Most Londoners probably take the capital’s armed police for granted when they see them protecting buildings, railway stations and other key locations, unless it’s in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack.
That’s important enough, but with their tasks extending well beyond that to tackling dangerous organised criminals, armed gang members and other potentially lethal threats, the revelation that the Met saw a drop of more than 250 in the number of its officers prepared to carry guns to protect the public in the nine months to the end of December is troubling.
One of the principal causes of the fall, which equates to 10 per cent of the force’s firearms contingent, is the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to charge a Met firearms officer with murder over the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba in Streatham Hill in September 2022, after intelligence linked the car he was in to a previous firearms incident.
The precise details of what happened will not become clear until the officer goes on trial and could not be discussed for legal reasons even if they were known. It will be for the jury to decide.
But what is obvious is that this case and others, such as the protracted attempt by the Independent Office for Police Conduct to force gross misconduct proceedings against another Met firearms officer eight years after the fatal shooting of Jermaine Baker in Wood Green in December 2015, have left some armed police feeling a lack of support and that the risk of having their lives ruined by the split-second decisions they are forced to take on the public’s behalf is too great to continue carrying a gun.
It’s worth remembering that armed police aren’t pursuing average Londoners but highly dangerous criminals
It is understandable why armed officers — who all volunteer to perform their firearms role — might feel this way. Of course, there cannot be carte blanche to open fire without any risk of legal consequences. But the threshold for taking criminal or disciplinary action against armed officers must be high and take into account the potentially fatal risks they face when deciding, in highly pressured circumstances that most people will never have to confront, whether they need to shoot.
Investigations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which are stressful for officers and their families regardless of the outcome, are also excessively slow.
It is worth remembering too that our armed police are not out pursuing the average Londoner, but instead usually dealing with highly dangerous criminals with a propensity to use violence. Mark Duggan, for example, whose fatal shooting by a Met officer in Tottenham prompted the London riots of 2011, was known to the police as a violent gangster, as a subsequent investigation by the policing watchdog showed. The later conviction of another criminal for selling Duggan a gun only minutes before he was killed shows the nature of who the armed officers were dealing with that day and why they were tracking him in the first place. It’s the same with the fatal shooting of Jermaine Baker. He was not shot while enjoying an innocent stroll, but because he was involved in an operation with two other criminals to spring a senior gang member from a prison van near Wood Green crown court.
Nor does the fact that a fatal police shooting has occurred mean that “justice” — the familiar cry of families and friends often apparently blind to the malign history of the person they’re mourning — should always involve putting the officer who fired the bullet before a court and securing a conviction. The law of self-defence rightly gives police (and anyone) the right to use proportionate force to protect their own life or those of others.
That’s particularly relevant in cases where an armed officer fears a suspect with a gun or other potentially lethal weapon is about to use it on them, another officer or member of the public. They cannot wait to find out because that would be too late. Aiming to “wing” the suspect by hitting a limb might look OK in a film, but not in real life where it might leave them able to fire. That’s why, on the very rare occasions that police do shoot, it’s usually lethal. It’s the only way to be sure a suspect can’t take someone else’s life.
The Met insists that despite the “challenging” situation, it still has enough armed officers to perform the tasks required. Let’s hope it remains that way. But let’s be clear too that London’s armed police are brave men and women, working as public servants, who deserve better treatment.
