After consideration of arming the police, the Weapons Selection Committee decided they want unarmed police in Norway, but have suggested the testing of stun guns.
‘The Committee recommends that electronic stun guns are tested so that the police on patrol service get a new, tactical weapon that is less lethal than firearms’, said Chairwoman, Anne Kari Lande Hasle, when she presented the Weapons Selection Committee report on Wednesday morning.
Along with four other committee members, she constitutes a majority who recommended a continuation of the current arrangement of an unarmed police force.
The Committee has received the distinct impression that the police, generally, found that the less lethal armaments, which have been used a total of eight times in recent years, have worked well.
The committee believes that the move generally gets negative feedback from the public, however, and that this has a cause. Interviews had shown that more people had experienced that the threshold for contact with the police as being higher, and Hasle also said that more people had experienced police as being more aggressive.
‘The question of weapons concerns many people, both police officers and all the citizens of the state. The question is about the state’s legitimacy among the population, and the state’s right to use force against its citizens, and when that force can be used’, said Hasle.
The committee also want an increase in the number of officers available, and to have responsive policing in police districts, and they proposed a number of other recommendations.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
