Thread by @AamerAnwar

Thread 1/9 Comes as no surprise that leadership of Scottish Police Federation produce research for their own ‘quasi’ magazine to demand GUNS-Thankfully their out of touch leadership, who haven’t been beat cops for years, will never get to make that decision #ShekuBayoh

2/9 -Headline is inaccurate- 40% of police officers were not victims of assault last year- that statistic applies to 40% of 1698 officers their Federation surveyed, not 17,283 officers deployed by @policescotland making it just 3% not 40% of officers

3/9 The headline is disingenuous, more than half of Scots Cops do not want guns, it is the officers the Federation surveyed which means it’s actually only 899 officers making it just 5% of 17,283 police officers in Scotland 🙈

4/9 To take away from the spinning of stats, the reality is that the last time a police was sadly killed in a violent assault in Scotland was as far back as 1994- today’s officers are more heavily armed, with access to greater resources & back up than ever before

5/9 That a police officer faces assault is not acceptable, but it does not make it reasonable or proportionate to call for arming all officers with lethal weapons- especially when you consider that a large proportion of those assaults will be minor

6/9 Where is analysis of the assaults, the breakdown of was it a push, punch or a knife, how many were actually reported, how many convicted, how of those assaults were serious assault,attempted murder or murder?

7/9 Multiple officers had no difficulty in bringing #ShekuBayoh to the ground in less than 42 seconds, spraying him,batoned, covered with lacerations, bruises,he died in police custody-A gun would have allowed officers to shoot 1st & ask questions later,but they did that already!

8/9 As for body cameras it’s about time they were introduced,it’s the norm in other democracies, on so many occasions it stops the escalation of police violence & holds officers to account- the fact that it is still out for consultation is shameful & pathetic

9/9 The SPF prefers ‘militarisation’ & can scream about it all day long, in their so called magazine ‘1919’ which they fund, with journalists they pay to write for them, to promote their views, of course they can it’s a free society? 🙈