THE TRAGIC killing of 25-year-old woman police officer Nina Mackay highlights the dangers and stresses our police officers face all the time.

It underlines, too, the fact that they must have all the protection they regard as necessary to safeguard them from attack.

It used to be that, in far less violent times, all the police officer needed was a wooden truncheon and even then it was a weapon that was seldom drawn.

And though it may be a grim commentary on today's society that we now see officers equipped with body armour, American-style night-sticks and CS gas sprays, with WPC Mackay's death comes the inevitable question: Is it enough?

True, the circumstances of her alleged murder pose other questions. Why had she felt it necessary to remove her heavy-duty protective vest?

Why had there been a hold-up in the issue of lightweight body armour which Miss Mackay might have kept on?

Yet today many will be asking if this young policewoman might still be alive if she had been armed with a gun.

Or if the abandoned hangman's noose was brought back for police-killers.

Both, of course, would be disturbing departures for our society.

Certainly, as Home Secretary Jack Straw points out today, issuing all officers with guns all the time might have the unwelcome effect of distancing the police from the public.

But what of the criterion that, in doing such a dangerous job for the public's security, the police deserve all the protection possible?

It is a difficult question, but it is one best left to those who are the experts in the dangers that they face - the police themselves.

If officers feel that the safeguards they have at present are not sufficient and that they need guns, then the Home Office must consider any such call on the strict merits of how many young lives like that of Nina Mackay might be spared as a result.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.