Kill, policeman, kill, kill...

The obsession of the police with gaining increased "rights" to "shoot to kill" is deeply troubling. According to a number of articles in the UK press over the past couple of days, such as this one in the Independent, their "right" has now been extended beyond suicide bombers. What democratic process was followed to give them this "right" is unclear. What bothers me even more is that I would expect any justification of this to include a catalogue of specific cases (such as cases of "kidnapping, stalking and domestic violence" mentioned in the article) where police have been present but unable to prevent deaths of victims because they couldn't "shoot to kill". I haven't heard of such a catalogue of such cases, I've never seen a police chief interviewed on TV saying how he could have saved someone if he'd been able to allow his firearms officers to shoot. I think people have been watching too much TV.

Then, while I'm back on this topic (of course we remember the catastrophic Menezes shooting as discussed in previous blog entries), the Harry Stanley table-leg case has been in the news again. An inquest verdict of unlawful killing has been overturned, as reported here. What bothers me most about this case is why the police put themselves in a situation where they believed they had no alternative but to shoot someone who they had been told had a sawn-off shotgun. One would have thought their training would have been to do something commonsensical like hide behind a wall until they had sized up the situation.