Twenty firearms officers in London’s Metropolitan Police, handed in their authorisation to carry weapons yesterday after two colleagues were suspended. A further hundred are reported to be refusing firearms duties on a temporary basis. Glen Smyth of the Police Federation, said his officers needed clarification over how they were to respond when they believed themselves to be under threat. An inquest jury into the death of Harry Stanley, returned a verdict of unlawful killing last Friday, after hearing that the 44 year old father was shot down because he was carrying a table leg in a plastic bag. Stanley’s solicitor said the jury had not believed the officer’s accounts that they thought he had a sawn off shotgun, and had not considered such a conclusion reasonable.
The people of Britain owe a debt of gratitude to skilled and professional police. We can be proud of them, but those among them who habitually back their colleagues, even when they are manifestly in the wrong, should consider whether they owe loyalty to their mates, or to the law. At the distance Stanley was shot, less trigger happy officers would have seen that possession of a table leg was no threat to them, or to anyone else.
2 comments:
How can anyone be "loyal to the law", if the law itself refuses to be fully defined until your own court case.
It doesn't matter what distance he was at. That is irrelevant. What matters is this- if you and I should find ourselves facing a man pointing a concealed gun-looking thing at us, would we want a policeman in attendance to hold our lives cheap, and wait until the bastard pulls the trigger?
The only thing that makes this scenario unlikely, is the fact that if I should ever find myself standing side by side with you Fred, I will instinctively know I am in the wrong place, and immediately bugger-off elsewhere. I never take the side of a man who isn't on his own side....
Q
I'll ignore the personal slur - I owe you that one, but you seem not to have noticed that a man carrying a table leg that his brother in law had repaired for him, was shot down like a dog as he left a pub!
When we put guns into the hands of our police (which we do for obvious reasons) we expect of them a high standard of care and judgement. A jury of their peers, have during an inquest, decided that the act was one of unlawful killing. Hopefully, another jury can be allowed to decide how criminal their responsibility was, but knowing how the CPS slide over this kind of thing, I don't hold out too much hope of that.
Hopefully, if MR Q is ever spotted carrying a snooker cue out of his garage, Northumbria Police will be a little more circumspect about shooting him. Then, unlike Mrs Stanley, you'll continue to have the man of your choice to stand beside you...
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