Policing and the gun

Most police officers in Britain will never hold a firearm, face a gun or fire one. And the majority have consistently shown that they have no desire to carry arms routinely. Furthermore, in the vast majority of incidents where firearms are deployed in Britain no shots are fired. A highly experienced SO19 officer involved in the Stockwell shooting had taken part in some 2,000 firearms operations yet had never before fired at a person. One chief officer had granted around 4,000 authorisations for firearms use, but none had resulted in bullets being fired. And on the very few occasions when police do open fire more than half the bullets will miss their target. Then in the extremely rare cases when people are unfortunate enough to be struck by a police bullet, more than half will survive. The evidence is crystal clear; whatever the intention, most police shootings do not kill.

That also holds for the Netherlands and, somewhat surprisingly, for the United States. We may hold a stereotype of American officers as being ‘quick on the trigger’ and expect a high mortality rate among those shot by the police. But the overall data is in many respects not that very different from Britain. For example, within the New York Police Department (NYPD) – the largest US police department with over 30,000 officers in a historically violent city – the vast majority of officers will not discharge a firearm during their entire career, according to a recent study by the Rand Corporation (Rostker et al, 2008). Furthermore, the detailed accounts of 80 American officers involved in over 100 firearms incidents analysed by Klinger (2004), reveal that they often exercised restraint for a wide range of reasons. They frequently managed not to shoot to kill even where they would have been perfectly within their rights in doing so. In real-life situations they hesitated, took risks and prevented a fatality and sometimes avoided deaths that would have been labelled unjustified and perhaps might have haunted them for years.

This book has focused on policy and practice with regard to police use of firearms. It delved into these matters principally with regard to the UK, but also looked at the US and the Netherlands. The police use of firearms is a perennial and central topic in a democratic society because it involves representatives of the state being granted the power and authority to deprive people of their lives. This pivotal matter in policing helps to open up the consideration of a wider raft of issues around law, policy, legitimacy, governance, accountability and the demarcation line between police and government. These complex and intertwined issues raise in turn three questions of great importance: who actually decides policy on police use of firearms?; why is there such a striking absence of debate on this topic?; and, above all, what does the material and analysis in this book – and especially the significance of Kratos – tell us about the direction in which policing is moving?

In addition, what are the implications of that movement for the relationship between the state, police and society – which was traditionally based on a paradigm of consent – and for the role of the police officer? Consent is based on the exercise of legitimate authority and if the public doubts that legitimacy it can revoke consent. For example, in Britain the approach to this fundamental topic – the power of police to kill – was based on the philosophy and practice of restraint. This can be traced back to 1829 with the founding of an unarmed police force, Peel’s assurance that the state was essentially benign, and his subliminal message that the citizenry need not fear the police officer. After 176 years, however, that traditional policy and practice evaporated on one day in 2005. The Stockwell shooting was a defining moment in police use of firearms – and indeed in British policing history – because it revealed a seismic paradigm shift.

Peel and benign Bobbies

Police violence, and especially police use of firearms, touches a highly sensitive nerve in Britain. This is because, from the commencement of modern policing in 1829 with the establishment of the Metropolitan Police (Met) by Sir Robert Peel, the British Police has operated on a policy and exuded an image that all its officers were unarmed (Ascoli, 1979). Furthermore, Peel’s model for policing was that police officers would not carry firearms; would not be given the military-style training typical of Gendarmerie-style forces on the Continent; would be restrained in the use of force; and would be directly answerable to the courts. This conveyed a powerful message. Peel was reassuring the public, and his political opponents, that in Britain the state was essentially benign and the citizen need not fear arbitrary violence from it. Indeed, the formation of the New Police by Peel drew partly on the failure of the military, which had proved incapable of maintaining public order without causing considerable casualties.

For almost one and a half centuries, then, the iconic ‘Great British Bobby’, patrolling alone and with his truncheon concealed beneath his tunic, symbolised this aversion to the use of overt force in the policing of British society (Emsley, 2009). Indeed, Waddington (1991: 9) asserts that this ‘policing by consent’ paradigm of civilian policing – where Peel envisaged the Bobby as no more than a citizen in uniform – drew its authority and legitimacy from the ‘benign, non-aggressive image that the British police institution has tried to cultivate’. This has meant that for many years Britain stood out as an exception to the practice in most forces throughout the world, including the relatively pacific Netherlands, of all officers routinely carrying guns. There are in fact few other forces in modern societies where the police are not armed, and typically in most forces abroad every police officer carries a weapon while specialised units can be heavily armed.

