Quote Originally Posted by Gil Boyd View Post
Geeram,
As Peter will bear out, the Police did some strange things when the "Powers at Be" thought they should be more than they were.
I am going to speak from both sides of the fence.
If you have been there, you will instantly recognise in the new breed of Police Firearms Officers, whether they were in the Military before hand, when you watch them on TV at major incidents such as we have all seen recently in London.

Its a strange thing, but you will recognise those who are wary of their opponents before rushing in, and there will be those who perhaps haven't seen an agree man with a firearm before, or an explosive trigger in his hand!!
For the Small Arms School to be "forced" into training Police Officers in the art of sniping in those early days of the Enforcer, I would hazard a guess it was hard. As you don't know who you are getting, where in the Army, the first prerequisite was, you had to be able to shoot, and well, and your unit documents would state that, and also you would have attended a selection cadre before hand.
None of these were given to Warminster. They expected a Police Officer could shoot and shoot well. Sadly, the service "Shot themselves in the foot" there!!!
From memory, all the original cadre of applicants for the first Met Firearms team that were sent to the Small Arms School, were either ex-mil or experienced civilian shooters at least, but I believe almost all were ex-mil, as was a requirement for application....which given D6 was setup in response to the shooting of the 3 x officers at Braybrook Street in Aug 1966, quite a large percentage of Met Offiers with a reasonable length of service had been in the services. In the immediate aftermath of the Braybrook St shooting, the search for the suspects involved lots of searching of green belt land and farmland on the outskirts of the Met district west and north-west of London, mostly using dogs, and as such involved my late father who was a Met Dog Handler at the time. In those days each station had a gun safe with half a dozen Webley revolvers for issue in circumstances that required firearms, and were usually only issued to officers that were ex-mil, and thus those few weeks in Aug 1966 during those searches for Roberts, Duddy & Witney was the only time my father, as a WW2 ex-Army vet, carried a firearm in his Police service.

I can still remember my Mum's 'fear' during those weeks, every time Dad went on duty up until Roberts and co were captured.