If you don't like scrutiny, hand in your guns
More than 1,000 people are shot and killed by the police in the United States every year, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post.
In England and Wales, by contrast, three people were fatally shot by the police in the twelve months to March 2023. I am not aware of any fatal shootings by police officers in Scotland and Northern Ireland during the same period.
I can only imagine the grief, anguish and anger any fatal police shooting must cause family members and friends. We should always aim for no fatal police shootings across the UK, as has been the case in some years.
Gun carrying and deployment is routine among the thousands of federal, state and local police forces in the US. In the UK, very few police officers carry guns. The role itself is voluntary and does not come with additional pay.
The deployment of armed officers in the UK is also subject to more stringent guidelines and review than is the case in the United States.
These are some of the reasons why the number of fatal police shootings are so much lower in the UK than in the USA. Given this, the recent manoeuvrings around the police officer facing a murder charge for the fatal shooting last year of Chris Kaba should concern us all.
Following the officer’s court appearance last week, a number of police officers in London stepped back from armed duty.
While one can sympathise with the dilemma – most of us are not in jobs where a split-second, high-pressure decision might result in a death – it is vital that any use by the police of lethal force is rigorously and transparently investigated.
If an armed police officer is not comfortable with the scrutiny that comes with the role, it is certainly for the best that they step back, permanently, from armed duty.
After the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, intervened this week, in a manner that some argued risked prejudicing the trial, the Solicitor General issued a media advisory. This followed a contempt of court warning issued by the judge in charge of the murder case.
The Home Secretary has also announced a review into armed policing. If this review is to be useful, it should take into account the conclusions of the Casey Review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan police.
The review, commissioned and published by the Met, was damning in its assessment of the Specialist Firearms Command, MO19.
One anonymous witness described MO19 as “the most toxic, racist, sexist place I’ve ever worked…it’s just an unbelievable place.”
Casey herself summarised MO19 as:
Well resourced, with elitist attitudes and toxic cultures of bullying, racism, sexism and ableism, normal rules do not seem to apply or be applied in MO19.
She called for “higher vetting and behaviour standards in its specialist armed teams to identify any conduct issues and to keep out those drawn to these roles for the wrong reasons,” and for such vetting to be applied retrospectively.
Far from being over-scrutinised, the Met’s armed police officers are not scrutinised enough.