen to the concerns of local people | 0.889 |
They would treat you with respect if you had contact with them for any reason | 0.676 |
How well do you think police in England , Scotland and Wales…? | |
Respond to emergencies promptly | 0.655 |
Provide a visible patrolling presence | 0.616 |
Social identification | |
I see myself as a member of the British community | 0.594 |
It is important to me that others see me as a member of the British community | 0.801 |
I see myself as an honest, law-abiding citizen | 0.808 |
It is important to me that others see me as an honest, law-abiding citizen | 0.768 |
Right-wing (reverse coded) | |
Government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are less well off | 0.710 |
Big business benefits owners at the expense of workers | 0.766 |
Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth | 0.828 |
There is one law for the rich and one for the poor | 0.730 |
Management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance | 0.633 |
Authoritarian | |
Young people today don’t have enough respect for traditional British values | 0.632 |
People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences | 0.761 |
For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence | 0.615 |
Schools should teach children to obey authority | 0.827 |
The law should always be obeyed, even if a particular law is wrong | 0.679 |
Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards | 0.640 |
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Yesberg, J.A., Bradford, B. (2023). Predictors of Public Reactions to Armed Police: Findings from the UK. In: Farmer, C., Evans, R. (eds) Policing & Firearms. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13013-7_14
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