Thread: Two female police officers killed in Tameside attack

Originally Posted by RickThai

There is that. What I think is sad, is that politicians who support removing guns from honest citizens, do so knowing that many innocent people will surely become victims of horrendous crimes due to their inability to defend themselves.

This happened in the UK, not Texas.

They shouldn't have taken a man's job. The PC nonsense of women cops is as silly as male pre-school teachers. Add the stupidity of having them work without guns, and this was a disaster waiting to happen.

Originally Posted by BobR

Add the stupidity of having them work without guns, and this was a disaster waiting to happen.

In many polls taken the police in UK don't want guns. They "police by consent". They are not a paramilitary organization. I do in part agree with the PC bit...

Originally Posted by RickThai

There is that. What I think is sad, is that politicians who support removing guns from honest citizens, do so knowing that many innocent people will surely become victims of horrendous crimes due to their inability to defend themselves.

To them, these are apparently considered "acceptable" losses, as long as they stay in power (and have the ability to defend themselves).

RickThai

Way off target, chap.

In the incident the subject of this thread, two officers were called to a routine matter and shot dead. No civilians were harmed or suffered through not being able to carry guns.

The call to routinely arm British police officers is mistaken. The experience in the US suggests that gun crime would increase and officers would accidentally shoot innocent people as well as each other. There will always be gun crime to some extent but the British system whereby expert armed and trained units consisting of selected officers are on call works well.

Originally Posted by Morden

Originally Posted by RickThai

There is that. What I think is sad, is that politicians who support removing guns from honest citizens, do so knowing that many innocent people will surely become victims of horrendous crimes due to their inability to defend themselves.

To them, these are apparently considered "acceptable" losses, as long as they stay in power (and have the ability to defend themselves).

RickThai

Way off target, chap.

In the incident the subject of this thread, two officers were called to a routine matter and shot dead. No civilians were harmed or suffered through not being able to carry guns.

The call to routinely arm British police officers is mistaken. The experience in the US suggests that gun crime would increase and officers would accidentally shoot innocent people as well as each other. There will always be gun crime to some extent but the British system whereby expert armed and trained units consisting of selected officers are on call works well.

Don't know why everyone has to compare things to the US all the time. UK is a northern European country and should be compared to the northern EU, who's police are all armed.

As said before, you can't arm the UK police without giving them the authority to shoot. All that would happen is the guns would be stolen from them, after all you can't shoot people for stealing.
Jim

Dale Cregan poses with shotgun just weeks before brutally murdering two WPCs
Ben Rankin
15 Jun 2013

The one-eyed maniac had fled Britain after executing a gangland rival and was honing his skills at a Thai shooting range


Dale Gregan
SUNDAY MIRROR EXCLUSIVE

Shotgun in hand and an evil smirk on his face, Dale Cregan poses for the camera just weeks before brutally murdering two female police officers.

The one-eyed maniac had fled Britain after executing a gangland rival and was honing his deadly skills at a shooting range in Thailand.

Cregan fired round after round at targets during his time at the Koh Samui Shooting Range.

He used a variety of weapons including a Glock handgun – like the model he used to shoot the WPCs – and a pump-action shotgun.

He was sharpening the shooting skills he used to fire 32 shots at police victims Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone.

Cregan will spend the rest of his life behind bars after he was convicted last week of murdering the two policewomen and father and son David and Mark Short.

Campaigners say Cregan’s obsessive violence is the latest sign of the need to act on gun use.

Lyn Costello, the founder of anti-gun campaign group Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, said: “These pictures are likely to be extremely painful for the families of Cregan’s victims.

“It is unlikely any shooting range in the UK would have accepted an application to join from Cregan, given his violent criminal past. It is worrying that people like him can simply fly overseas to join such a ‘club’ unchecked.”

Cregan’s trip to Thailand came after he shot dead Mark Short in the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden, Manchester, on May 25 last year.

He paid cash for his friends to fly business class with him to the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.

It was the same resort where two years earlier he had his eye gouged at the hands of a mobster wearing a spiked ring.

