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JUSTICE campaigners yesterday called for a debate in the Scottish Parliament after Police Scotland admitted that more than 400 officers had been secretly authorised to carry handguns.
An investigation by the Sunday Mail newspaper revealed that Scotland’s Chief Constable Sir Stephen House had given “standing authority” for armed response vehicle crews to be deployed with “handguns and less lethal weapons” while on routine patrol.
Labour justice spokesman Graeme Pearson MSP, himself a former police inspector, said the “change in the culture of policing” needed to be debated by parliament and that the public ought to be consulted.
Human rights group Justice Scotland chairman John Scott QC said: “To have armed police officers on the street routinely is quite wrong.”
A spokeswoman for Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said crime was “at an almost 40-year low” but insisted that resource deployment was “a matter for Police Scotland.”