Police officer cleared

Thanks for the tip. I’ve followed it carefully enough to see that you’re not particularly bothered about the facts of the case in question so I’ll wade in wherever the fancy takes me.

Like I said, an egg mayo sandwich.

Absolutely the right decision. I do understand why it went to trial though too!

hopefully the officer can start to move past this.

No sympathy for him. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Sometimes you just have to admit society is a much better place without these scumbags.

You need to follow a discussion before wading in. We're talking about whether there's a Met Shoot to Kill policy and arms training.

Sadly not - No/little line of sight to them from the front of a moving car, plus you'd have to take your eyes off the target. Also bursting them would have zero effect at slow speed/close range.

As for shooting a limb...this is largely a Hollywood thing. Police are trained to shoot center mass or head, which is likely to cause massive cardiac arrest/brain death which are both pretty instant.

You can die from being shot anywhere, but it can take time due to blood loss, sepsis etc. Also limbs are much harder to hit accurately. This is why guidance suggests center mass/head.

Do you think you’ve had more access to the ‘facts’ in this case than the Jury did?

You were arguing, incorrectly, that the police are trained to shoot people in the head and now you're offering to teach me all about it. Tempting as that is, I'd rather learn facts. All the best.

Great news. Hopefully the officer can now move on and put this behind him.

I've got little sympathy for CK. The bloke was a violent thug with a history of gun offences, was driving a car involved in a firearms incident and failed to stop and surrender.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Jeez, this thread!

Some of you really will argue that black is white if it fits your narrative,

The man was a violent, dangerous, thug who was responsible for bringing misery to the streets. He could have complied with the police’s request to stop and deal with the consequences of his being in a car that was linked to a firearms offence, but he chose not to and he paid the price.

The way some of you are going on it’s like you think the police should have realised he didn’t fancy being nicked that day and let him go with a cheery wave.

I disagree. It was right to take it to court as without a trial there would be even more people demonstrating claiming it was a racist killing by the police. Having a jury who review the evidence and find him not guilty is significant and should be accepted by the family and local activists. Without the trial many people could claim there was a cover up.

I think you’ve seen too many Bruce Willis films and not enough Olympic shooting events.

No, you can’t stop a car by firing at its tyres. You have a police marksman who has seconds to decide how to stop a criminal about to possibly kill someone with his car, which is connected to gun crime, so he’s going to be aware that he could be shot at any second. It’s dark. There are headlights and flashing blue lights and sirens. We don’t know if the car had tinted windows but I’d be willing to take an educated guess. And you want him to shoot him in the arm with accuracy? What if that doesn’t stop him? Should he aim for the other arm and hope he takes his feet off the accelerator?

Thé bit behind the wheel.

The jury will have seen and heard much more than was reported in the press. I was present for a trial that was covered in detail in ‘live’ blogs, loads of video and photos published, accounts of expert witnesses etc. , but it was still only a tiny amount compared to what the jury saw, and in what detail.

I don't know much about cars no, but can't you shoot the tyres? Otherwise shoot the driver in the arm or something. It's a question which I wouldn't be asking if I already knew the answer.

If a car is on an open road, driving away at speed, shooting the tyre might cause it to crash. However from stationary, cars can be driven for short distances on the rims so that wouldn't have stopped the risk of the car injuring or killing one of the police officers. And in an emergency situation, there clearly isn't the scope for one armed man to run round a revving car attempting to shoot all four tyres (assuming it wasn't pointless).

It's also quite hard to deliberately shoot a smaller target like an arm. In the dark, in an emergency situation, you might miss, or shoot them in the chest anyway. Also shooting someone in the arm would quite probably kill them or cause them to lose the arm.

Overall, if a situation is deemed that critical that a police officer shoots at someone, they need to stop them asap and the shot needs to do that - thus the head or torso.

Yes, or the officer who gets put on trial for murder, or gets shot because the suspect is actually armed and dangerous..

Sure.

all cars can drive quite far and fast with flat tyres

and im not a trained firearms officer but Im sure that shooting a driver in the arm, through the window of a moving vehicle would take some doing - and even if done successfully it would not necessarily stop the vehicle

Great news, should never have been taken to court.

They're not trained to shoot people in the head.

He was stationary because he’d just reversed after attempting to ram cars out of his way, and he was revving his engine suggesting he was going to have another go.

He was killed because he was assessed as being dangerous to life. You can pretend he was just sitting there waiting to be handcuffed all you like, but he wasn’t. You know it, we know it and a jury knows it.

Yes I am and have already read it. You said the police were trained to shoot people in the head and kill them. 'Reasonable force' is meant to be used and they're trained to hit the torso, not head. The Met does not have a shoot to kill policy and never has.

They're just unequivocally wrong but have gone too far to admit it 🤷🏻‍♂️

They're googling something along the lines of "UK police shoot to kill policy" and going off the first page of Google results which are very old refs to something completely different 😅

The official policy says armed officers “shoot to incapacitate”, even though it is highly likely that this will kill. @username35890

At the moment a person being pursued knows that the police are trained only to fire under certain conditions / last resort, but they don’t have the police pov or see what the police see, so will keep trying to escape until their own interpretation of ‘last resort’. Which is the dangerous grey area.

Dangerous largely to the non-compliant criminal, so... oh well.

I don't know much about cars no, but can't you shoot the tyres? Otherwise shoot the driver in the arm or something. It's a question which I wouldn't be asking if I already knew the answer.