introduction: the hardest job in policing?catalogimages.wiley.com/images/db/pdf/9780470779262...p1:...

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Chapter 1

Introduction: The Hardest Jobin Policing?

One of the most important decisions the state can make is to cause the death of one ofits citizens and perhaps the most difficult and controversial decision a police officer canmake as an agent of the state is to take the life of a fellow citizen. Traditional policingdiscourses have tended to balance the needs of liberty, security and police accountability,with traditional policing styles in the UK being based on notions of reasonableness,compromise and respect for individual rights. Technological advances have informedchoices around equipment, dress, weapons including lethal/non-lethal options in waysthat have certainly transformed the appearance of policing and have, arguably, also ledto a paramilitarisation of policing practice and assumptions (we develop this discussionlater in the book). Military styles of policing, with their overt displays of force tendto overlook civil rights and (perhaps partly as a result) are prone to more ‘errors ofcommission’ (Kennison and Loumansky, 2007; McCulloch, 1996).

Trust in the police is also essential since this secures our consent to be policed and atrustworthy police is one which acknowledges our civil rights. Indeed, the major threadrunning through the book is that for 150 years police use of force has been formally basedupon notions of restraint, minimal force, the rule of law, not setting out to kill the suspect,discretion at the moment of firing for the officers involved and the legal responsibility ofthe individual officer. This notion of policing we refer to as the restraint paradigm andwe set this against a more military paradigm which is characterised by low discretion,hierarchical chains of command, ‘risk management’ or overwhelming superiority offirepower at close quarters and target incapacitation (arguably, ‘shooting to kill’) toeliminate the danger. It is interesting that the SAS was active in Northern Ireland, trainedthe RUC special units and still plays a role in training the ‘heavier’ firearms units inBritain. But the SAS training of its own soldiers is based on ambush or confrontationtechniques, intense firepower and killing the opponent (whereas policing emphasisescontainment and minimum casualties with suspects apprehended for criminal justiceprocessing rather than summary execution) (Steinert, 2004; see Urban, 1992 on SAS).In sum the military model tends towards secrecy, overwhelming force, uncompromisingtactics and military solutions which, post-9/11, are seeing more frequent applications

Shooting to Kill?: Policing, Firearms and Armed Response. By Peter Squires and Peter KennisonC© 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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2 Shooting to Kill?

in mainstream policing. In such demanding situations and especially with far morefrequent armed response deployments a greater burden of responsibility will fall uponthe armed police officers who are called to an incident. As one police firearms instructor,welcoming a cohort of officers applying for AFO training, put it,

You guys have all applied to take on one of the hardest jobs in policing. We need to seewhether you are up to that challenge. You need to know that too (Special OperationsInstructor, AFO course applicants).

The difficulties associated with spontaneous and unpredictable events increases thelikelihood that mistakes and errors will be made. Yet we know that violence and shooting,even when practised by seasoned professionals is hazardous and surrounded by tensions,pressures and various perceptual distortions. This is so even for highly trained policepersonnel (Collins, 2008). Despite this (perhaps because of it) there is no open debateabout the police use of firearms in the UK. Police policy is developed in secret by anon-statutory body – the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) which is perhapsthe most influential group of unelected opinion formers. When ACPO advises thengovernments tend to listen and take action. The closed corridors of senior police policymaking have tended somewhat to insulate police decision making from external scrutiny,complaint and criticism – except, too late, when things go badly wrong. These internalaccountability systems have become institutionalised up and down police professionalhierarchies, becoming authenticated through partnership with a variety of agencies whichnow have a vested interest in the delivery of central and local policing services throughworking together. This form of accountability becomes especially insular given the leadrole of the Metropolitan Force in police operational policy making, armed response(including Kratos) and public order strategy included.

McKenzie, in his forward-looking article entitled ‘Policing force rules, hierarchiesand consequences’, wrote about the secrecy of firearms policy in the UK, which was notthe subject of informed public debate. He contended that keeping things away from the‘bad guys’ (which was the usual explanation) and allowing matters to remain secret hadbeen part of a grander culture of concealment and cover-up for many years (McKenzie,1996a, 2000, pp. 183–6). Maintaining secrecy rather than being open and transparent onpolicy matters militates against the notion of police/public partnership as trust relies oninformation flow in both directions not just from the public to the police. In essence thissituation becomes counter-productive, compromising former traditional liberal policingstyles. A wider constituency of police and security professionals, partners, advisers,technicians, consultants and ‘police scientists’ now share in this policy developmentprocess and they also share in the sense of denial alluded to by Bunyard in 2003. AlthoughBunyard was specifically referring to denials about corruption, a similar ‘stubborn refusalat all levels . . . to acknowledge that a serious problem exists’ pervades a great deal ofpolice policy making, not least the development of armed response policy (Bunyard,2003, p. 94).

Police shootings threaten to tear through the fabric of trust, legitimacy and account-ability upon which policing depends; they expose, just for a moment, the implicit (usuallyhidden) but necessary forcefulness at the heart of police power. The way that incidentsare recorded, resolved or in some cases judged or determined, represents a vital part ofthe processes of reconciliation by which ‘normal policing’ is restored (and here the roleof the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is required by law toformally investigate each police shooting, is vital). The IPCC’s role is crucial because it


Introduction: The Hardest Job in Policing? 3

will investigate to find out what happened in its search for the truth, then publish openlythe results. For, whereas a shooting is intended to bring order, eliminate risk, neutralisea threat, or incapacitate an aggressor, the law follows behind as if equipped with mopand bucket to clean up and close down. Saying this is certainly not to claim that anypolice shooting incident, from the decision to deploy firearms, the identification of thetarget, the authorisation to shoot, the police marksman’s sense of absolute responsibilityto the awesome burden of responsibility borne by this officer, is not at every stage framedby the law (as the various editions of the ACPO Manual of Guidance on Police Use ofFirearms makes absolutely clear). It is simply that when a finger pulls a trigger to senda bullet spinning towards a human target (where a decision made in seconds can haverepercussions for years), it is not law, human rights or professional ethics, but physicsand human biology, reactions, reflexes, skill, training and a fair measure of chance whichdetermines what happens next. Accuracy permitting, force pure and simple (collectivelygiven the rather unfortunate title of ‘terminal ballistics’), will determine the outcome.Such a potentially contingent outcome is not something with which policing is espe-cially comfortable. Hence the story of a shooting, how it is authorised, remembered andaccounted for, and the lessons to be drawn from it (including, sometimes, why they arenot learned) are vital aspects of armed response policy and practice. Peter Waddington,whose various writings on police armed response policy we engage with at a number oftimes throughout this book, has provided an analogy from the field of public disordermanagement that we find very useful when discussing armed response. ‘Senior officersprivately concede’, he writes, ‘that once a baton charge is initiated, it is largely beyondtheir control to direct. The police are “out of control” ’ (Waddington, 1991, p. 177). By thesame token when an armed police officer is placed in a critical ‘shoot–don’t shoot ’ situationthe outcome is determined by factors reaching far beyond the conventional, foreseeable,professional or legal ‘chain of command’ scenarios that may have been worked on atlength in training – as Scharf and Binder’s (1983) extensive study of police-involvedshootings in the USA shows. This work has partly been replicated in England and Walesby Best and Quigley (2003) for the Police Complaints Authority. Making such a point isnot to claim, as each of these authors readily acknowledge, that training and procedurescannot influence police involved shootings – both in their frequency and their outcomes –it is simply that there is much more involved.

As a telling illustration of these tensions and dilemmas, here recounted from theperspective of an armed response officer, we reproduce the description given by AndyHailwood, then a GMP firearms officer, experiencing his first ‘dynamic entry’ raid.Hailwood’s book is one of a number written by former armed response officers, a sub-genre in the police autobiography field. We consider other similar texts at various pointsin our developing commentary.

At 4.30 on a dark and mild spring morning, I stood on a terraced street in Salford withten other armed officers. I would be the second man in to a two-up-two-down terracedproperty in the hope of arresting an Irish gypsy believed to be in possession of a smallhandgun and wanted for a gruesome murder.

I was 23 years of age, my arsehole was tight enough to extract the tops of beer bottles.My stomach was in knots, but I was enjoying myself . . . Through my earpiece I heard‘Strike! Strike! Strike!’ This was the command to physically smash down the door and forall teams to enter and arrest . . . Jimmy located the stairs and sprinted up them two at a timescreaming ‘Armed Police! Armed Police!’ Adrenalin had kicked in and I was up Jimmy’sbackside moving equally as fast. Jim had increased our field of vision by activating the


4 Shooting to Kill?

Maglite mounted on his shotgun. He booted the first bedroom door he came across andimmediately entered. I had my pistol in my right hand, supported by my left and in theon-aim position.

Jimmy immediately made his way to a double bed in the middle of the room. I couldhear booming around the rest of the property, ‘Armed Police! Armed Police!’ and the heavyfootsteps of officers running as they continued to enter . . . Jim had located a man tryingto hide under the mess of a bed I would normally call a duvet. Jim was screaming at him,‘Armed Police, show me your hands!’ Everything seemed to slow down and my visionappeared to increase and focus as if I was looking through a telescope. If it was possible, theroom had gone quiet although I knew Jim was shouting. The occupant of the bed fitted thedescription of the target but he wasn’t showing hands, he was rummaging amongst the shithe slept in.

My mind had decided what he was doing. I had judged him and now I was going tosentence him. I took the first pressure up on the trigger of my revolver and started to initiatea shot. His hands seemed to be moving in the direction of his bollocks and I had decided hewas looking for the small firearm hidden down his Y-fronts. I was clinically going to shootthis individual. I started to increase the pressure on the trigger and acquire a sight picture,when my bubble was burst. Jim pulled away the bedclothes to reveal a naked male who waspissing himself with fright. “Handcuff him”, shouted Jim . . .

