Vol. 80/No. 2 January 18, 2016
(front page)
UK gov’t moves to arm more
cops, let them ‘shoot to kill’
Senior police officers, including London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, have been pressing for the changes, claiming that current regulations make it hard to carry through government plans to recruit significantly more armed cops after the attacks in Paris. Of 130,000 officers in England and Wales, 6,000 are trained to use guns.
The Home Office announced Dec. 17 an extra $50 million for firearms officers, and a police taskforce is examining how to increase the number of armed response vehicles and specialist counterterrorism teams, and whether to equip riot police with firearms. Authorities are also planning to increase the number of cops armed with Tasers.
On Dec. 11, Baker was shot dead by a plainclothes officer while sitting in a car outside Wood Green Crown Court in north London. Police allege that Baker was part of a plot to spring two men who were being sentenced that day, and that a fake handgun that fires plastic pellets was recovered at the scene. Authorities say there is no recording of the incident, either from surveillance video or police body cameras.
Residents of Tottenham, where Baker lived, voiced their anger at a Dec. 17 public meeting of some 150 people, addressed by officials of the government’s Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Metropolitan Police. There was applause when IPCC representative Cindy Butts said an officer had been arrested— an unusual move — as part of an IPCC criminal homicide investigation. The officer, who hasn’t been named, has been suspended from duty. Butts made clear, however, that he has not been charged.
“I’ve been told that he was sleeping in his car. Police officers had information that was not 100% that he was going to do it — you took an innocent man away,” a friend of Baker told the meeting, according to the Daily Mail. The IPCC now says they are investigating the claim that Baker was asleep when he was shot.
“It’s another case of shoot first and ask questions later,” Rupert Sylvester, a long-time fighter against police brutality, told the Militant. Sylvester’s son, Roger, was killed by police in 1999.
The arrest of the cop sends “a very bad message,” said former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair. “These are men and women who go to work to do an incredibly dangerous job for which they volunteer and if they do their duty and shoot somebody because they have to,” he told Sky News, “they should not be treated as criminals.”
As commissioner, Blair was a vocal defender of the shoot-to-kill policy following the notorious counterterrorism operation in which police executed Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005. They later admitted the Brazilian-born electrician was completely innocent.
No firearms cop has ever been convicted of unlawful killing. Under the current law they are allowed to open fire if they have an “honest and instinctive” belief that it is “reasonable.” Last July former officer Anthony Long was cleared of murdering Azelle Rodney 10 years after shooting him dead, including with four bullets to the head. Long argued self-defense, saying he feared Rodney was reaching for a gun.
That same month, Home Secretary Theresa May announced a review of deaths in police custody, saying they have “the potential to undermine dramatically the relationship between the public and the police.” By official figures, 17 people had died at the hands of police in the previous 12 months, a five-year high.
Working people are wary of the government’s moves. “It’s alright for police to use weapons if there is danger, but you need to have some measures to check them,” said Nadeem Butt, who works at the McVitie’s cookie factory. “Some people think they have power when they have a gun.”
“Cameron is giving police more power to shoot innocent people and get away with it,” said David Grant, another McVitie’s worker, who has personally known several people who died in police custody.
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