For the types of firearms available to the police in Britain see Waddington (1991), Collins (1998) and Waldren (2007).

Air guns and ‘BB’ guns. Air guns fire a pellet projected by compressed air, whereas ‘BB’ guns fire ball bearings.

Assault rifles. These are shorter, lighter weapons than the standard rifle and with a smaller calibre and high muzzle velocity; they are very effective at short range. Probably the most renowned is the Russian AK47 Kalashnikov.

Automatic weapons. Automatic weapons are designed to fire a number of shots rapidly without having to be manually reloaded after each shot. Several techniques have been developed that allow the spent round to be ejected and a fresh round to be moved into the breech ‘automatically’. They are also referred to as ‘self-loading’ weapons. People also speak of a ‘semi-automatic’ weapon, which means a firing mode where the shooter has to pull the trigger for each individual shot, while an ‘automatic’ weapon can be fired continuously until the pressure is released from the trigger. Some weapons are configured for only for semi-automatic firing while others are capable of being fired on semi- or fully automatic modes.

Carbine. The carbine is a lighter form of rifle with a shorter barrel originally designed for use by cavalry. The H&K MP5, for instance, is referred to as a carbine and not a rifle.

Heckler and Kochs (H&Ks). ‘H&K’ has become a prominent weapons manufacturer, with certain of its handguns, such as the MP5 carbine, enjoying a prolonged product lifecycle. Since the mid-1970s, Heckler and Koch and its MP5 have come to dominate the choice for a close-quarter combat weapon that is also widely used in law-enforcement. The MP5 came into prominence in SAS hands during the Iranian Embassy assault in 1980. It is a reliable and versatile weapon that is manufactured in a variety of models. H&K also produces assault and sniper rifles and sub-machine guns. British police officers normally carry their H&Ks on single-shot, semi-automatic mode; for other purposes they usually can be configured for short bursts (3–5 bullets) or for full-automatic firing.

Machine guns. These weapons are capable of firing a large number of rounds rapidly, usually through an ammunition belt, with Maxim’s model of 1883 being viewed as the first fully automatic version.

This book arose directly from the resurfacing of the term ‘shoot to kill’ following the killing of an innocent man by the Metropolitan Police Service – colloquially referred to as the ‘Met’ – in London in 2005 at Stockwell Underground Station. My academic curiosity was aroused by that extraordinary event and the implications for British policing, but already before that affair I was interested in issues of operational and institutional accountability in policing. Recently, moreover, I began to pay attention to these crucial subjects in relation to the police use of firearms. This was for two main reasons.

First, I have often collaborated with police practitioners in my work and publications. In the age of smart cops the contribution of these ‘reflective practitioners’ brings valuable insights from insiders both about strategic and operational issues and especially about the predicament of the front-line officer at the delivery end of the most important government agency in society. We can, for instance, ruminate on firearms policy, but we must always consider the sometimes crude reality and acute dilemmas facing the officer confronting a gun, without a weapon or with a firearm. The latter carries the awesome responsibility of being able to take the life of a fellow citizen. The state has abolished the death penalty, but has delegated a form of ‘capital punishment’ to a law-enforcement officer low in the formal hierarchy.

My focus in this work draws, then, on the knowledge and experience of several reflective practitioners but especially that of Geoffrey Markham, who served in the Essex Police for over 40 years (1957–99). He became Assistant Chief Constable (ACC), was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) for 16 years and served on nine ACPO committees including the Joint Standing Committee on Police Use of Firearms. Geoffrey became an authority on firearms and contributed to The Manual of Guidance on the Police Use of Firearms (ACPO, 2001). He has handled major incidents during a period of rapid and significant change in British policing. During his training in 1957, for example, there was no attention paid to firearms: ‘They were only mentioned in relation to the law on weapons and licensing and also with regard to humane use against animals. But there was no thought given to weaponry at all, although there must have been an arsenal somewhere’ (interview, Markham).

The material presented earlier indicates that the British Police during the last four decades – say from that crucial turning-point of 1966 (Waddington, 1991) – engaged in a continuous learning process regarding police use of firearms and the allied issues of rights, command, accountability, investigations and oversight. In wrestling with these complex and intertwined matters, police were driven by a number of factors that have culminated generally in a more professional and sophisticated approach.