We made our way back to Bootle Street and after a less than concise debrief we were toldto take the rest of the day off. As I handed in my weapon, Jim winked and said, ‘You did OKthere, Andy’. OK ? I nearly shot someone. Hadn’t Jim noticed? (from Hailwood, 2004, pp.99–100, reproduced by permission of the publisher).

The issues raised by this account resonate throughout our whole book (not to mentionthe history of police armed response itself), in particular many of the case studies in thepenultimate chapter, and our account of the Stockwell incident (Chapter 2). The issuesraised speak to police training and policy development, standard operating procedures,the law, police psychology and officer perceptions, and the practice of (both pre-plannedand spontaneous) incident management, all of which we consider later in the book.Fortunately, Hailwood’s incident did not spiral out of control. Echoing US militaryslang, armed police officers appear to have their own term – a ‘clusterfuck’ – to describewhen everything goes badly wrong. Later in the book we will be encountering a few ofthese.

Shots Around the World

Reference has already been made to some of the American literature where the scienceof police shooting is rather more advanced because, with a routinely armed policeservice, the practice is more common. Rather more worryingly we have also unearthedevidence from other parts of the world where ‘shooting to kill’ is far from being the guiltysecret of a clandestine security force but, rather, something enthusiastically demandedof the police by a fearful populace. For example, Susan Shabangu, South Africa’s DeputySecurity Minister, told a packed public meeting in Pretoria during 2008 that the policehad her permission to kill criminals. ‘I want to assure the police station commissionersand policemen and women . . . that they have permission to kill these criminals. Iwon’t tolerate any pathetic excuses for you not being able to deal with crime. Youhave been given guns, now use them.’ She went on to add that police ‘must kill the



[criminal] bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry aboutthe regulations – that is my responsibility. Your responsibility is to serve and protect.I want no warning shots. You have one shot and it must be a kill shot’ (Evans, 2008).Although her outburst was strongly criticised by fellow South African politicians, herwords were greeted by a standing ovation from her immediate audience. The meetinghad been called to discuss the spiralling crime and violence rates in South Africa where,within a population less than that of England and Wales, the previous year had seenover 22,000 murders (approximately 60 per day) and over 100 police officers shot. Forobvious reasons, therefore, attitudes to police shootings may be both contested andcontext specific. But, in truth, there is not so much difference between the attitudesdisplayed by South Africa’s security minister and those reflected on the front page of theSun newspaper in Britain the day after Jean Charles de Menezes was mistakenly shot inLondon. ‘One down, Two to go’ its headline ran (cited in Hillyard, 2005, p. 2).

By contrast, the perspective of the UN, a wide variety of NGOs and internationalpolicing agencies has sought to curb and control unwarranted, unauthorised and illegaluse of force by police and security forces. The United Nations Code of Conduct for LawEnforcement Officials (1979), the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearmsby Law Enforcement Officials (1990) and the Amnesty International, Control Armsreport on Guns and policing: Standards to prevent misuse (2004) have sought to specifybasic principles to guide professionalism in the safe use of firearms by civilian policeforces around the world. It is notable that most of the latter’s examples of systematicpolice misuse of firearms emanate from former colonial policing systems or societiesundergoing demilitarisation. Addressing police abuses of lethal force is seen to run handin hand with addressing the proliferation of firearms in civilian hands.

Currently there are disparate, although rapidly growing, literatures on police con-vergence, international police reform and police/security interfaces, on the one hand(Andreas and Nadelmann, 2006; Hinton and Newburn, 2009) and, on the other, workon ‘death squads’, ‘police vigilantism’, post-colonial paramilitarism and extra-legal vio-lence (Campbell and Brenner, 2000; Huggins, 1991; Mars, 2002; Penglase, 1996; Prattenand Sen, 2007) which still require assimilating and developing with the more theoreticalpolicing literatures on the ‘transformation of policing’ (Bayley and Shearing, 1996; Jonesand Newburn, 2002) or the emergence of the ‘new policing’ (McLaughlin, 2007).

There has been much discussion of the ‘new policing’ (McLaughlin, 2007) or of the‘transformation of policing’ (Jones and Newburn, 2002) and of the contexts in which thisnew policing operates (Johnston, 2000). Much of this work has tended to focus on the‘symbolic’ community reassurance end of the spectrum of police activity (private policing(the mixed economy of policing and the public/private interface), multi-agency or quasi-policing of low-level disorders (incivilities and ASB), and fear and reassurance issues).By contrast, our book explores the other (more coercive and forceful) end of the ‘newpolicing’ spectrum (some of which is referred to as ‘high policing’)1 where, interestingly,many similar issues also prevail (public/private relationships, the mixed economies offorce, fear and reassurance). Fundamentally, we would argue that unless the study of newpolicing attends to both ends of the policing spectrum then the very phenomenon of

1 The notion of ‘high’ and ‘low’ policing was raised by Brodeur (1983) when he suggested a distinctionshould be made between the two. High policing is essentially based on the collection and processing of validinformation reaching beyond criminal intelligence and into the realms of economics and politics (domesticand international). Low policing on the other hand refers to traditional activities of public police departments,such as patrol, order maintenance and the control of street crime (Brodeur, 1999).


6 Shooting to Kill?

‘new policing’ itself is being inadequately conceived. This is so especially in contexts wherenew (and often inter-related) criminal threats: global terror campaigns and resultinginsecurities and organised transnational criminal activity place new demands uponpolicing ‘at home’, or where weak or transitional political authorities, regional conflictsand/or inter-ethnic rivalries and divisions further blur our distinctions between militaryintervention, peacekeeping and policing (Steinert, 2004).

It had been our original ambition that a further chapter of this book would engagewith this growing international literature, but reasons of scale and time rather precludedthis. Central to our ambitions in this, as yet unwritten, analysis would have been anattempt to situate firearm deployment and frequency of use within the useful typologyof policing systems developed by Rob Mawby (1990, 1999).

Using concepts of legitimacy, structure and function to apply to different policingsystems Mawby establishes four key types of policing system (The Local Constabularymodel; the Continental model, the Colonial model and the Communist model) and twomore recent subtypes (the Post-Colonial model and the Post-Communist model). Thesesix types were then explored via case studies of national police forces correspondingto each model. In adapting and developing this typology our aim had partly been toadd another dimension to Mawby’s existing three, namely ‘context’. This was in orderto assess the extent to which police firearm deployment and use varied systematicallyacross different policing systems and in relation to the contextual crime and disorderproblems with which the police were required to deal. As Waddington has argued ‘thenature of policing, including the role that weapons play, cannot be divorced from thecontext in which policing takes place’. And especially, in this regard, the degree to whichthe policed civil population are considered as ‘citizens’ and have attained meaningfuland enforceable civil rights and freedoms is critical (Waddington, 1999, p. 152). Thishelps to explain the robust paramilitary-style policing to which indigenous populationshave historically been subjected (India, South Africa, Australia, the USA, Canada andIreland) and may point to a continuing policing legacy in certain post-colonial policingsystems (Anderson and Killingray, 1991, 1992; Brogden and Shearing, 1993; Das andVerma, 1998; Meliala, 2001; Smith, 2004). Similar considerations also apply to com-munist policing systems, which represent, in Mawby’s typology, a stronger variant ofthe continental model embracing a clearer and more explicit, political and ideological,state security role. Therefore civilianising post-communist policing systems also typi-cally entails democratising and demilitarising them whilst simultaneously investing incitizenship rights (Beck and Robertson, 2009; Ivkovic and Haberfield, 2000).

Yet, as if to demonstrate that simple typologies cannot answer all our questions,Knutsson and Strype (2003) present a comparative analysis of the police use of firearmsin Norway and Sweden which revealed that ‘Swedish officers fired shots in police–citizenencounters about five times more often than their Norwegian counterparts’ (p. 438).While, to an outsider, any differences between these two relatively small, Scandinavian,affluent, welfare capitalist societies might seem to be overwhelmed by the similarities,this evidence on police-involved shootings stands as an anomaly. In fact, the differenceis simply accounted for. Swedish police officers routinely carry firearms whilst on dutywhereas in Norway firearm deployment and use has to be specially authorised. Theauthors relate the greater frequency of police shootings (and a higher rate of injuredpolice officers) in Sweden to the availability of firearms and the police practices ofengaging suspects arising from this. In Norway, the evidence suggests, police tend toadopt different methods of engaging potentially dangerous suspects (Knutsson andStrype, 2003, p. 432). Although they call for further research to explore these issues, their



data suggests an interesting paradox ‘the absence of [police] firearms acts as a protectivefactor for police officers’ (ibid., p. 438).2

Of course the differing availability of firearms to Swedish and Norwegian policeofficers might be read as an example of how legal and administrative policies influencepolice custom and practice regarding the use of force – or policing routines, and thistopic has been extensively studied in the USA. However, in the US context we are not justconfronted with a routinely armed police service inheriting aspects of a colonial culturaltradition, we also have a rather uniquely armed citizenry. As we argue in Chapter6, Policing in a ‘Gun Culture’, both firearms availability in citizen conflicts and thepropensity to use them have to be taken into account. In the US, a tradition of violencein law enforcement that some commentators trace back to the lawless ‘frontier culture’(Brown, 1975) and the policing of more contemporary social and cultural divisions,have fostered the conditions for a discourse on ‘shooting to kill’ uniquely preoccupiedwith the ‘man-stopping’ qualities of certain types of weapons and ammunition. It isworth noting how, despite its cultural and historical associations, not unlike Garland’sargument about the very contemporary significance of the death penalty in the politicsof US punitiveness (Garland, 2002, 2004), this is a modern discourse rooted in whatmight be called ‘ballistic realism’. Two authors in particular, eschewing the ‘laboratoryapproach’ to firearms and ammunition testing, base their assessment of optimum lawenforcement, combat-ready handguns and ammunition types on what they call fieldexperiences – or actual police shootings (‘nothing provides validated data like actualshootings’). They assemble their evidence in two books: Handgun stopping power: Thedefinitive study (Marshall and Sanow, 1992) and, Street stoppers: The latest handgunstopping power street results (Marshall and Sanow, 1996).

