Sorry I don't accept that at all, there is no excuse in my book for not verbally communicating with the person before deciding to put a bullet in them.

This is the same organisation which managed this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_H ... y#Shooting

He's right - as part of the law on police use of firearms, there's only one circumstance where it is legal to fire without first verbally challenging the person who is supposedly a threat - that's if they're actively targetting/in the process of firing at a member of the public or the armed officer when first engaged. Basically the only time a police officer is allowed to shoot first & ask questions later is if they or a member of the public is being fired upon or if they are about to be fired upon.

The former case is usually pretty straightforward, there's forensic evidence to back up a suspect having a weapon and discharging it . The latter is the get-out the police have used in the past when they've fired upon someone and been hasty about it. And, of course, it used to be hard to prove one way or the other. In the last few years though, a lot of forces have fitted micro cameras either to the officer's flak vest or to the weapons they carry and the IPCC will always ask for those recordings, so that excuse has largely gone out the window. If such a recording of a firearms incident 'went missing', there are plenty of people out there who wouldn't let that go at all...

If the camera evidence disappears or is lost then it should be an instant dismissal of the officers involved. If it was lost after being handed to the evidence stores then the officer in charge should also be either dismissed or charged with destruction of evidence. With a zero tolerance of police incompetence it will mean that good officers do not have to face redundancy in light of the cuts. There would be enough natural wastage to cover the savings.

You notice I said "dealt with as such" not "instantly fired upon". You are reading words I have not written. There are indeed circumstances where shots will be fired first, and questions asked later, but most of the time you will be verbally challenged before things escalate.

Of course, you need to be sure that your space soldier helmet does not interfere with your hearing.

You do have to remember that from a distance, your replica space gun prop may be hard to differentiate from the real thing. Some props from films are built around real guns (the pulse rifle props in Aliens, for example were built around real, functional weapons).

The weapons the storm troopers use in Star Wars bear a very close similarity to WWII sten guns.

There's also the point that toy guns (in the UK at least) are required to be bright colours for the stated reason it makes them easier to identify compared to actual weapons, which are pretty much never luminous colours. If you get a toy gun that's bright purple and then paint it the same colours as a standard issue army weapon then you've, if not actively put yourself at risk, at least removed one of the mechanisms that's there to keep you safe.

You quite often see low budget sci-fi movies using repainted nerf guns as props. And some of the more expensive nerf guns are designed to look as much like actual firearms as possible apart from the colour of the plastic they're made from. And that's without even considering the airsoft market.

It is actually asking a lot for a police officer who thinks he may be facing an armed nutjob to tell that these things aren't actual guns at a glance...



let alone one that looks identical to the weapon he's carrying..



I mean, OK, it's got the orange bit on the front but if some berk who wants to dress as Hicks decides to paint over that...

OK. carrying a toy gun should not get you shot. But you can either mitigate or increase the risk of that happening by your own actions.

Maybe the police policy should be not to shoot first. That way any fool who makes his toy gun look even more real will be unable to fire first.

The policy, as I've said, is not to shoot first if you can avoid doing so. However it's a bit much to ask someone to hold their fire to give what could be a gunman with a high velocity weapon a chance to take a potshot at them first just to be sure. A police officer is able to open fire if he feels his life is under immediate threat. That I don't think is wrong. The problem is the consequences when it turns out that perception was incorrect aren't great enough. A policeman who fires upon an unarmed suspect should not remain a policeman afterwards and should by default be faced with a manslaughter investigation.

Jon

I can see your point but the police do have bullet proof jackets and significant training, so even if Han shoots first they are more likely to be able to respond. They also do not act alone, so the chances of them taking both officers out would be close to zero.

That's always been something of a misnomer. Most 'bullet proof jackets' won't actually stop a large caliber bullet fired at you from close range. Plus even with the jacket your arms, legs and face are still exposed. A police officer in the right gear has a chance of surviving being shot but are you prepared to bet your life on a chance?


Training is the key. It's training that (should) allow an officer to think rationally when his basic fight or flight reflex is telling him to just shoot the bad guy. And this, it appears, is where things have been going awry.


Yeah, I'm not sure it would be much comfort to the now deceased officer's wife and kids that 'he had a 50/50 chance and got unlucky'.

I know police officers, and especially ARU officers, volunteer to put themselves in harms way but that doesn't mean we should treat them as a disposable resource. They have just as much right to life as everyone else.

Jon

I am certainly not thinking that we should treat the ARU's as disposable. I prefer them over the alternative of arming all police. The recent case of the two police women shot in Manchester might mean a better use of ARU's when a known gunman is on the loose. My point about training means that even if you were dressed as a storm trooper the chances of getting shot should be nil. It should never be an excuse for the police to murder someone, then blame the victim.

You do have to bear in mind that your average Star Wars storm trooper can't hit a barn door at three paces, let alone anything vaguely ambulatory, such as a small R2 droid.

+1