Britain may call on foreign armed police
By Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:56am BST 10/06/2007
Foreign Armed police may be needed to guard the London Olympics because too few British officers are trained to use guns, Scotland Yard has admitted.
Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said the cost of training recruits to use guns may be prohibitive.
The Olympics are considered a prime terrorist target and the Government has estimated the cost of security at £600 million out of a total Olympics budget of £9 billion. Armed officers will be required to guard visiting dignitaries, athletes, the main Olympic Park and remote sports venues.
Britain is the only wealthy country in the world where police are not routinely armed and only about 6,000 out of 140,000 officers in England and Wales are trained to use guns.
Some competing nations may want to bring their own security teams, who could refuse to work in Britain unless they are allowed to carry weapons.
Sir Ian has now raised the prospect of "borrowing" foreign armed officers.
"The principle must be that we don't want armed foreign police, but there's a 'but' - and the 'but' is twofold," he told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA).
"One, you may not be able to get any foreign police unless they are armed, because they won't feel easy being unarmed in public scenarios like that. Two, do we actually have, in this case, sufficient capacity to have enough armed officers to do the job? If we don't, then we are talking about a training requirement of very significant expenditure for a period of eight weeks.
"We can't close the door, but we probably have to make that decision within the next 12 months."
The use of foreign armed police on British streets would raise serious questions over who would be held responsible if something went wrong.
Critics condemned the proposal and called for extra funds to ensure enough British officers are trained by 2012.
Damian Hockney, a member of the MPA, said: "We should not be reliant in any way on police officers from other countries. What if one of these foreign officers shoots somebody? It's amazing to suggest that we cannot train enough armed officers of our own. We should start now."
Traditionally there have been strict curbs on police operating outside their home countries. When unarmed British officers were deployed in Germany during last year's World Cup, they had to be "sworn in" as temporary German officers.
The Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest force, has 2,600 firearms-trained officers. Many are routinely deployed to protect key buildings, such as Parliament, Buckingham Palace and foreign embassies.
They cannot be redeployed to the Olympic zone during the Games because security at sensitive buildings will need to be maintained, or even strengthened, while the games are on.
The Met will be able to borrow armed officers from provincial British police forces during the Olympics, but even this may not provide enough strength.