These writers and their colleagues emphatically do not subscribe to what they deri-sively refer to as ‘magic bullet theory’ and are at pains to emphasise restraint (‘the onlyway to keep from getting hurt in a gun fight is don’t get in a gunfight’ (Jones, 1996)),a correct mental attitude, tactics, training and marksmanship. But at the critical pointof last resort when officers need to shoot, they argue, they need a weapon and a loadthat will do the job required. There is, they suggest, no such thing as a ‘man-stopping’bullet that will deliver, every time, the ‘one-shot-knockdown’ (and they caution againstwhat they refer to as ‘training by Hollywood’). Instead, from their reconstructions ofpolice shooting scenarios, they begin to derive lessons that have a direct bearing uponweapon and ammunition design characteristics as well as guidance and training for boththe police (and civilian self-defence shooters). For example: ‘despite the thousands ofwords that have been written about stopping power, the truth is that the effect a bullethas on a body is a crap shoot. There are too many variables for accurate prediction.However, most gun experts agree that larger calibre bullets that expand and stay in thebody are more effective (Bird, 1997, p. 45), Marshall and Sanow further add that better,‘survival-oriented’ decisions will be made by officers who ‘expect their bullet to havelittle, if any, effect on the target’. Furthermore, sensible officers ‘will fire from behindcover or get behind cover as soon as possible. They will fire numerous times. They will

2 This is so in the strong specific sense in that availability of police firearms has an apparent impact uponpolice–citizen encounters and also in the more generic sense that availability of firearms (illegal or otherwise)in a population tends to increase illegal gun violence (Global Firearms Deaths, 2005: www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm) and thereby contributes to arguments for more routinely arming the police. Therefore,maintaining effective gun control policies at the population level is also an important element in restrainingrates of police–citizen shootings. Perhaps it goes without saying but, in the USA in particular, these broadconclusions are hotly contested by gun rights advocates (see Spitzer, 1998; Squires, 2000b).


8 Shooting to Kill?

be more precise in their fire. They will keep their gun pointed at the target until they areabsolutely sure the action is finished’ (Marshall and Sanow, 1992, p. 3). A neurologist,Dennis Tobin, contributing a chapter to Marshall and Sanow’s first book endorses thisapproach, ‘there is no “one-hundred per cent” one-shot stopper “magic bullet” even withrare head shots. It should lend support to the shooting theory to “keep shooting untilthey are down or you are out of bullets,” as taught in many academies. Multiple hits docount significantly’ (Tobin, 1992, p. 10). Until recently, therefore, this ‘ballistic realism’,has pulled in a rather different direction to the demands of police accountability in theUK, given that ACPO guidance discourages firearms officers from firing secondary or‘additional’ shots (ACPO, 2003, paras 3.1 and 6.4, emphasis added). Under the OperationKratos guidance for tackling suspected suicide terrorist suspects, however, the value ofrepeated, close range, head shots to achieve rapid incapacitation superseded this morestandard advice. These issues are taken up later.

Controversy

Notwithstanding the relative infrequency of police shootings, almost everything aboutsuch incidents is controversial and hotly contested. As McCulloch notes, ‘fatal shootingsby the police reside at the extreme end of police use of force and power with conse-quences that are irreversible . . . the single most controversial policing issue’ (McCulloch,1996). In her study of media reactions to police shootings in Australia she also notesmany recognisable features of similar incidents in other parts of the world: distrust andattempted cover-ups, incompatible evidence or witness accounts, senior officers rush-ing to justification and misleading media stories. In a generic sense, such controversyis understandable, as Scharf and Binder recognise for ‘the issue of police deadly forcereflects the symbolic issue of the moral limits of the power of the state’ (Scharf andBinder, 1983, p. 100). In a sense, the police use of force, here represented through policefirearms use, already tests vital discourses of police legitimacy and accountability to theirliberal democratic limits (Skinner, 2003). As Waddington and Wright acknowledge, forthe ‘policeman as citizen’ tradition, ‘the ready availability of lethal weapons for policeuse symbolizes a clear disparity of power between police and citizens’ (2007, p. 466).Although this may not be such a critical issue where civilian gun ownership is morewidespread.

Such broad and, perhaps, inevitable controversy also influences many of the detailedelements of shooting incidents. Not only are they rare, they are also extreme and therefore‘newsworthy’ entailing moral dimensions of good and evil, our worst fears, the greatestrisks and an ‘all too human’ capacity for error. Likewise public attitudes towards thepolice use of force, sometimes pretty raw, often ill-informed or maybe easily-led (or evenwith their own axes to grind), falling somewhere between Susan Shabangu’s ‘kill thecriminal bastards’ and a civil libertarian critique of creeping police paramilitarism, maynot be the most reliable or consistent standpoint from which to judge.

When police officers are killed or seriously injured on duty the call often goes out fora more routine arming of police officers and, as we show in Chapter 4, during the mid1990s the Police Federation undertook a series of opinion polls as part of a campaign tosupport its campaign for an enhanced armed response capacity. During 2007 followingthe on-duty murder of a police officer the Daily Express front page headline (12 June2007) demanded: ‘Now arm ALL our police’ (Evans and Whitehead, 2007). An editorial



was a little more considered, noting that it was only ‘in some parts of Britain’ that‘carrying a gun was wholly appropriate for officers on routine patrol’ and it went on topropose local referendums ‘to allow law abiding citizens in every area to vote on whethertheir local force should carry guns’. Six years earlier, in the course of an investigativearticle into police shootings in the Guardian, Nick Davies had put the case against sucha policy, arguing (not unlike the Norway/Sweden research referred to earlier), ‘policeuse of firearms is inherently dangerous. The more police are armed, the more they willshoot the wrong people. And the law which surrounds this is inadequate and incapableof fixing the blame when things go wrong’ (Davies, 2001).

Davies’s concern had been a sequence of police shootings in the 10 years before 2001which had seen police shoot 41 persons who had been found not to be carrying firearms.He continued:

At least 15 of the victims died. And not one of the police officers who fired those shotshas been convicted of any criminal offence. The vast majority were not even prosecuted . . .

Police officers in England and Wales now shoot people once every seven or eight weeks.This might look like a disturbing sequence of corrupt decisions, effectively a licence forpolice officers to kill. In reality, it indicates something very different but equally disturbing,not just for potential victims but also for the police officers who may fire at them (Davies,2001).

The comments take us straight back to a critical debate about ‘shooting to kill’ andthe means by which it may be controlled, prevented or averted, and how lessons canbe learned to frame future policy, the subject of our book. Note, however, how Davies,despite his critical starting point, concludes with an expression of concern also for theofficers placed in the unfortunate position of having to use their firearms. In case suchremarks might be thought to be the voice of a rather extreme position it is worth notingthe angry exchange of letters between Mayor of London candidate Boris Johnson, and thethen Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Ian Blair in the wake of the Jean Charlesde Menezes shooting. Mr Johnson had suggested in his letter that the SO19 officers mighthave been ‘too trigger happy’. The Commissioner responded: ‘I consider your commentsthat it could be argued that MPS officers are “trigger happy” are outrageous. I wouldremind you that of ten thousand potential armed incidents attended by the MPS in thepast year, shots were fired on only three occasions’ (Churcher, 2009). But, as we havealready noted, everyone remembers the three, that memory is institutionalised becausethe IPCC is required to review such incidents, the thousands of incidents which passwithout shooting leave rather less of a trace. Even so there are still issues of proportion:what factors are driving the escalating numbers of armed response deployments, whatpolicing needs do they speak to? And are the three occasions on which shots were firedstill too many when, as we have seen, ‘the only acceptable casualty rate is zero’?

Changes, Mistakes and Learning in Police Circles

According to Deborah Glass, IPCC Commissioner (2007), ‘the majority of fatal shoot-ings raise no conduct issues about the shooting itself, a conclusion usually endorsed bythe verdict of lawful killing at a coroner’s court. But there are some common themes fororganisational learning.’ Unfortunately some shootings do raise ‘conduct’ issues but, for


10 Shooting to Kill?

the most part, this is not the point. Shootings, as the case studies towards the end of thisbook reveal, frequently arouse issues of law, policy, procedure, communication, training,professionalism, accountability and incident management as well as of equipment andpolice culture. On the whole these are the focus of our analysis rather more than thebehaviour of particular officers. In a sense our analysis draws upon a distinction betweenthe actions of individuals and the collective outcomes of those actions, rather like thedistinction between racist action or behaviour and ‘institutional racism’. In a similarsense, and here the parallel with institutional racism becomes unfortunately more com-plete, these are practices and processes which the police have found it especially difficultto address, rooted as they are within a particular conception of the role and purpose ofpolicing itself. A particular illustration might elaborate this point. It is often asserted, nodoubt accurately, that the purpose of police use of firearms is not to kill but to ensurerapid incapacitation of a suspect who is presenting an immediate threat, either to a po-lice officer or to other parties (Waddington, 1991). At this point an officer may employpotentially lethal force. The use of potentially lethal force, rather inevitably, turns intoactual lethal force on a good number of occasions. However, we cannot treat fatality asif it were merely a, perhaps, unwanted and unintended ‘side effect’ of a particular policy.If we are serious about the avoidance of harm and that, ‘the only acceptable casualty rateis zero’, then fatalities are a problem to be avoided. Doing so might involve rethinkinghow a problem is policed, for example the adoption of new procedures, deeper preven-tion, or use of less lethal incapacitating technologies. A corollary of treating death as amere ‘side effect’ of police intervention might be an acceptance of poor race relations –the price to be paid – as a consequence of current policing methods. In either case wewould privilege the police perspective on their own role and purpose, deferring to apolicing point of view, as it were, something that, as critical criminologists we wouldnever normally do. Our analysis, in this sense, derives from our professional orientationand training as social scientists and forms part of a wider questioning of police account-ability, albeit at some of the most critical and specialist points of police decision making.In a sense, that is also why our title ends with a question mark: whereas the police andlegal processes exist to bring ‘closure’, the social scientist’s role is invariably to fight thisby posing the next question (as the illustration which follows, from David Simon’s work,suggests).