This time Cregan was there to celebrate a cold-blooded pub murder which had made him one of Britain’s most wanted criminals.

Two days after arriving, Cregan went for a day out at the Koh Samui Shooting Range.


Dale Gregan
SUNDAY MIRROR EXCLUSIVE

Wearing a disturbing false eye made of black onyx, he grinned as friends captured chilling images of him on camera brandishing a pump-action shotgun.

In another shot he is gripping a Glock pistol.

Yesterday a source said: “Dale was among 20 lads who went. He paid for the whole thing. Pretty much as soon as they arrived Dale said he wanted to go to the firing range. They all went and Dale was being his typical self.

“He was firing different types of guns and posing for pictures. When you look at them now you realise he just didn’t care. He’d just killed one of his gangland rivals and there he is posing with these guns.”

Cregan, who bulked up his muscles using steroids, spent all day at the range, where prices start at £19 a session and semi-automatic machine gun bullets cost £2 each.

He practised his aim, taking shots at paper cut-out targets strung up in the gallery.

The gun club offers holidaymakers a wide choice of pistols, revolvers and semi-automatic rifles, and states in an online advert that it is legal and licensed.

Cregan spent a full day at the range before returning to the five-star, £105-a-night Peace Resort on Koh Samui to party with his friends.

It was at another Thai shooting range in the resort of Pattaya that taxi driver Derrick Bird fired shotguns and high-calibre revolvers before he went on a rampage in Cumbria in 2010.

He shot dead 12 people and injured another 11 before killing himself.
On Cregan’s return to the UK on June 12, he was arrested as he stepped off the plane at Manchester Airport.

But officers had to release him on bail while they gathered [at]evidence to support a murder charge. And that decision left Cregan free to kill again.

On August 10 he murdered David Short, father of his first victim, in a gun and grenade attack.

At some point while he was free he went on the run across Europe before returning to Manchester. Finally, on September 18, he made the hoax call that lured the two WPCs to their deaths.



He called 999 to make a false report of a concrete slab being hurled at the window of a house in Greater Manchester.

When WPCs Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone arrived he opened fire. He shot PC Bone, 32, up to eight times, killing her with a bullet to the heart, and he fired at PC Hughes, 23, three times in the head at point-blank range.

He fled the scene, but turned himself in an hour later at Hyde Police Station.

Cregan admitted the four murders and three attempted murders at his trial.



His friends Luke Livesey, 28, and Damian Gorman, 38, were convicted of the murder of Mark Short, 23, and the attempted murders of three others at the pub in Droylsden.

At his trial jurors heard details of his trip to Thailand.

One friend told the court how Cregan would regularly visit the country for lavish holidays, always treating friends along the way.

But on Thursday justice was finally served.

At Preston Crown Court Mr Justice Holroyde QC sentenced Cregan, 30, to a whole-life tariff at the conclusion of a five-month, high-security trial which had cost £5million.

He said he had “acted with premeditated savagery”.

Cregan, also a cocaine dealer, repeatedly opened fire on WPC Bone, who had been due to get married, and WPC Hughes.

“You, Cregan, drew those two officers into a calculated trap for the sole purpose of murdering them in cold blood… You pursued them with a cold-blooded ruthlessness, determined to end their lives,” said the judge.

Campaigners yesterday said our revelations were further proof of the need to bring in tougher regulations on gun clubs.

Echoing Lyn Costello’s call, Gill Marshall-Andrews, head of the Gun Control Network, said yesterday: “Some of these shooting activities in foreign countries are truly terrifying and people who are attracted to this type of activity should not be allowed to have a fire arms licence.”

It has also emerged that Cregan was paying Russian gangsters to protect him after he fled to Spain during his 42 days on the run.

- Cregan’s mother Anita, 56, appeared before Manchester magistrates yesterday.

Alongside Kathryn Smith, 25, and Sean Booth, 31, she is accused of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office.

All the charges relate to Smith’s job as a call handler for Greater Manchester Police and the release of sensitive information.

All three were remanded and will appear at Manchester Crown Court on June 28.

mirror.co.uk