I’m aware of a number of people criticising the anonymity of the firearms officers but they don’t give reasons why the officers shouldn’t be anonymous.

So they can throw tomatoes at them, clearly.

ukliberty,

Albert Pierrepoint’s name was well known. Why would our current posse of state sanctioned executioners be allowed an anonymity that he didn’t have?

posse of state sanctioned executioner

Oh for goodness sake.

As to why they should be allowed anonymity, well, to protect them from reprisals would be one reason. To prevent compromising their jobs would be another.

ukliberty,

There is no ‘for goodness sake’ about it. It is, quite clearly, a licence to kill. And, they are doing it on our behalf. Whether it’s being applied appropriately or not – I tend towards the ‘not’ side but there you go – ought to be subject to judicial review.

As to why they should be allowed anonymity, well, to protect them from reprisals would be one reason. To prevent compromising their jobs would be another.

So, the Brazilian branch of Al Quaida, is going to extract revenge? I don’t think so. The extent of the anonymity is allegedly around 50 police officers. Do even you not think that’s a tad excessive? To me it’s a cover up.

There is no way of bringing Jean Charles de Mendez back. But there should be clear accountability for what was a total systemic disaster.

It is, quite clearly, a licence to kill.

Rubbish.

ought to be subject to judicial review.

There is going to be an inquest.

So, the Brazilian branch of Al Quaida, is going to extract revenge? I don’t think so.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Anyone care to answer my original question without using hyperbole and histrionics?

ukliberty,

OK, lets take this very slowly.

We have armed our police.

Did you notice that?

Within certain parameters they are allowed to kill you. If that is not a licence to kill, I don’t know what is.

Anything you disagree with so far. No?

It is patently obvious that there are terms of engagement.

Whether these are the right rules or not, or whether lessons can be learned, seems to be a bit beyond you.

You view any oversight of the Police as ‘rubbish’.

The hysteria is yours my friend. You are sounding like Chicken Little.

Within certain parameters they are allowed to kill you. If that is not a licence to kill, I don’t know what is.

Within certain parameters I’m allowed to kill you. Is that a licence to kill?

Whether these are the right rules or not, or whether lessons can be learned, seems to be a bit beyond you.

I’ve written a number of articles on my blog and elsewhere (example) regarding de Menezes and other police shootings – more than 20 on the health and safety trial alone. I’ve expressed a great deal of concern about their actions and accountability, and disgust at how de Menezes and other victims have been traduced by ‘sources’. I’ve also asked if inquests without juries are born in part from a desire to avoid having firearms officers labelled unlawful killers by jurors.

You view any oversight of the Police as ‘rubbish’.

Liar.

According to Crooked Timber, what Reiss actually asked was:

” What should science teachers do when faced with students who are creationists?”

To which he gave the answer that simply ignoring them is wrong and counterproductive. Rather, in his view, it is better pedagogical practice to engage with their doubts about evolution. He also adds that teachers have a duty to explain the scientific position but that they should not expect the doing so will displace creationist beliefs in students. His thought there is that explaining that evolutionary theory provides the best scientific explanation is not necessarily going to cut ice with people who don’t accept the scientific way of looking at the world.

ukliberty,

Within certain parameters I’m allowed to kill you. Is that a licence to kill?

Of course it is. The Police however are now armed on a regular basis, which you are not. Which, unsurprisingly, makes them a greater danger to the general public than you are. In normal circumstances if you killed me you would be subject to a murder trial. If you were able to prove that you had had reasonable grounds for fearing for your own life, or the lives of others, the chances are you’d walk free. Which means that the state would have agreed with your decision, in effect a retrospective licence.

I very much doubt you’d be allowed anonymity. The Tony Martin case comes to mind.

Your own commentary, from your own blog, certainly doesn’t come across in the comments you made early on in this thread. If you were simply asking for information in your first post on this thread, then I adequately answered it at 3. It was perhaps not too clever for an alleged civil libertarian to open with a somewhat naive question about anonymity @ 1, reject reasons why this should be refused @ 4, and attempt to rubbish any opinion other than your own @ 6 & 8.

Jolly well done.

I am not holding my breath that the inquest proves definitive in this case, especially on the wider ramifications of arming the Police. However, hope springs eternal.

It was perhaps not too clever for an alleged civil libertarian to open with a somewhat naive question about anonymity @ 1

I’ve never claimed to be an expert, far from it. I asked the question because I didn’t know the answer. Is that naive?

I was certainly naive when I attempted to continue with the discussion after your comment about a “posse of state sanctioned executioners”. Clearly you aren’t interested in reasonable discussion.

ukliberty,

Well, what else is it? The Army are legally encouraged to kill people (foreigners mainly) on behalf of the State. When they kill our own citizens, in Northern Ireland for instance, it is permissible, given rules of engagement. I repeat, I have no issue with either the Police or the Army using lethal force in circumstances where there is a clear and present danger. That is what they are about, it is why we have them. But lets not pretend that it is anything other than a licence, in the sense that we, through Parliament allow it.