The suggestion is made that the police are now more effectively ‘learning from theirmistakes’ with the assistance of the IPCC (Glass, 2007). This is not a wholly straightfor-ward matter, there have been commentators such as former IPCC commissioner JohnCrawley who, after the death of a man following police contact at the G20 demonstra-tions in London during April 2009, have argued that the IPCC have come to occupy arather too cosy and uncritical relationship with the police (Crawley, 2009; Laville andLewis, 2009). Perhaps more fundamentally, however, is the reflection that ‘learning frommistakes’ is not some straightforward and inevitable process that operates according tosimple principles of revelation and accumulation. On the contrary, just as every goodsocial scientist knows that ‘facts do not speak for themselves’, so mistakes only become op-portunities for learning if we allow them to do so and, both within and without policing,there are pressures and influences which work to inhibit this reflective learning processand thereby impede reform. Critical fingers (although also, recently, the MetropolitanPolice Authority too: MPA, 2008, para. 6) often point at the influence of ‘police culture’(Chan, 1996; Fielding, 1994) and, without getting into an extensive debate on this, thereis undoubtedly some truth in the suggestion that professional and occupational culturesplay a role (though not always malign: Waddington, 1999b), in the evolution of policy



and practice just as they would for any professional group. Yet in relation to policing,one influence playing an important role, undoubtedly shaping the professional culturetoo, is the role of the law and the need for legitimate, accountable, unambiguous, legalclosure of events. The issue goes to the heart of much post-incident management bythe police and explains the significance of important police practices, such as allowingpolice officers to confer over the production of their recollection of an incident in whichthey were involved. This issue has arisen in a number of the critical shooting incidentcase studies we discuss later in the book, the practice has been criticised by a number oforganisations, including the IPCC, and recently ACPO has issued revised guidance onthis practice (ACPO Working Group on Police Use of Firearms, Circular 28/08, 2008).The problem is that the need for unambiguous legal (i.e. evidential) closure and officers’concerns about the consequences for themselves of being found to have acted unpro-fessionally, unreasonably or illegally, may prompt them towards a certain defensiveness.As IPCC Commissioner Deborah Glass notes: ‘Defensiveness on the part of officers onlyadds to the climate of suspicion and mistrust that the IPCC is trying to reduce’ (2007).Moreover defensiveness is hardly conducive to ‘learning lessons’.

Another illustration of the external pressure upon police (managers) to produce legal,definitive, unambiguous accounts to bring closure to critical incidents can be found inDavid Simon’s excellent year-long, participant observer investigation into the BaltimorePolice Homicide Unit.3 As well as handling all homicides, the unit had responsibility forinvestigating all police-involved shootings within the city. Here Simon takes up the storyof two unrelated shootings by vice squad officers that the Homicide Unit had been calledin to investigate:

As law enforcement goes, [both incidents were] downright ugly. And yet with the rightamount of talent and finesse, both incidents will be ruled justifiable by the state’s attorney’soffice. In a strictly legal sense, they can certainly be justified: before firing their weapons atthe two men, both officers may well have believed they were in jeopardy.

For homicide detectives, however, a justified police shooting means only that there wasno criminal intent behind the officer’s actions and that at the time he used deadly force theofficer genuinely believed himself or others to be in serious danger. From a legal standpointthis is a hole large enough for the proverbial truck and . . . the homicide unit will feel noqualms about using every inch of that chasm.

In the realm of American law enforcement the deceit has been standardized. Inside everymajor police department, the initial investigation of any officer involved shooting begins asan attempt to make the incident look as clean and professional as possible. . . . The bias atthe heart of such an investigation is seen as the only reasonable response to a public thatneeds to believe that good cops always make good shootings . . . Time and again the lie mustbe maintained. . . .

[Back in the office . . .] Slowly . . . the five page report begins to come together beneath thehum of [the] word-processor. Reading the draft [the lieutenant] pencils a change or two andsuggests the re-wording of a few critical sections. When it comes to police-shooting reports,[the lieutenant] is something of an artist . . . Rarely, if ever, has a shooting report bounceddown the ladder after the lieutenant has put his mark on it. As awkward and excessive as theuse of deadly force might have seemed out on that parking lot, it reads as squeaky clean inthe finished product (Simon, 1991 pp. 392–3, 397).

3 David Simon’s book Homicide: A year on the killing streets, (‘a work of journalism’), was first published in1991; it was the inspiration for the TV series Homicide: Life on the Streets. Simon also wrote and produced thelater, highly acclaimed, series The Wire.



There are many differences: different time, different place, different legal jurisdictionand – as we have already noted – context is vital. Moreover in Simon’s example thereappeared no reference to any subsequent civilian & legal oversight of police-involvedshooting investigations in Baltimore in the early 1990s. And above all we are talking of apolicing culture that is routinely armed in a society in which firearm possession is com-monplace. As we demonstrate later in the book, a wide range of research demonstratesthe potential effectiveness of differing laws, departmental policies, training practice andguidance, and oversight procedures and resolution mechanisms in restraining rates ofofficer-involved shootings. But even so, Simon’s Baltimore example does alert us to thecross-cutting internal and external pressures that any police-involved shooting is almostbound to encounter and which, in turn, can serve to inhibit institutional learning byrendering the messy, ‘awkward and excessive’ street-level practice (which might needwider discussion in order to facilitate both accountability and reform and thereby en-hance public confidence) ‘squeaky clean’ and with any uncomfortable details carefullyairbrushed from the picture. This demand for unambiguous (‘squeaky clean’) legal clo-sure and the production of a definitive account also interacts with questions of secrecy –and, in particular, the suppression of alternative accounts that might challenge theauthority of the ‘definitive’ version. In turn both processes have a bearing upon thepolice institution’s ability to learn, including what it learns and how it learns it, how itcommunicates this learning to the public, how it renders itself accountable and how itreassures.

Similar concerns have also been raised by Best and Quigley in their research on behalfof the (then) Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 2003. They drew attention to theseeming secrecy and reluctance of police policy makers in these areas to expose theirdecision making to public scrutiny.

Studies in the United States have been able to use ‘shoot–don’t shoot’ methodolo-gies to test the questions [we have] addressed . . . the reluctance of police forces inEngland and Wales to carry out such research, or even to allow access to their datato outside academics, has significantly hindered our understanding of what the keyrisks are for shots to be fired and under what circumstances this will occur. Further-more, for the effective introduction of less lethal alternatives to traditional firearms in theUnited Kingdom, it is imperative we know when shots are fired, under what circumstancesand what opportunities may exist for alternative resolution strategies to be implemented(Best and Quigley, 2003, p. 362).

In other words, the ability to learn (from mistakes) in order to thereby develop moreeffective and potentially less lethal force technologies for policing has been hamperedby secrecy and reluctance pressures harboured within policing itself. Similar issues havearisen for us in this research in relation to police ammunition choices and methods ofshooting. A few words on each, discussed in fuller context in later sections of the bookmay illustrate our points.

Police ammunition

First, regarding the selection of police ammunition in England and Wales, a Chief Super-intendent from SO19, interviewed by Fleming and Miller for a 1994 book to accompany



the Thames TV series on Scotland Yard, considered the necessary characteristics of policeammunition for use in peacetime. To a degree we have already encountered, albeit froma different context and perspective, some of these more ‘ballistic’ considerations, insofaras they relate to the US ‘stopping power’ research and debates. The SO19 commanderreflected upon the types of ammunition that the police had, almost inadvertently, inher-ited from the military. Although, in some ways, validated by the Hague Convention, hecommented, the Home Office ‘decided that [it] was the most appropriate ammunitionfor the police to use as well [because] it causes a clean wound and a minimum of suffering’(cited in Fleming and Miller, 1994, p. 231). And yet, the authors paraphrased, ‘the troubleis that such ammunition often passes clean through its target, doing minimal damage onthe way and perhaps hitting some innocent person in the vicinity’ (ibid.). In other wordsthe bullet was eminently unsuited to peacetime police usage. According to the ChiefSuperintendent, the police had moved somewhat away from the military specificationammunition, adopting instead ‘semi-jacketed’ or soft-nosed ammunition ‘designed toretain its integrity once it strikes the person’s body’ (Waddington, 1988, p. 17). But eventhis had limitations according to the SO19 man. It may stop ‘over-penetration’, ‘but in alot of circumstances it doesn’t stop the person committing further acts or attempting toescape’ (Fleming and Miller, 1994, p. 231). And then he asked, displaying a certain police‘gallows humour’, ‘if a person is committing a criminal offence and he is endangeringlife, should we actually use a bullet that is going to incapacitate him to an extent wherehe doesn’t want to play anymore?’ (ibid.). Yet despite having articulated a clear andcompelling case for the kind of ammunition available to police and civilians in the USAwhere (as we have seen) it is described as the optimum police use, last resort, form ofammunition for rapid incapacitation and minimal risk to third parties – in other words,the hollow-point round – the Chief Superintendent drew way back from advocating‘anything so extreme’ as hollow-point ammunition for British police usage because ofthe ‘considerable internal damage’ it causes on striking the human body. In any event, theauthors add, such ammunition ‘is illegal in the United Kingdom’ (Fleming and Miller,1994, p. 231).

One way to look at this, in the context of when the actual interview took place (in 1994),might be to see it as an example of historical, cultural and essentially ‘presentational’issues precluding the use of the most scientifically and ballistically appropriate ammu-nition by the UK police. In any event, in 1994 police firearms experts were adamant thathollow-points were not acceptable even though there was a pressing need to identify:

another form of ammunition that operates efficiently, and doesn’t allow the suspect to putanyone else in danger. If you’ve got a [suspect] who is intent on using a gun, then thatperson should be stopped. And you should stop him in a way that doesn’t endanger anyoneelse. If that means using a round of ammunition that will stop him, even if it does causea little bit more trauma and suffering, that’s much better than the risk of over-penetrationand the risk to other people (cited in Fleming and Miller, 1994, p. 232).

