The dark side of St Helena 's new
international age is already manifesting despite the fact that the airport has
still not yet fully opened, see background links below for more details. The St
Helena Government has announced that the island's police are receiving training
in how to use tasers, a supposedly "non-lethal" weapon. St
Helena is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena,
Ascension and Tristan da Cunha ; and it has a unified
police force consisting of just seventy officers. There are sixty-three on St
Helena and six on Ascension Island . Tristan
da Cunha has just one full-time officer with three special reserve
assistants. Small and isolated settlements tend to have very low crime rates
and St Helena seems to be no exception according to the
UK Government's foreign travel advice page; this is despite worrying levels of
poverty there. So why are tasers deemed necessary? The St Helena Government has
reassured us that this weapon will not be routinely carried by officers on
duty, but the option will be there to issue it with permission of a senior
officer. However, the very fact this policing method has been introduced must
sound strange to the Saints, I imagine. Tasers are far from
"non-lethal" in practice. Only a few weeks ago the former Aston Villa
footballer Dalian Atkinson was killed by one, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/ex-footballer-killed-by-taser.html.
He is just one of over a hundred people who have died under the electrodes of
police tasers since its invention. It has also been revealed that the St
Helena police are training with standard firearms too. Source: http://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/police-service-developing-firearms-taser-capability/
and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_auUdgR3dQ.
What's going on? Are the authorities on the island tacitly preparing for a
change in society in which levels of antisocial and unlawful behaviour are
predicted to rise?
See here for
background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/st-helena-airport-update.html.
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