Today I have a New Hero...
It has been an awful week for the police with the tragic death of two dedicated WPC's in Manchester at the hands of what can only be described as a mad man. There has been a great deal of discussion over the week with respect to arming the police as well as asking how the police at large will react to this brutality. I think many of our friends stateside laugh at the unarmed British bobby, but I feel proud that officers are not, by and large, armed. I think part of the reason is that I have had some very negative experiences with the police force and I wouldn't want any recurrences of incidents such as the murder of John Charles de Menezes . I have no truck with the arguments that say such mistakes are the price we have to pay: collateral damage if you will. It is not Catholic to assert that you will accept some evil in order to achieve the greater good—it is Utilitarian. But also, I think that the philosophy behind our preference for an unarmed force is one of policing ...