With the police ammunition dilemma thus phrased and, seemingly quite definitivelyresolved, it might come as some surprise that, a little over 10 years after this interviewtook place, it was precisely seven hollow-point bullets that two SO19 officers fired, atvirtually point-blank range, into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tubestation in July 2005. Hollow-point ammunition is still not issued as standard to SO19 butcame to be available under the new ‘Operation Kratos’ guidelines developed by police



to tackle suicide terrorism. As Waddington and Wright note, the Stockwell shooting,‘brought to public attention an anti-terrorist tactic that had previously been veiled insecrecy’ (Waddington and Wright, 2007, p. 478). Furthermore the significance of theissue of hollow-point ammunition was not lost on the SO19 officers who were to takepart in the operation that day.

On 22 July 2005 the SO19 firearms officers’ Glock semi-automatic pistols were loadedwith hollow-point ammunition designed to deliver crucial ‘terminal ballistic’ advantagesin any encounter with a suicide bomber. The IPCC Stockwell One report summarisedthe guidance they had been given by the Metropolitan Police armourer:

The hollow-point 9mm bullet, also used in aircraft protection duties, was adopted becauseas it expands on impact, ‘it does not pass through the body . . . and has a greater chance ofimmediately incapacitating a suspect’ (IPCC, 2007c, paras 16.12–13).

The adoption of such ammunition would suggest a significant deviation from the ‘stan-dard operating procedures’ employed by the officers. On the day, and afterwards, theemployment of such ammunition certainly contributed to the uncertainty surroundingthe incident and may (alongside other factors) have also increased the likelihood of theshooting itself occurring (see our later discussion of the Stockwell case). Furthermore,as Waddington and Wright argue (2007, p. 478), it was the very manner of the shoot-ing, employing ammunition hitherto regarded as illegal and inappropriate, using tacticsthat verged on the brutal and excessive and not just the terrible fact of the shooting ofan innocent person that caused the police so much additional difficulty on and after22 July. In the absence of the kind of ‘wide and well-informed public debate’ such as theIPCC subsequently called for (IPCC, 2007c, p. 160, recommendation 4.4) regarding thegradations of police armed response to suicide terrorism, everything about the tragedy ofStockwell came as a shock and a surprise, and the police reputation suffered accordingly.A lesson that some police professionalism thus far appears incapable of learning, andwhich is borne out in a number of our critical incident case studies is that police actionscannot be ‘back-filled’ with accountability, legitimacy and integrity; these must be partof the policy process.

Shooting tactics

Our second illustration, here concerning police shooting tactics, is thrown into sharprelief by the fact that, on 22 July, SO19 officers attempted to fire nine shots at Mr deMenezes’ head (one bullet missed, another round mis-fired). In Chapter 4 we devotesome attention to the training guidance that firearms officers were once given in whatare known as ‘close combat’ conditions. With an armed and dangerous assailant in closephysical proximity such circumstances are undoubtedly amongst the most dangerousthat a police officer might encounter. In such circumstances, where ‘last resort’ self-defensive lethal force is immediately necessary, the instant incapacitation of an assailantis called for. The method of shooting that officers were trained in (although seldomcalled upon) was known as ‘sense of direction’ shooting and involved the police officerthrusting his firearm forwards in a punching action and, without formally ‘aiming’,firing two shots in rapid succession at the attacker’s main body mass. The adoption ofsuch tactics reflected the kind of informed combat shooting guidance emerging from



the USA which we have already considered. Yet following a police shooting incident inFebruary 1987 when a suspect was shot twice by a police officer employing this shootingmethod, media sources questioned why, if the purpose of shooting was only to ‘stop’or ‘incapacitate’ offenders, it was necessary to shoot them twice. Waddington roundedupon the critics who, he argued, appeared to imply it was somehow ‘improper’ to shootoffenders twice. The explanation, he suggested, was as follows:

Police are trained to fire two shots in rapid succession when firing ‘sense of direction’because these shots are fired at close range when immediate incapacitation is absolutelyessential given the imminence of the threat. In view of the urgency of the situation and thelack of time in which to take aim, one shot might miss the armed person and in the time itmight take to appreciate this, the suspect could have fired and killed the officer. Moreover,if only one bullet struck the person there is no guarantee that it would totally incapacitateand prevent the suspect returning fire (Waddington, 1988, p. 81).

In fact the thinking behind the ‘double-tap’ method might logically be extended, anynumber of bullets fired in haste might miss, just as any number might not immediatelystop a determined aggressor, leading ultimately to the shooting technique referred to inthe USA as ‘spray and pray’ where officers literally empty their guns into a suspect (a prac-tice made easier by the shift from revolvers to larger magazine capacity semi-automaticpistols during the late 1980s and 1990s). The problem was graphically illustrated in NewYork in 2000 when four New York Police Department (NYPD) officers fired 41 shots atan unarmed man they thought was reaching for a gun, hitting him 19 times (Ellison,2000; Collins, 2008). Yet Waddington’s point is simply that when, in extremis, an officermakes a decision to use potentially lethal force, it has to be last resort so it needs to beeffective, and two shots are better than one whereas more, certainly emptying the gun,might seem excessive. Similar to the decisions made regarding the types of ammunitionemployed, policy and practice on shooting tactics also attempt to steer a careful coursebetween tactical effectiveness and public acceptability. One might even go further to saythat considerations of public acceptability ‘compromised’ tactical effectiveness. But thiswas the official police position as Waddington stated it in 1988.

However, another police shooting incident in February 1995 where an officer firedtwice, in the approved fashion, to incapacitate an offender who was trying to crush himwith a stolen car, gave rise to further questions about the ‘double-tap’ tactic. In duecourse, partly by virtue of the second shot, the officer was charged with murder (lateracquitted). The Home Office undertook a review of the law on ‘The Use of Lethal Force inSelf-Defence or the Prevention of Crime’ but ultimately made no changes (Rogers, 1998).Alert to the criticisms, however, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) revisedthe tactical training of firearms officers who are now officially discouraged from firingsecondary or ‘extra’ shots and reminded that they are personally and legally responsiblefor every bullet they fire. Every trigger pull must now be subject to a separate test ofnecessity. As the ACPO Guide (2003 edition) put it: ‘Individual officers are accountableand responsible for all rounds they fire and must be in a position to justify them in thelight of their legal responsibilities and powers . . . [and] . . . Officers should constantlyassess the need for any further action depending on the threat posed’ (ACPO, 2003, paras3.1 and 6.4, emphasis added).

Yet in Waddington’s 1988 terms, this might be seen as a significant compromisingof police tactical effectiveness, even though it corresponds more exactly to the test of



‘absolute necessity’ applied to each trigger pull as demanded by law (and, indirectlythereby defers to considerations of public acceptability). That is, until 22 July whenSO19 officers, influenced no doubt by the Operation Kratos ‘suicide terrorism’ tacticalprinciples, fired multiple shots into the head of a suspect. Differentiating between in-dividual trigger pulls and assuming individual responsibility for every round fired wasneither required nor demanded. ACPO’s carefully constructed legal nicety of accountingfor every round was literally shredded by a hail of bullets that were now given a collectivejustification: ‘shooting to kill to protect’. Our argument is not that this was wrong oreven illegal, but that it was certainly different and perhaps exceptional. It was developed,as Waddington and Wright (2007) have acknowledged, in secret, being subject to noneof the public debate advocated by the IPCC. As we have suggested, this in itself exac-erbated the police’s post-Stockwell difficulties. And finally, the very ‘experts’ who hadonce advocated for the ‘double-tap’ (the firing of two ‘sense of direction’ shots simul-taneously without formally ‘aiming’ the weapon) then later articulated a need for thelegal accountability of every shot were now the architects of a policy in which the highstakes demanded overwhelmingly lethal force and a different conception of constabu-lary responsibility for the deployment of it. Perhaps, as has been suggested, context iseverything.

Contexts, Command, Frequencies and Victims

In the main police forces around the world are routinely armed in their day-to-day duties.Only a very small number count themselves as routinely unarmed and these includeEngland and Wales, Scotland, New Zealand, Norway and Eire. There are a number ofjurisdictions in the UK that also need explaining. For example, between 1812 and 1922there was an armed force in Ireland and even the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)used heavy machine guns in Northern Ireland until recently. Following a resolution ofthe troubles in Northern Ireland the devolved nature of government has reconstitutedthe Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) maintaining its tradition taken from theformer RUC as a routinely armed force. The role of the army should also be explainedhere as a key problem occurs when those involved (police and army) are grouped togetherunder the collective term ‘security forces’. Nowadays this seems to encapsulate all theplayers involved in combating terrorism (Kennison and Loumansky, 2007) and perhapsmore. During the troubles it was often claimed that the tactics allegedly employed bythe security forces in killing their Provisional IRA members were frequently carried outunder cover of a false claim that they were in the process of frustrating an imminentterrorist attack and that this amounted to de facto shoot to kill. Indeed, according toMark Urban,

Many soldiers sum up their attitudes to the use of lethal force in situations like Ulstersaying ‘Big boys’ games, big boys’ rules’. In other words any IRA man caught with a rifle orbomb can expect to be shot, whatever the yellow card may say. The saying is, according to amember of the Regiment, their justification for killing people (Urban, 1992).

The rules of engagement of the security services appear to justify any shoot-to-killstrategy providing the right people are involved and there are no mistakes. The army has



its ‘rules of engagement’ which revolve around what came to be known as the ‘yellowcard’ system where if an officer gives an order to shoot then the soldier must carry outthat order. The difference here is that there is no individual discretion on the part ofthe soldier. The distinction with the police in theory is that no one can order a policeofficer to shoot or not although there are signs (to be discussed later) that one of therecent aspects of contemporary police paramilitarism is that under certain policies andcircumstances, the vital discretion about whether to shoot is pushed further up the chainof command (see Kennison and Loumansky, 2007).

