The police are using guns more and more. It depends on the situations that the officers encounter on the road and they have to draw their weapons and shoot – said former Poznań police commander and private detective Maciej Szuba. He also assessed that currently officers receive very little training in the use of weapons.
On Saturday in Warsaw, a tragic intervention took place on Injinierska Street in Praha Polnok, during which a policeman was injured. The officer was shot. He died the same day in the hospital. According to the Warsaw police headquarters, one of the intervening officers used a weapon. The violent man, against whom the police intervened, was arrested and taken to the police station.
The Metropolitan Police said that the shot was fired by a young officer who had been in the service for more than a year.
“The use of weapons is a great stress.”
Maciej Suba, a private detective and former police commander in Poznań, admitted to TVN24 that the need to use a weapon is always stressful for an officer, especially an inexperienced one. – Here, unfortunately, we were dealing with a young policeman who served for a little more than a year. Only for this reason, he did not have many opportunities to get used to using sharp weapons every day. Just drawing a gun is already stressful for him, and the situation they (intervention officers – ed.) found themselves in was not very interesting. A man wielding a machete was a huge threat. As it turned out later, he was a person known to the police who had repeatedly broken the order in this area, Szuba said.
He admitted that he was surprised that the policeman who was shot was not wearing a bulletproof vest. – Police officers on emergency patrol use these belts every day. They protect against bullets and other sharp and dangerous tools, he said.
Szuba was asked whether enough time was allocated for training future officers in weapons. “In my opinion, not too much,” he answered.
At the same time, he emphasized that at present we do not know enough to make a clear assessment of this situation.
– This is very difficult for everyone who deals with this issue. This boy is under a lot of stress and needs mental help. We need to gather all the witnesses, interview them and assess the situation. One thing is clear, he did not want to kill. He had to serve his friend, protect him and prevent him from being attacked, Machei Suba said.
“Guns are used more by the police”
The investigator also pointed to an example from the past, in which there was an incident of throwing a service weapon. At that time, it was a short automatic rifle of the “RAK” type. – This was among the commandos who were in the organization, – recalls Szuba. At some point, he fired a shot and the bullet hit one of the officers. Then I got a huge wound because the commando was wearing a shirt.
– Such situations can happen, but the more you practice, the less it happens. I am afraid that these mandatory daily exercises are very few – he said.
– The police use more weapons. This is also due to the more and more situations that police officers encounter on the road and are forced to draw weapons and shoot. They shoot well if they practice with weapons, he added.
Main photo source: PAP/Paweł Supernak
