security
I've always been rather perplexed at why SO14 officers are described as "elite" and "crack". An officer in 2000 fired his gun aboard the Royal Train while the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were onboard. In 2009, court testimony revealed that police officers in the Buckingham Palace police station gambled, had sex parties, and handled load duty-issued guns whilst drunk. On September 16, 2010, Chief Superintendent Boyes, the Queen's personal police officer, her last line of defense, seen standing behind her att the 2011 Royal Maundy Service and guarding her during the Royal Wedding and at the train station going to Sandringham last year, who was trained by the Special Air Services, accidentally fired his weapon while cleaning it, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse the day before Pope Benedict arrived for a state visit. Now on October 24th, an SAS-trained officer guarding William and Catherine's home fired off a round accidentally. These are the elite officers guarding the Royal Family? In the States, the Secret Service has been caught up in a scandal over consensual sex with prostituites while on a foreign trip, true. But none of these agents were on duty at the time. It's a miracle one of the Queen's bodyguards hasn't accidentally shot someone, like Her Majesty. Who trains these people exactly? How are they trained? And how is it that the British taxpayer has to pay a quarter million quid each for these "elite" police officers who are so trigger-happy they risk shooting themselves in the foot because they don't know how to properly handle loaded guns? Of course less we forget, the "scandals" because the Duchess of Cambridge bared her breasts at a private estate and Prince Harry allowed American girls to con him into playing strip billards with them. If a photographer with a long lens could take a photo of the Duchess nude from a public road, isn't it clear that a trained marksman with a high-powered gun could get to that vantage point as well? Prince Harry could've been spared embarrassment by having the girls' cell phones confiscated, which seems a no-brainer to me in this modern age. Now I don't think anything bad will necessarily happen to one of the royals because their security details aren't up to the job, but why tempt fate? Perhaps the Army's paratroopers or the SAS themselves should take over security. It doesn't seem that the Met's up to the job anymore.