This ‘chain of command’ is another aspect of the context from which shooting risksarise. As we shall see later, one of the shooting ‘risk factors’, identified in Best and Quigley’s(2003) research in the UK, involved the absence of an effective and accountable commandstructure and a too hurried (hasty or confrontational) approach taken towards incidentresolution. On the other hand, having a command structure in place is no guarantee thatan incident will be resolved satisfactorily.

The British police system has developed a structure of ‘command and control’ whichis widely used in major incidents and on live operations such as firearms operations. Themethod was first developed in 1985 in the UK Metropolitan Police following a serious riotin North London on the evening of 6 October where Police Constable Keith Blakelock wasmurdered. It is based on a hierarchical framework of three levels of command – ‘Gold’(strategic), ‘Silver’ (operational) and Bronze (implementation) – and is meant to keepthe levels separate during incidents. The hierarchy is meant to establish an accountabilitystructure (Punch, 2009) although, as we shall see later, with the shooting of Jean Charlesde Menezes, when a number of operations were running simultaneously, this led to aconfusing situation where staff were unclear about the various command structures foreach.

‘Gold’ has a monitoring function and not only facilitates Silver’s decision makingbut also monitors it. The Gold Commander is in overall control of the organisation’sresources at the incident or operation. They will not be on site, but at a distant controlroom. The Gold Commander will formulate the strategy for dealing with the incident.The Silver Commander is the senior member of the organisation at the scene and isin charge of all the resources. They decide how to utilise these resources to achieve thestrategic aims of the Gold Commander; they determine the tactics used. At the scene ofthe incident, they may work in proximity and harmony with other Silver Commanders,usually situated in purpose-built command vehicles, at the Joint Emergency ServicesControl Centre (JESCC). They will not, however, become directly involved in dealingwith the incident itself. During the initial stages of a major incident, the first member ofan organisation who arrives at the incident assumes, albeit temporarily, the role of SilverCommander. There will be an incident file which is meant to contain correspondence,briefings (on video-tape), appointments, radio traffic and logs of telephone calls andkey decisions, etc. (Punch and Markham, 2006). A Bronze Commander directly controlsthe organisation’s resources at the incident and will be found with their staff workingon the scene. If an incident is widespread geographically, different Bronzes may assumeresponsibility for different areas. If complex, differing Bronzes can command differingtasks or responsibilities at an incident.4

4 http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:Krju-Qtph58J:www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/website/download.asp%3Ffn%3D%252FImages%252FAppendix%25252006%252520-%252 (accessed 14 July 2009).



As Punch, 2009 asserts:

The important principle of this model is the fact that it draws accountability upwards. Golddevolves responsibility while accepting final accountability. In theory a force faced by criticalscrutiny after an incident can confidently hand over a complete file saying, ‘do you haveany questions because we have the answers?’ And potentially ‘Gold’ can face legal action foroperational decisions (2009, p. 197).

After an incident, especially if firearms are discharged (and the IPCC is required to inves-tigate) questions may arise at a variety of levels. Attention may focus upon the framingof the overall strategy (Gold tier); issues may arise with respect to the coordination ofresources at the scene (Silver tier) or problems may arise with the direct managementof the intervention and the performances of front-line officers (Bronze tier). In theorythese arrangements concern command structure but they also assume a culture of ac-countability where senior officers are imbued with an ethic of accountability fundamentalto their functioning (Punch, 2009, p. 197). Yet the command and control structures bythemselves do not guarantee success in operational matters and, as we see later, it mayonly be when a failure occurs that we are able to understand what went wrong and why.

As Punch notes the particular virtue of the command structure for those officersactually facing the most immediate risks and dangers – and having, as a consequence, toface the most awesome choices (shoot/don’t shoot) – is that their decision making occursunder the virtual umbrella of legal accountability established by the command structure.Their actions are ‘authorised’ by it, hence, action within this ‘chain of command’ is for-mally protected by the legitimacy of ultimate purposes that it provides. Yet in alleviatingthe burden of responsibility upon the individual officer at the ‘sharp end’, the chain ofcommand subtly erases conventional conceptions of constabulary independence and anofficer’s professional discretion. Within the chain of command the police officer is actingmuch more as an agent of the state – effectively, therefore, more as a paramilitary, ratherthan as a traditional police officer.

Throughout the book we have not generally sought to criticise individual police of-ficers whose duties have placed them in difficult potentially life-threatening positions,though we certainly do not argue for officer immunity (so much here will depend uponthe facts of the case, the reasonableness of the decisions made and action taken andin the light of the stress of the situation, all things considered). Rather, so long as theofficer is operating within the chain of command and according to the action planvalidated through this system of accountability, legal responsibility will lie elsewhere.Critics, including lawyers working for the victims of police shootings, have complainedthat such arrangements amount to virtual immunity. According to Deborah Coles, fromthe pressure group Inquest , the arrangement ‘puts police officers above the law’ (quotedin Verkaik and Bennetto, 2005). Davies, likewise, speaks of police officers having a ‘li-cense to kill’ (Davies, 2001) while it has also been suggested that all an officer (either afirearms officer or a commander) would need to do to evade legal responsibility wouldbe to claim that he/she had acted in good faith (although) on bad or inaccurate infor-mation (Leppard, 2006). Our argument, in contrast, is not that immunity is establishedthrough the chain of command, but rather corporate responsibility. Individual officersable to show that they acted professionally, appropriately and in good faith on the basisof information received, their training and the instructions they had been given wouldnot incur personal liability for their actions. Instead a corporate or institutional respon-sibility would be established, and it is this that supersedes their individual agency and



legal autonomy. It remains entirely appropriate that, when shooting mistakes are made,command level teams or whole police forces be prosecuted for (inter alia) corporatemanslaughter, health and safety breaches (as in the Stockwell case), or breaches in their‘duty of care’ (as in the James Ashley case in Sussex). As we argue, these command andcontrol arrangements change the status and position of the individual firearms officer.Taking on this mantle of institutional responsibility brings with it an agency derivingfrom institutional strategy with the individual firearms officer acting as a governmentagent, no longer as an autonomous constable. It is upon this altered legal foundationfor the firearms officer’s role (although it is unlikely to be confined to firearms con-texts) that, weapons, tactics, training, image and culture aside, our case regarding policeparamilitarisation rests.

However, notwithstanding these legal and constitutional contexts, what then are thefrequencies by which members of the public are shot dead by police around the world?On average around 3000 people per year are killed by the police in Brazil,5 384 in theUSA,6 40 in Jamaica,7 11 in Australia,8 5 in Germany,9 and 2 in England and Wales.10

Very low numbers of police shootings are also found in Holland and Canada – thelatter country experiencing 11 in 200011 even though rates of household gun ownershipthere run close to 22%. Beyond such publicly available data, information is patchy andhard to come by although some societies, such as Brazil, Kenya, the Philippines, havebeen subject to investigative reports into ‘extra-judicial killings’ by police and securityforces prepared by the UN special rapporteur Philip Alston. It goes without sayingthat the information in such reports is incomplete and the list of countries examinedvery limited. Published reports are available on the web site of the UN: Office of theCommissioner for Human Rights. Amnesty International also collates some reports andmaterial on police violence.12

Before terminating this initial discussion about the contexts in which police killcitizens and the rates at which they do so, it is worth making a brief comment aboutexactly who it is that tends to be shot by police officers. Patterns do vary considerablyfrom country to country especially when questions of civil and political disorder andthe role of insurgent armed groups, paramilitarised drug cartels and terrorist cells aretaken into account. For instance we have already referred to Central American police‘death squads’ indiscriminately killing street gang members and allegations about theIndian police ‘ambush’ methods for taking on armed criminal groups. But now referringprimarily to the civilian police in modern liberal cultures, it is clear that the debate aboutpolice use of armed force and armed response policy development is almost entirelyconducted in relation to tackling terrorism, serious and organised, armed criminalviolence, and responding to gang and gun crime. However, just as police shootings insuch modern Western cultures are relatively rare (and especially so in the UK) shoot-outsand armed conflicts with the aforementioned serious offender groups are particularly few

5 http://news.bbc.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4463010.stm (accessed 6 July 2009).6 www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/police/08 toomany.html (accessed 6 July 2009).7 www.amnesty.international.org.uk/news details p.asp?NewsID=16894 (accessed 6 July 2009).8 www.aic.gov.au on Police Shootings 1990-97 Australian Institute of Criminology Canberra (accessed 6 July2009).9 Montgomery, N. (2008). ‘Police shootings in Germany very rare’, Stars and Stripes, 15 March.10 Statistics on the police use of firearms in England and Wales 1985–2008, Home Office.11 Mortality, summary list of causes (2000). Statistics Canada.12 Amnesty International, 1997: Romania: Unlawful use of firearms by law enforcement officials: http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR390011997?open&of=ENG-2U2



and far between. An evidence base emerging especially from the USA, UK, Canada andAustralia (Best and Quigley, 2003; Dalton, 1998; McCulloch and Sentas, 2006; Parent andVerdun-Jones, 1998; PCA, 2003; Scharf and Binder, 1983) suggests that ‘criminals’ (asconventionally understood) are not necessarily the major recipients of police bullets. Onthe contrary, persons with mental or personality disorders, persons under the influenceof drink, drugs or severe emotional distress and (in the UK in particular) persons who,perhaps for one of the preceding reasons, happen to be in possession of replica firearmsor other apparently lethal weapons, are more frequently shot by police officers. In theUSA, the label ‘suicide by cop’ has been developed to account for the actions takenby depressed or disturbed persons provoking police officers into shooting them (Drylie,2007), this notion is also not unknown in other cultures (Best, Quigley and Bailey, 2002).Discussion of these issues is taken further in Chapter 7.

