A coroner’s jury has decided Mark Saunders was lawfully killed. It was a majority verdict, so someone thought the killing was unlawful. I have not seen a decent outcome from any case involving police shootings. This is no exception. The questions for me are these:
1. An alcoholic depressive had a shotgun. Why had no one stopped his access, including family members?
2. How many victims of antisocial crime networks, or on the streets police have abandoned, got unsatisfactory responses from police whilst this mega-officered tragedy played out?
3. 59 armed officers were deployed, but couldn’t get a woman with a baby out from next door and left her in a lot of fear. Even in ‘over-kill’ there is a failing of victim here. Is this recognised?
4. Why are we so concerned about anyone levelling a shotgun in the direction of others?
5. The trained negotiators sounded like heartless cretins. Why was this?
6. I think it would be a good idea to let relatives talk to people like this, and used to do it. I haver no idea what the ‘expert’ advice is on this is, but find it very difficult to accept a jury should be making comment about it as though they are. We used to ‘talk down’ people like this, but then we had to as armed response was negligible. I would rather have shot some of the clowns dealt with than gone through the trauma of facing them down – trauma that persists into the present from many years ago. We should be asking ourselves whether we would allow a gun to be levelled at us without firing, not forever expecting cops to hope the other guy won’t shoot. I only didn’t shoot because more likely than not I wasn’t armed. I do no believe it would be better to go back to putting the risk into the copper’s court. Some of the softly, softly comment I’ve heard is just the upper class treating cops as expendable.
7. Armed response is still, somehow, too gung-ho and OTT. This said, it’s still better than sending unarmed cops, or even having the majority of our response cops fearing they may be sent to such situations without back-up. Anyone want to volunteer to to first on at ‘drunken man with shotgun’ calls?
8. When are we going to get some genuine responses from senior cops that don’t make our flesh crawl? The female hair-greaser commander turned out on this one was dreadful, possibly an evidencer of enlightened Met diversity quotas.
9. Was so much fuss made over this case because there was nothing to hide?
10. Should we spend any time talking to these clowns? Maybe the ‘answer’ is just to shoot them once they’ve been asked to put the gun down, or before if the question can’t be asked safely and for this to be known to be our policy?
11. The deaths and bullying of ordinary, often disabled folk, and police-CJS total failure to protect victims across our society is much more important than the death of a shotgun toting, pissed lawyer. I’d have shot him, though had I found him in the street unarmed in this condition I would have tried to get him home to care rather than nicked him – though this latter tolerance wouldn’t look good if the next call was ‘armed drunk at that place you just left’!
12. Our enfeebled fourth estate is chasing the wrong stories and is almost no help in getting the changes needed.
Allcoppedout's Blog 
This particular verdict was probably correct but that detracts nothing from your excellent points.
“Armed response is still, somehow, too gung-ho and OTT” The tabloids, the internet and the dinner table are obsessed with the subject and all but police have something intelligent to add to the debate.
“all but police have something intelligent to add to the debate.”
Seriously?
Let us compare the related subjects of a short and shameful history of armed responses with subsequent police blog demands for wholesale arming.
An intelligence shortfall is apparent in police failing to recognise the shaping of public opinion arises through their own actions. Tragic mistakes do happen in the heat of the moment but blatant evidence fixing, ever bungled post-event, is no hallmark of intelligence Area, much less any indication of honesty.
Let me point you in the direction of the Gadget blog, where these subjects have received much airing and where any unwelcome public opinion is ‘spammed’ to maintain a false impression of public support. This Gadget strategy equates to police evidence fixing in a class which fools nobody. What standard of intelligence is this, Area?
All the gung-ho aggression, nonsense, bigotry, bluster and misspelled abuse, has been supplied by Gadget rabble. The sobriety or state of mind of these officers, at the time they felt compelled to write, is not known but I rarely spot decent English or intelligent debate.
The contributor’s goal on Gadget is to be ‘First’ or to present the most puerile or the most coarse Neanderthal rant.
I submit that what is done anonymously is a true reflection of police conduct, police courage and police intelligence.
I’m sure the verdict was right too. Something else is deeply amiss, and it’s not just on one side of any argument that gets into the press. One other thing that strikes me is that this lawyer, pissed and armed, was probably less dangerous to his neighbourhood than the few mad-criminal families not far from here, yet we won’t don’t such a response until they try to kill someone.
We would certainly have to take the view you put into account on a research footing Melvin. I have met enlightened cops too. What I notice in the Gadget-Knacker line is the lack of tolerance and good humour. In practice, I’ve found our cops both brilliant and worse than useless. This applies to the ones I’ve taught in higher education too. A number of officers on Gadget are good, but the general “rancour” is disturbing. I believe the country generally is suffering from the kind of lying exemplified in police statistics and propaganda.
I agree there are still very decent and pleasant officers to be found, ACO. However one of my arguments is that it matters less.
Whilst the Gadget variety continue to harm the Country, themselves and the reputation of police generally, the fact we still have some decent ones is almost as irrelevant as it is indisputable.
The irrelevance argument needs development.
Thank you. I have left an apple on your desk.
One hopes then, Melvin, you have not just been chanting ‘mirror, mirror on the wall’!