Monday 22 August 2011

Police Cars or Guns - Which is Deadlier?

At LabourList, David Talbot writes sensibly that police forces will always claim to need more money and always claim that a reduction in their budget will mean more crime. However, in his article he claims:
The police continually say that any reduction in funding will damage public safety and reduce frontline effectiveness. It does not mention that speeding police cars now kill twice as many members of the public as die from gun offences.
In fact this claim is untrue. Home Office figures on deaths caused by road traffic incidents involving police cars in England and Wales can be found here. Figures for fatalities from firearms can be found here (page 59 of the report). Below is a graph of the two showing that, in fact, more people are killed by guns than by RTIs, not half as many as was claimed.


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