Structure and Contents

In the chapters that follow we proceed to explore in greater detail many of the issueswe have raised in this introduction. Our policy context is certainly Britain but we havedrawn upon research findings from around the world, especially the USA where armedpolicing is practised and evidence from police-involved shooting is rather more plentiful.In Chapter 2 we begin by unpacking by far the most dramatic and notorious incident,the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station. Thishas already been the subject of an article by one of us (Kennison and Loumansky, 2007)primarily addressing the legal, human rights and police management issues raised, bothby the incident itself and the Operation Kratos policy for dealing with suicide terrorism(although Operation Kratos protocols were not, officially at least, declared on the day).In our discussion of the incident, now with the benefit of the IPCC inquiry report,the Coroner’s report and the inquest evidence transcripts (amongst other material), wefocus more upon the detailed and pragmatic operational issues arising. We regard thisincident as critical for the wider and deeper discussion that follows and not least becauseit prompted the IPCC to call for precisely the kind of debate on which we are nowengaged (IPCC, 2007c, p. 160, recommendation 4.4). In a second sense the catalogueof errors, planning and management failures, dangerous operational practices, blink-ered thinking and unquestioned (sometimes ambiguously legal) working practices itrevealed demonstrate, writ large, the kinds of problems that each of our individual casesthrow up to some degree or other. The case is also critical in terms of its far-reachingconsequences and as a kind of litmus test for contemporary police paramilitarismdebates.

In Chapters 3 and 4 we look back and detail two initial phases which we have, for sakeof argument, loosely termed the ‘amateur’ and ‘event-driven’ phases, although we areaware that even these labels remain somewhat contested. For instance in the ‘amateur’phase rather more police officers than today will have had extensive military trainingin firearms use and it may do them a profound disservice to describe their experienceas ‘amateurish’. Our point is simply that police armed response policy and strategy waslittle advanced, often poorly organised and managed and not well understood. It wasalso rare. The irony may be that many people may have found more reassurance in thatendearing incompetence than in the well-disciplined, hard hitting strike of a CO19 team.In this regard Reiner’s (1992) contrast between Dixon and Darth Vader makes a tellingpoint which goes to the heart of perceptions of police legitimacy in the UK.



Even so, perceptions can mislead, as Peter Neyroud, then a member of ACPO’sfirearms sub-committee, noted in 2001 when discussing the ‘Dixon myth’ on a Panoramadocumentary. ‘It is an interesting perception and a lovely, warm, golden-age perception.But it is completely and utterly wrong. There were more arms around then. There weremore officers with firearms. There were more officers who were authorised to shoot inthose balmy days of Dixon of Dock Green than there are now’ (Neyroud, ‘Lethal Force’,Panorama, 9 December 2001). That said, ‘winning by appearing to lose’ (in Sir RobertMark’s axiom) still asks rather a lot of one’s police officers as the fictional PC Dixon’stragic self-sacrifice suggested.

The ‘event-driven’ phase, by contrast, draws largely on policing’s own self-definition,the rising violent crime rate ‘trump card’ serves as a backcloth to policing’s gradual‘tooling up’ although these developments are punctuated by a series of events betrayingthe lack of a clear policy. An overarching policy may not have been apparent, but ‘events’were not the only factors exerting their influence at this time. Influences emanating frompolitics, pressures of convergence, policy and technology transfer all had their impact atthis time.

In Chapter 5 we turn to consider how these pressures impacted the police viewpointitself and we review the attempts by the Police Federation to force the debate on officerprotection, weapons and armed response. A cautious balance was established betweenpublic reassurance, officer protection and effective armed response which framed thedebate into the early years of the twenty-first century. Maintenance of a relatively smallnumber of better trained specialist armed response teams and vehicles gave police man-agers more room to manoeuvre. Henceforth, pressures for more routine arming couldbe deflected by a continuing upgrade in the number and availability of armed responseoptions. Even this compromise began to be tested from the late 1990s as the spectreof ‘gun crime’ began to manifest itself in the UK and Chapter 6 takes up the theme ofpolicing in a ‘gun culture’.

Here we take up Waddington’s point about the importance of context and considerthe ways in which policing strategies, in both the USA and the UK, have developedto tackle gang-related and gun-involved violence. One strand of this discussion pits a‘police science’ perspective on tackling gun crime with a broader social crime preventionapproach. The argument is not that one approach is wrong and the other right, butthat there are important issues of balance, priority and purpose to address. Some of theAmerican evidence clearly raises questions about the limitations of simply policing gunswith guns and the dangers associated with specialist, paramilitary-style, armed gangunits. In the late 1980s, a debate of this nature regarding ‘police paramilitarism’ surfacedin the UK (Jefferson, 1987, 1990, 1993; Waddington, 1987). This was reprised in the late1990s, this time in a debate concerning the nature of specialist weapons and tactics units(SWAT teams) in American policing (Kraska, 1999; Kraska and Cubellis, 1997; Kraskaand Kappeler, 1997; Kraska and Paulsen, 1997; Waddington, 1999). It is not our aim, inthis book, to reprise those debates or to quibble about terminology. It seems reasonableto accept, especially in the wake of the ‘yellow card’ rules of engagement distributedto security personnel (police and military) in Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’,and the more recent Operation Kratos guidance to police, that a certain blurring ofthe guidance on the use of lethal force has occurred. And in particular in terms of its‘weaponry, garb, hardware, ideology, operations, organisation and language’ – and, wemight add, tactics, training and skills – armed response policing has come to take onaspects of a paramilitary form even though it does not embrace, in Waddington’s terms,the ultimate indicator of militarisation, the indiscriminate killing of enemy combatants(Kraska, 1999, pp. 147–8; Steinert, 2004).



One important consequence of the increased rates of gun crime, or reports of guninvolved offending, has been significant increases in armed response deployment and inChapter 7 we begin to review some of the detailed evidence emerging in the USA andthe UK regarding armed confrontations and officer-involved shootings. Central to thisdiscussion is a review of Police Complaints Authority investigations, completed in 1996and 2003, of police shootings in England and Wales (Best and Quigley, 2003; Burrows,1996; PCA, 2003). This discussion then serves as the basis for our detailed considerationof a further five police armed response case studies in Chapter 8. These cases, chosenfor a range of reasons – in part their notoriety and significance in the evolving armedresponse debate and the issues that they raise – do not all involve the discharge of policefirearms, nor have all been regarded (by the media or the IPCC) as errors.

Again Stockwell is not the end of our story, although not all our case studies havegenerated so much media comment and analysis. One in particular, our last case study,scarcely generated any complaint at all. Effective use was made of intelligence andsurveillance, the incident was carefully planned, a security guard threatened with a gunwas rescued, a robbery was prevented, the ‘right’ offenders (with a string of violentrobberies behind them) were confronted. Unfortunately two men were shot and killed,although in a subsequent trial of the remaining gang members the police were praisedby the judge for doing a good job. There were no ‘mistakes’ and no controversy but thisis the case upon which we rest our approach. After all, the critical social scientist’s job isto raise questions. Discussing the Stockwell incident McCulloch has noted how, ‘there isno tactical “solution” to politically and religiously motivated violence’ (McCulloch andSentas, 2006). And likewise, we argue, exceptional policing strategies entailing militarisedresponse, pre-emptive confrontation and extra-judicial killing are no solution for crime,even violent crime.


Timeline on Police Weaponsand Firearms

1941 Police firearms instructions 3500 rifles held by Metropolitan Policeissued to 185 stations

1947 Injuring of PC Rowsell infirearms incident

Fredrick Westbrook shot and wounded theofficer who was later arrested at gunpoint bySergeant Lacey

1948 Killing of PC Edgar Shot three times by Donald Thomas inSouthgate, London

1948 Police Federation response In connection with the proposed abolitionof the death penalty the Federation issued astatement from its members over thepreference to be an unarmed service. It washeld that the widows and orphans of policeofficers would be looked after byParliament.

1949 Police image Film The Blue Lamp, launches the career ofPC Dixon of Dock Green, although Dixonwas shot and killed in the film he returnedto TV screens from the 1950s to the 1970s

1953 Killing of PC Sidney Milesand injury to PC FrederickFairfax

Following the attempted arrest of Craig andBentley in Croydon, Surrey, the officer wasshot

1953 Firearms instructions Inspection of weapons revealedunsatisfactory situation. 1194 Smith andWesson revolvers held by police with afurther purchase of 750 revolvers released topolice.

1953–55 Firearms instructions Sequence of more comprehensiveinstructions for use of weapons, premisespurchased, weapons practice includingstandards of qualification



1955 Firearms incident Five police officers received medals ofbravery following two officers being shotand injured when challenging a person inpossession of a stolen car

1958 Killing of PC Summers Shot in the back while investigating adisturbance in Holloway, London

1959 Killing of DetectiveSergeant Purdy

Shot by Gunter Padollo whilst trying tospeak with him

1961 Killing of Inspector Pawseyand Sergeant Hutchins

Both shot and killed trying to apprehend aprisoner who escaped from West HamPolice Station

1966 Killing of DetectiveSergeant Head, PC Fox andTDC Wombwell

Shot and killed in Shepherds Bush by HarryRoberts

1966 Firearms instructions Establishment of a dedicated Police FirearmsTraining Section.

1967 New legislation 1967 Criminal Law Act. Section 3 establishesprinciple of reasonable force to be usedwhen protecting life.

1967–69 Firearms instructions Increased professionalisation of firearms useon the streets, training courses, betterweapons and call out for D.11 officers tosieges, etc.

1968 New legislation Firearms Act 1968

1970 Firearms instructions Police rifle training introduced

1972 Firearms incident PC Peter Slimon shoots dead an armedrobber whilst en route to armed Embassyprotection post

1973 Firearms incident Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Groupshoot dead two people who stormed theIndian Embassy with imitation weapons

1974 Firearms incident Shots fired at diplomatic protection officersas a man attempted to kidnap Princess Anne

1974 Firearms incident Spaghetti House siege following armedrobbery attempt. Peacefully concluded byMPS D.11 firearms unit.

