Armed Police officers

The rural police forces are saying that they are sitting ducks, in the case of a terrorist attack, due to there being a lack of armed police officers, so a BBC report says.  Is this the case?  Aren't I the man to find this out?  The thing is, this doesn't look at the full spectrum of things that come under the banner of terrorism. WHat about training?  What about intelligence?  Are those the sort of things that Wales needs to look at?

After asking the home office:

1)How many armed police officers are there in the UK at the present moment

2) How much is spent on recruiting armed police officers

3) How much is spent on training armed police officers

I got a very interesting answer.  They basically said the data was in the public domain for the first part of the question, HOWEVER:

turning to parts two and three of your request, the Home Office does not centrally record

the recruitment and training costs for armed officers across forces in England and Wales.

It is for Chief Officers to determine the number and recruit and train authorised firearms

Police Chief officers to determine?  The request that I made about the training programmes has still yet to be answered at time of writing.  

That's the home office sorted.  Let’s get a bit closer to home.  Let's ask all police forces in Wales about how many armed police officer they have.  That would at least help us to see what we can do regarding wales. Gwent police basically refused me…  Because the information is publically  available.  Pretty  cool, eh kids?  Now the boys in North Wales Police (They’re amazing) stated that they have a joint armed force response unit with Cheshire. They have 100 armed police officers (combined).  At time of writing Dyfed Powys Police and South Wales Police have yet to get back in touch with me. 

The table of armed police officers in these are aer as follows:

Wales	244
Dyfed-Powys	63
Gwent	45
North Wales	48
South Wales	88

SO what is the amount that is needed to be “Safe” or “prepared”?   Now that is a harder number to come up with.  

What about training?  Has any of the police forces, in Wales, had any training from the Metropolitan Police office? They usually deal with things like this.,  South Wales police have not had any training from Metropolitan Police.  Hmm… Neither has Gwent Police.  North Wales Police have had the following training:

CSD MET POLICE PATHOGENS COURSE x1

CSD MET FIELD INTELLIGENCE OFFICER COURSE x1

DOG SECTION GENERAL PURPOSE INSTRUCTOR x1

HYDRA FACILITATION COURSE x1

TERRORIST FINANCIAL INVESTIGATION x2

NATIONAL NEGOTIATOR'S TRAINING x5

Dyfed Powys police have yet to get back to me (At time of writing). So why ask this question to the police?  Because the Metropolitan police have something call a gang matrix which  tracks gangs, and terrorists.  If Wales has had this training then we have a better idea of being protected and a better of idea what we are facing. So I await with bated breath the update on this post..