UK: No accountability for armed police
01 January 2006
Harry Stanley was a 46-year old painter and decorator, who was recovering from a successful cancer operation when he was shot dead by two Metropolitan police officers in Hackney, east London, on 22 September 1999. He had just collected a table leg that had been repaired and was on his way home with it wrapped in a bag when he stopped at a local public house. There, a customer who mistook Harry's Scottish accent for an Irish one and his bagged table leg for a firearm, phoned the police to report a suspicious armed man. Within minutes a Metropolitan police armed response unit (SO 19) arrived. As the father of three made his way home the police officers approached him from behind, shouting twice for him to stop; as Harry turned the police officers opened fire, one shot hitting him in the head the other hitting his left hand. When his bag was searched the officers recovered the table leg.
The controversial killing was the subject of a Surrey police investigation under the supervision of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA, which was replaced by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, IPCC, in April 2004). In June 2002, after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) ruled that Inspector Neil Sharman and PC Kevin Fagan should not face criminal charges, an inquest jury returned an open verdict on the killing. However, the jury's verdict was overturned by the High Court in April 2003 and a second inquest was ordered. This was held in October 2004 and on this occasion the jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing. Their verdict led to Sharman and Fagan being suspended from duty which resulted in a major policing crisis as members of SO-19 downed arms and went on unofficial strike. This show of force caused panic in the government and at the Home Office. By May 2005 the High Court had quashed the second jury's verdict, (see Statewatch Vol. 10 no 2 and 6, Vol. 12 no 5, Vol. 13 no 2, Vol. 15 no 2).
In June 2005 Sharman and Fagan were arrested by Surrey police after new forensic evidence surfaced, indicating that the officers' claim that Harry had implausibly aimed the bag carrying the table leg at them was false. The CPS was considering charges of murder, gross negligence manslaughter, perjury, attempting to pervert the course of justice and misconduct in public office. The new forensic evidence "appeared to indicate that Mr Stanley may have been shot as he turned towards the officers, in contradiction to the statements provided by them" said a CPS press release. However, the CPS concluded in October 2005 that "the prosecution evidence is insufficient to rebut the officers assertion that they were acting in self-defence. We have also concluded that the threat which they believed they faced made the use of fatal force reasonable in the circumstances as they perceived them."
This decision, alongside the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes after a terrorist scare on 22 July 2005, prompted Lord Berkeley to ask the Minister for State in the House of Lords in November 2005, "Under what circumstances a Metropolitan Police Officer is authorised to shoot to kill?" Baroness Scotland replied:
all police use of firearms is subject to the usual law on the use of force. Any decision to use firearms must be justifiable according to the circumstances of the case - if necessary, before a court. Police operations involving firearms will be intended in appropriate circumstances to bring an end to an imminent threat to life or of serious injury. Tactics will be aimed at ensuring that that is done quickly and with certainty. If a firearm is discharged, death may result, but that is not the objective. (House of Lords debates 3.11.05)
When Lord Berkeley pointed out that Harry Stanley (and Jean Charles de Menezes) "did not fall into that category" Baroness Scotland agreed that "an extreme threat must be present" but was unable to comment on Harry's case because "these issues are under investigation."
In February 2006