1974 Firearms incident Balcombe Street siege peacefully concluded(even after shots fired at police by escapingIRA operatives) by MPS D.11 firearms unit

1975 Killing of PC Tibble Shot dead by IRA whilst chasing suspect inWest Kensington, London

1976 Firearms instructions Introduction of firearms training manual

1978 Firearms incident Armed robber with sawn-off shotgun killedby armed police in unmarked MPS responsevehicle

1979 Firearms incident Essex Police shoot dead Paul Howefollowing a siege at Ramsey, in Essex


Timeline on Police Weapons and Firearms 25

1980 Firearms incident Six-day Iranian Embassy siege concluded asSAS storm the building killing five of the sixhostage takers

1980 Firearms incident Accidental fatal shooting by police of GailKinchen in Birmingham

1981 Firearms instructions Detective Chief Inspectors responsible forinvestigating all discharges of police firearmsirrespective of whether by accident or not

1983 Firearms incident The Metropolitan Police mistakenly shootSteven Waldorf

1984 Killing of WPC YvonneFletcher

Shot and killed outside the Libyan Peoples’Bureau in London by an occupant

1984 Firearms incident Police shoot and injure two unarmedrobbers during a failed armed robbery inHolloway, London

1985 Firearms incident D.11 rifleman shoots suspect to bring adifficult siege to an end

1985 Firearms incident Accidental killing by police of JohnShorthouse, a 5-year-old boy inBirmingham during a raid

1985 Firearms incident Accidental shooting by police of CherryGroce during a search for her son

1985 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Errol Walker, armed witha knife attempting to stab his daughterduring siege in Northolt, Middlesex

1985 Firearms incident SO19 police officer twice shoots(double-tap) man attempting to ram him ina stolen car. First police officer to be chargedwith murder arising from an incidentoccurring whilst on duty. Found not guiltyin 1997

1986 Police firearmsprocurement

Following a security review, police adopt theHeckler & Koch MP5 carbine for armedresponse work

1987 Firearms incident Police in Plumstead shoot two dead andinjure a third during an armed robbery of asecurity van

1987 Firearms incident Police shoot dead armed robber DenisBergin during robbery at the Sir JohnSoane’s Museum in central London

1987 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Glyn Davies armed withan unloaded shotgun during street hostagesituation in London

1987 Firearms incident Police shoot dead one and injure another inWoolwich during an armed robbery. Apolice officer is injured in the exchange offire.



1987 Firearms incident Michael Ryan kills 16 people, including apolice officer in Hungerford. The first UK‘mass killing’.

1987 Firearms incident On the M1 in Nottinghamshire police returnfire when suspects in a car become cornered

1988 New legislation 1988 Firearms (Amendment) Act. Prohibitsmulti-shot (self-loading) rifles andshotguns. Establishes FCC. Introduces new‘weapon deactivation’ standards.

1988 Firearms incident Three IRA operatives shot dead in Gibraltarby plain-clothes ‘security personnel’. Thisbrought the total of those killed to 20 in 15months, raising concerns about a ‘shoot tokill’ policy.

1988 Firearms incident Man holding a hostage shot by police sniperin London’s West End. Offender’s gun laterfound to be a replica pistol.

1988–1990s Weapons trend Growing evidence of new replica firearm usein ‘gun crime’

1989 Firearms incident Police shoot dead James Farrell and TerryDewsnap during a failed robbery in Harrow

1990s Police Federation lobbying Police Federation begins to lobby andopinion poll for enhanced armed responsecapacity (makes link with abolition ofcapital punishment)

1991 ARV deployment Metropolitan Police reorganises its ARVstrategy. Five ‘active’ units operating at anytime with weapons locked in vehicle gunsafe. Authorisation process laterstreamlined, ACPO soon followed suit.

1992 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Peter Swann in Pengefollowing a siege where the deceased was inpossession of a shotgun

1994 Police policy review Metropolitan Police Commissioner PaulCondon calls for review of weapons andprotective equipment

1994 Police point of view At annual ACPO conference, MerseysideChief Constable refers to ‘wild inner cities’and heavily armed criminal gangs

1995 Firearms incident Police shoot David Ewin an unarmed dayrelease prisoner who died three weeks later.Ewin was in possession of a stolen vehicle.The officer was cleared of murder andunlawful killing

1995 Firearms incident Police shoot dead James Brady in a policeambush in Westhope, Tyne and Wear whenofficers mistook a torch he was carrying fora gun. Inquest verdict: Open. The CPSdecided against prosecution in 1999



1995 Police Federation opinionpoll

Final Police Federation national poll rejectsroutine arming of all officers by 79% to 21%.

1996 Firearms incident Police shoot dead David Howell apsychiatric patient; after arming himself hetook a shop manager hostage

1996 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Diarmuid O’Neill an IRAsuspect who died in a hail of 10 bullets in hishome in Hammersmith. He was unarmed.Inquest verdict: Lawful killing

1996 Firearms incident Thomas Hamilton kills 16 children and theirteacher, injuring 13 more before, killinghimself at Dunblane Primary School,Scotland. Cullen Report follows

1997 Firearms incident Police wounded Jane Lee when it wasreported that a woman in a van was involvedin a robbery. She sustained injuries to herhand, shoulder and groin when a policeofficer fired his weapon

1997 New firearms legislation Rejecting the Cullen recommendationsfollowing Dunblane, Firearms(Amendment) No. 1 and No. 2 Acts passedto prohibit private ownership of handgunsabove .22 calibre

1998 Firearms incident Police mistakenly shoot dead James Ashleyin his home in Hastings

1998 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Michael Fitzgerald inBedford after his girlfriend mistook him fora burglar. He was in his own home inpossession of a fake gun which he refused toput down. Inquest verdict; Lawful killing

1998 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Anthony Kitts at Falmouthin Cornwall after threatening police with anair rifle. Inquest verdict: Lawful killing

1998 Police response Metropolitan Police launch OperationTrident to tackle ‘black-on-black’ gun crimein London

1999 Firearms incident Police mistakenly shoot dead Harry Stanleywho was carrying a chair leg in a bag inHackney

1999 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Derek Bateman inHolmwood, Surrey, following a tip-off hewas armed and threatening to kill hisgirlfriend. He was unarmed when killed;officers face disciplinary action

1999 Firearms incident Police shot and wounded James Robertsduring a Devon and Cornwall operation atan Exeter jeweller’s shop



1999 Firearms incident Police shot and wounded Simon Gillard inKingston, Surrey, when he was found inpossession of an imitation forearm

2000 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Patrick O’Donnell inIslington, London, during hostage situation

2000 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Kirk Davies in WakefieldWest Yorkshire who threatened police withan air rifle. Inquest verdict: Lawful killing

2001 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Andrew Kernanbrandishing a samurai sword in Liverpool

2001 Police policy ACPO: Manual of Guidance on Police Use ofFirearms first published

2001 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Derek Bennett with fourshots to the back in Brixton, South London,after he was scene brandishing a gun-shapedcigar lighter

2002 Manchester Manchester adopts aspects of the Boston(USA) ‘Ceasefire’ project to form MMAGS.Later (2004) GMP establishes OperationXcalibre to tackle the city’s gun/gangproblems

2003 Birmingham shootings Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespearekilled in gang-related drive-by shooting atparty. Automatic weapon used

2003 Politics All Party Parliamentary Group holdhearings on gun crime and police response,and produce report

2003 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Keith Larkins a mentalpatient brandishing an imitation gun atHeathrow

2003-4 Police policy reviews MPA Gun Crime Scrutiny Consultationreport (MPA, 2003) and the HMICinspection report Guns, Community andPolice (HMIC, 2004) both refer to theexistence of a ‘gun culture’

2003 Research on policeshootings

Following Burrows Report of 1996, PCApublishes analysis of 24 police shootings1998–2001

2004 Police complaints IPCC replaces PCA

2004 Politics Government launches Connected: TacklingGun Crime community initiative

2004 Firearms incident Three people shot (two fatally) at HighmoorCross by assailant who fled the scene. TheTVP criticised for failing to respondappropriately

2005 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Jean Charles de Menezeson a tube train in London thinking he was asuicide bomber



2005 Firearms incident A man armed with a sword and an imitationpistol is shot in Staffordshire. Officers areexonerated but Staffs Police control roommethods and practices criticised by IPCC

2006 New legislation Violent Crime Reduction Act – to bringtighter control over ‘realistic imitation’firearms, air weapons and knives and otherweapons

2006 Research Home Office publishes research study onillegal use of firearms (Hales et al., 2006)

2007 Firearms incident Police shoot dead two armed robbers duringa police ambush at Chandler’s Ford,Hampshire

2007 Policy matters IPCC publishes Stockwell One report andcalls for full public debate on police armedresponse policy

2007 Prosecution verdict Old Bailey jury finds Metropolitan Policeguilty of ‘a catastrophic series of errors’leading to the death of Jean Charles deMenezes in prosecution based upon the1974 Health and Safety at Work Act(responsibility for non-employees). TheForce was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay£385,000 costs.

2007 Firearms incident First woman deliberately shot and killed bypolice in Sevenoaks, after allegedlybrandishing a gun (later found to be areplica) following altercation in a car park

2008 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Mark Saunders in his flatat King’s Road, Chelsea after a 5-hour siegewhen 11 rounds were fired by 5 officers

2008 Police policy ACPO issues revised guidance on policeofficers conferring together following ashooting incident

2008 Firearms incident Man with a history of depression shot bypolice near Guildford cathedral afterthreatening to shoot people and pointing agun (later found to be a replica) at police

2009 Firearms incident Police shoot dead Keith Richards armedwith a crossbow during a siege at a house inShildon, County Durham

2009 Firearms incident Police shoot and injure Christopher Hamlynwhen he refused to put down what appearedto be a gun. He was carrying a piece of wood

2009 Firearms incident Police shoot and seriously injure a maleduring a pre-planned operation in GreenLanes, Haringey



2009 Legal settlement Final (out of court) settlement of Ashleycase from Sussex in 1998

2009 Reports on Stockwellincident

Stockwell Coroner’s Report and Inquesttranscripts published

2009 Firearms incident Sussex Police shoot distressed older man inrural West Sussex after he fired shots at them

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