London Banter - View Single Post

Tony Polson · July 23rd 05, 02:39 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

wrote:

Ian Johnston wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 11:58:38 UTC, Guy Gorton
wrote:

: I have never understood this policy. Even in the armed forces a
: wounded prisoner may be a source of information and certainly is to
: the police. Firing at long range with inaccurate weapons there may be
: no choice, but firing at short range with reasonably accurate weapons
: there is.
: Is it to do with fear that the wounded person still might be able to
: fight back?

I think it's because the police in this country only rarely carry
weapons, and only use them when they believe there to be an immediate
risk to life (OK, that's the theory, and it doesn't always work like
that, but I still prefer it to having routinely armed police who think
"running away" is justification for shooting). In other words, police
guns are only supposed to be fired to stop someone else being killed,
and in that case it is logical to make as certain as possible.

Ian

As someone who was an armed officer for 16 of my 22 years service and
served in various specialist branches in relation to this, let me
explain.
The "new powers" being spoken about on the TV and in some papers is
nothing new. The same procedures are being employed. The reason we were
trained to shoot at the largest part of the body, the torso, (and this
includes the back as well as the front) was to make sure the target was
hit and stopped, we were always taught to fire at least twice, rapidly,
one to stop, one to avoid a reactive return shot. However, if a suspect
had a way of triggering any sort of device either remotely or strapped
to the body then there is only one way to prevent loss of life, be it
the officers or other people, is a number of head shots to disrupt the
central nervous system and prevent the trigger being activated. By
necesity this has to be done at close range when a pistol or carbine is
used. Therefore those officers yesterday, if they believed this man had
the potential to set off a bomb, were extremely brave in my view. I
suspect the person involved had "sussed" that MI5 walkers/plain clothes
officers were following and before he could be contained ran into the
station. Whatever, the inquest will be extremely thorough and I still
expect that we may yet find some armed forces personnel were involved.
Media comment about "recent advice from Israel" is total ********.
These techniques were being trained, to my knowledge, in 1981 when
Close Protection officers were receiving training from the SAS, RMP and
in my case the Royal Marines. Many remember the furore surrounding the
Gibralter shootings of known IRA members, whether it turned out there
was a bomb or not, if I had been briefed that these people had a bomb
planted in Gib, and may have had a trigger on their person, then I too
would have kept firing until I was sure they were dead. Brutally
simple, the training was succinctly put to us in this fashion as
(contrary to assertions some make) officers were not as readily
adaptable as the armed forces personnel. My instructor was plain, "Keep
squeezing rapidly until the **** stops twitching". There are no
niceties, this isn't a game, many people died two weeks ago because men
as brave as those at Stockwell yesterday were not in the right place at
the right time.

Wise words. Thank you.