The Metropolitan police’s firearms command is seen as prestigious to serve in, but Louise Casey’s damning report into Britain’s largest force published in March found it had become dogged by cultural issues.
Some of its virtues can slide into vices. It is close knit, offering strong support for colleagues in trouble, which can turn into an insularity. Its members volunteer to face extreme danger, rarely open fire, and some can appear to sneer at those who question them, viewing it as doubting their professionalism.
Since last Wednesday and the charging of an officer with murder after Chris Kaba was shot dead last September in south London, a distrust of their bosses and discontent simmering for years has erupted into what is effectively a protest that has rocked the leadership of the Met and government.
Scores refused to go out on armed patrol, saying they needed a period of reflection to consider whether they wished to continue carrying a weapon.
Firearms officers in theory have no special protection when they use force under English criminal law compared with the average citizen.
The relevant law is section three of the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which reads: “A person may use such force as is reasonable in the prevention of crime.”
The law and case law following court hearings boils down to an officer having the right to use force to protect themselves or others from harm. The force used needs to be proportionate, and an officer needs to hold an honest belief that the threat exists. While the criminal law does not explicitly state the belief needs to be reasonable, guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service makes it clear that is a likely factor. “The more unreasonable the belief, the less likely it is that the court will accept it was honestly held,” it states.
In theory while armed officers have no special protections, those who have fought for greater police accountability would argue otherwise. V53, the officer who shot Mark Duggan in 2011, was not investigated for any criminal offence, with the inquest jury finding Duggan did not have a gun when shot. V53 spent years suspended or facing an inquest.
The officer who in 2005 shot dead a wholly innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, after mistaking him for a terrorist, was not prosecuted.
Some say officers who kill should be treated like any other suspect: arrested and investigated rapidly with a charging decision in days, not the best part of a year, as in the case of the Kaba shooting. Firearms officers resent the instant suspicion they feel from the rest of the criminal justice system and feel they should be treated as professional witnesses.
What both sides of the argument agree on is the length of time it takes it too long and exacerbates the emotional pain. The last trial of a Met firearms officer for murder took a whole decade to reach court. In 2015 Tony Long was acquitted by an Old Bailey jury of the murder of Azelle Rodney, a suspect he shot six times in 2005. Such prosecutions are rare.
In 2021 an officer from the West Mercia force, Benjamin Monk, was acquitted of murder but convicted of the manslaughter of the former footballer Dalian Atkinson in Telford.
Monk repeatedly fired an electric stun gun into Atkinson, for up to 33 seconds – longer than recommended – but also kicked him in the head while on the ground, and stood with his foot on his head, leading to him being jailed for eight years. He was the first officer convicted for killing someone in the course of their duties in more than three decades.
The Atkinson family decried that it took five years to see justice.
The strain is huge. One officer investigated after a fatal shooting was feared to pose a threat to his own life as the process dragged on. The wife of a different officer fainted and fell off a chair when told her loved one had been finally exonerated.
The Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, accepted the findings of Casey’s report, which included claims the firearms unit bent the rules, padded expenses and was riddled with racism and sexism.
But when the crisis became acute this weekend with firearms officers declining to patrol, he publicly became a vessel for their longstanding concerns, demanding reforms of how use of force cases are investigated and in rare cases prosecuted.
Whether that is enough to quell the protest remains to be seen, as does whether it further strains the confidence of those in the public who do not believe the police are accountable enough.