Whilst you might consider the expression ‘a posse of state sanctioned executioners’ a trifle OTT, I don’t think that anyone close to Charles de Menzes would have characterised it any more reasonably. The evidence that has come out so far, suggests that the decision to kill him was taken without any real knowledge – on the part of the presumeably senior policeman who took it – of the threat being presented as the situation developed.

From what has been released, he was dressed normally, in other words unable to disguise a potential bomb and he had been completely subdued. Only then was Kratos invoked. Seems wrong to me, but there you go.

I’m not going to argue with you about “licences to kill” and “posses of state sanctioned executioners”.

But some thoughts for what they are worth:

Principally I’m interested in fairness, yes ‘even’ for the police. Let’s get some perspective. There have been forty or so victims of police shootings in the last ten years – some 15 or so killed – who turned out not to have been a lethal threat, but no individual police officers have been convicted of any related crimes. That looks wrong. Yet there are many, many deployments of firearms officers – over 18,000 in 2006/07 (with only three shots). So we need to recognise that on the whole there are relatively few contentious incidents.

It seems to me that soldiers are under greater scrutiny, whether they are in Northern Ireland or Iraq. This doesn’t seem right. The police do not deserve less scrutiny because of their responsibilities – if anything, they deserve more scrutiny because of those responsibilities, because they have been permitted to carry firearms and the rest of us may not, because of the powers that they have that we do not have. I believe any officers who think they should be immune from prosecution should hand in their weapons and resign.

They do, however, deserve the presumption of innocence.

That is not to say there are no problems with firearms deployments.

I think the wheels of justice grind too slowly even for the police. It took five years, two inquests and two applications for judicial review for the Stanley case, for example, to be resolved (though obviously not to the satisfaction of Mrs Stanley). The inquest into the death of de Menezes still has not been completed more than three years after his shooting. It cannot be right that this is still hanging over his family or the heads of the firearms officers, assuming they are innocent (which of course we must do). No wonder there is infighting. This doesn’t help anyone: the de Menezes family, the police, or other members of the public.

(I wonder if the delay can itself be challenged under article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.)

It seems to me the health and safety trial was intended to mitigate the growing demand for some sort of scrutiny of the shooting – but it delayed the inquest, something more important, it seems to me – a political decision. This isn’t justice, this is politics. However, the trial did reveal details and provide confirmation of particular events and incompetence that would otherwise be absent from the public domain.

Now, there may be (indeed, probably is, from my armchair) a reluctance to prosecute, particularly because some firearms officers will down tools if any of their number are threatened with legal action – the reason given is that there is insufficient evidence for a reasonable prospect of conviction, but I think scrutiny would be improved if we took such decisions to prosecute from the CPS, which is not independent from Government, and gave it to something independent, say a grand jury or magistrate/judge with sufficient experience.

We the public deserve a proper, timely debate over firearms policies.

I believe the national practice of allowing officers to confer on their notes must stop immediately. The IPCC and MPA suggest it should stop – let’s stop suggesting and just stop it.

It seems to me that sometimes the police get themselves into a position where the suspect’s death will be the inevitable result. This is of course wholly unacceptable. It seems to me this was the case with Mark Saunders, James Ashley, and Harry Stanley (see for example para 55 of [2005] EWHC 857), to name but three.

It seems to me that firearms officers are sometimes given inflammatory and /or inaccurate briefings. This was the case with James Ashley (where the shooter was also inadequately trained and inexperienced particularly in the controversial tactic he and his colleagues were told to use). And how on earth did Cherry Groce become thought of as a lethal threat?

It seems to me it was wholly wrong for Sir Ian Blair to attempt to suspend – indeed, that he thought he could and should suspend – section 17 of the Police Reform Act 2002. It’s seems incredible that he thought he could do that, and that he got away with the attempt. The IPCC were denied access to the scene and evidence for five days! It is outrageous.

The mistakes / lies / smears in the press by official spokesmen and ‘sources’ and little to no evidence of any effort to correct them is wholly wrong. Also there should be some concern that some press officers will assume that standard procedure has been followed and base their statements on that assumption rather than the facts of the case (for example see Stockwell Two 16.10.04).

I think the circumstances of the 2006 Forest Gate raid have been inadequately scrutinised.

I think this story about the man who slipped into a hypoglycaemic state is extraordinary and
I’m surprised there has been no more ‘fuss’ about it.

Oh I forgot my main issue with the de Menezes case. As far as I have seen, there is no information in the public domain as to how the firearms officers reached the honest belief that he was an threat such that lethal force was necessary for the defence of themselves or others (as you say, he was unarmed, normally dressed, and restrained). Yet this is the heart of the case as to whether he was lawfully or unlawfully killed. We have to wait and see the results of the inquest.