The broader reform process in policing has not always been even, smooth and progressive, but rather has often been tardy, painful, contested and even at times retrograde. There have, for example, been highly critical moments eliciting considerable negative publicity with insistent demands for reform arising from major corruption scandals, miscarriages of justice, public order situations including the 1981 riots in Brixton and elsewhere, and from the profound repercussions of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. There can be no doubt, however, that policing has altered considerably in a number of areas and is continually subject to change and reform (Blair, 2003; Reiner, 2010).

Behind a number of these changes are several streams of influence combining to push the police to concentrate their minds on command, accountability, investigations and oversight (Jones, 2003). Here I shall touch on five key factors. The growing importance of human rights (HR) law and the pronouncements of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR); the potential impact from the late 1990s of the proposed legislation on ‘corporate manslaughter’; influential court cases and judicial pronouncements on police firearms use; developments in structures and practices of operational command and control; and problems with investigations and the rise of new oversight agencies.

Indeed, behind these particular impulses the police have been subjected in the last three decades more generally to a swelling stream of commissions, directives on procedures and legislation, which has cascaded onto them from both Conservative and Labour governments (Reiner, 2010). Under the New Labour government from 1997, for instance, there was a flood of measures: ‘During its first ten years in office New Labour passed fifty-three Acts containing criminal justice legislation and created 3,000 new or revised criminal offences’ (Blair, 2009: 105).

The long-standing, traditional position of civil policing in Britain is based on restraint, avoidance of violence, the application of the minimum force considered necessary and proportionate and, if possible, the preservation of life. This ‘restraint paradigm’ contrasts strongly with typical military-style operations that function under an alternative ‘military paradigm’. A central issue here is the extent to which British policing has shifted from the restraint paradigm and moved closer to the military paradigm. This is crucial to assessing the Stockwell shooting in London in 2005, the ‘Kratos’ policy underpinning it and the long-term implications of that incident for policing.

The military paradigm: ‘Close combat-style’ operations

As shown in the quotes above, soldiers are trained to ‘shoot to kill’ in combat during armed conflict in a conventional war, as in Iraq, or during counter-insurgency operations, as in Northern Ireland. Warfare is a gruesome, brutal and savage trade and front-line infantry are taught to kill other soldiers without compunction and with crude and ruthless violence by gun, grenade, bayonet, knife, spade, pick-handle or bare hands (Ellis, 1982). The grim reality of combat in warfare is a far cry from conventional policing in civil society.

This dichotomy is even more the case with Special Forces who are trained for certain high-risk and sometimes covert missions that include fighting behind enemy lines, Close Quarter Battle (CQB), ambushes, abductions, assassinations, rescue missions and attacking a stronghold (Asher, 2004, 2008). In the UK the SAS in particular has been central to training other military units for counter-insurgency and diverse other roles for four decades, but especially in Northern Ireland during the Troubles (Urban, 1993). It has also been influential since the early 1980s in policing with regard to preparing officers for certain types of tough operation such as ‘rapid entry’ to premises.

Throughout this work I wish to convey that while there is a truism – ‘it’s not guns that are a problem but people’ – it is clearly the case from much data that guns are a problem. They will always be a problem because they are intrinsically deadly instruments that become a social problem in relation to the widespread production and commercial promotion of weapons by the gun industry leading to public possession of guns for sport, hunting and self-defence; by the weaknesses in the legislation, licensing and regulation of firearms; and by the ease of access to legal or illegal weapons for criminal purposes (McLaglan, 2005).

In interpreting this material I shall hold that context and culture are pivotal in determining policy and practice (Waddington et al, 2009). And I shall have in mind primarily three societies – the UK, the US and the Netherlands – with three contrasting approaches to police use of force and of firearms. Throughout, I also have in mind that the Police Service is an emergency agency that responds to many mundane things but also to challenging incidents; some of these will require the mobilisation of potentially fatal force with the use of firearms. The chance of fatalities raises these incidents to the most important that police institutions will encounter and officers will have to deal with in their careers. And the police too can be victims of violence. For example, funerals for slain officers, or for officers killed on duty through accidents, are often strongly ritualised and highly emotional events (Manning, 1977; Crank, 1998). Police funerals are ritually rather like military ones for soldiers fallen in action except that the dead officer was killed while doing his job by a fellow citizen in his own society in peacetime.