Buffalo Police officers are still waiting for city lawmakers to make a decision on their request for AR-15-Rifles. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley recently sat down with the first vice president of the Buffalo Police Union about the recent wave of national violence.
“We’ve had several officers ask when are we going to get Tasers, we are we going to get AR-15’s,” said John Evans, First Vice President, Buffalo Police Benevolent Association.
"No police officer wants to kill anybody," said John Evans, First Vice President, Buffalo Police Benevolent Association.
With mass shootings, fears of terrorist attacks and other violence, Evans explains police officers want help in their jobs.
“From your perspective, what is the answer?” asked Buckley. “I would say I don’t have the answer. What I would love to see, a class in high school, say 9th grade, where police contact and compliance was somehow taught, because I think maybe at a young age, if you are compliant with police officers – yea, you might go to jail for whatever you did, you may go to jail, but you’re going to live. No police officer wants to kill anybody, but when we are driven to that point, then we have to, we are compelled to for our own lives and citizens,” Evans explained.
When Evans was asked if he is worried that Buffalo is one step away from the police violence that has occurred in other communities, Evans does not think that will happen.
“Honestly, I really haven’t seen it in Buffalo. I really think we have a pretty good rapport with the public at large,” replied Evans.
Evans is a former Attica Correctional Guard. He said when he experienced clashes in jail the older generation of prisoners actually showed more respect for the guards then the younger generation of those who are incarcerated.
“They keep on fighting and everything else as though you are not even there, so that causes you to use force to break them up, but you rather they just give up, comply, the fights over, same way on the street, whatever criminal act you did, okay, it’s over, you got caught,” Evans described.
Evans tells WBFO News for now he calls on officers to remain ‘vigilant’.
