Risk your life, live with taking a life but we will charge you with murder

[sleepyscientist]

Anyone else things police officers should have indemnity from prosecution whilst on duty. This poor officer followed a suspect that was believed to be armed, stepped out of his vehicle and into the line of fire to protect us.

Now because it turns out he was unarmed he's not only up on a disciplinary but facing a murder charge. Rightly other officers are stepping back so now our armed capacity is falling......terror attack risk right there! Hopefully any jury finds him not guilty!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12552965/Met-police-protest-Chris-Kaba-murder-charge.html

You can't just assume that on-duty police officer = automatically not at fault and shouldn't be charged, the same way you can't just assume that loving father or husband of victim/apparently obvious self-defence/on-duty doctor or nurse/diagnosed serious mental illness/respected religious leader = automatically not at fault, shouldn't be charged.

If somebody kills someone else, and the CPS thinks a prosecution can be justified, then things like the suspect's personal relationship to the victim, the circumstances in which they took their actions (like self-defence), their mental state and any psychiatric problems, and, yes, whether their actions were carried out in the course of their work and how somebody in that role would be expected to behave in those circumstances, are things which will undoubtedly come up in court and be taken into account.

But the idea of granting police officers total impunity — even just the idea that a single supposedly ordinary member of the public might think that that's a good idea — is chilling. I really hope you're just a troll, because if ordinary people out there are really willing to roll over like this and say "yes, yes, oh god yes, mister burgeoning totalitarian state, please screw me harder! harder!" then things aren't looking good.

Nope there is currently massive corruption in the MET and you want to give them a free pass.

You only have to look at arrests at the coronation to see what happens when you give them a free pass on grounds of safety.

Firstly, Chris Kaba is not a ‘victim’, he is a victim. He was murdered by armed police. Non-armed police regularly deal with car chases every day and use a number of strategies to deal with this, none of which involve shooting an unarmed man in the head.

Police should be held to higher standards. They are supposed to be highly trained professionals and should be treated as such. If they can’t accept that then they shouldn’t be in the job.

They have needlessly taken the life of an unarmed man. Rather than apologise or take some level of responsibility they are complaining that they should be immune from prosecution and refusing to work in their highly trained role because one of them is being held accountable. This tells me everything I need to know about these nasty bullying specimens trying to hold us to ransom.

Yes we need armed police but there is no room for this type of person in our police forces. We need to root out those who think they are above the law as a matter of priority.

bevelino · Today 10:11

The unarmed victim was shot in the head and that is completely unacceptable.”

This. A trained marksman is perfectly able to shoot out tyres.

armed police are a specialised unit with very intense training that you have to specifically apply for (and is usually very competitive, so I'm not convinced that this case will result in a reduction of people willing to be firearms officers). A lot of firearms officers are ex-armed forces. It's not as if he was a random officer who usually investigated low level theft, and had only been given a gun that morning, once you're accepted onto firearms and completed your training, that's your unit, every single shift you are deployed with a gun to the most serious incidents.

It's very unlikely he would have panicked or shot without thinking because that sort of scenario is exactly what all their training is based around. Of course he could still have been scared because you can't train human emotion out of people, but they are specifically trained to assess emotive and volatile situations and are trained in levels of escalation, how to justify decisions etc.

The reason why our death after police contact is so tiny (and despite the headlines it is compared to most countries) is because of policing by consent. Get rid of that and give them legal impunity and we'd end up worse than the US.
Believe me, they already get away with way more than the average person would.

@Iwasafool oh I see- thanks.
What on earth was the lad doing?!

Armed police officers are highly trained to risk assess in stressful situations before using deadly force and in the UK deadly force should be the last resort when it is clear lives are at risk. Even if Mr Kaba was guilty of other crimes, even if he was trying to evade capture the evidence must show he was not an immediate threat that required him to shot in the head.

Armed police officers absolutely should not have impunity from prosecution if they murder just because they are wearing a uniform. It wasn't a a slip up, it wasn't an accident, there is enough evidence for the police officer to be charged with murder.

The alternative is we end up with trigger happy cops like they have in the US.

Surely, regardless of what you have or haven’t done, if someone is yelling at you to get on the floor or I shoot and is pointing a gun at you, you get on the floor?!

I have absolutely no idea what I'd do in that situation. I've never had a gun pointed at me. Maybe I'd comply, or maybe the mortal terror would completely override the rational parts of my brain.

Ever watched one of those TV dramas where someone's told they're terminally ill and they suddenly stop hearing a word the doctor's saying? Sometimes it actually happens in the real world, that intense emotions like fear stop you taking anything in or processing any information.

How about fight, flight or freeze? We evolved around deadly threats that resulted in emergency responses we can't easily control without training, and none of these automatic responses are "immediately and calmly comply with the barely comprehensible screamed instructions coming from the deadly threat".

I'd be surprised if an ex-member of the Armed Forces didn't have an understanding of the wide range of human responses to fear and crisis, and the amount of training it takes to reliably override them. You might be able to think straight with a gun pointed at you, but I'm a random member of the public, and am not trained in assessing threats, remaining calm in life-threatening situations, or de-escalation (all the things that I'd hope a police firearms officer would be trained in).

When it comes to this kind of yelling and gun-pointing thing, I've seen occasional footage from the UK, but the US produces seemingly endless clips of aggressive police yelling incomprehensible, incoherent, sometimes contradictory commands while pointing guns at terrified members of the public, who end up dead.

There are a lot of factors contributing to this, but I think part of it is the result of a kind of weird, topsy-turvy allocation of responsibility.

Some US police are apparently conditioned by paranoid training programmes to overestimate threat, seem to be prone to volatility in a crisis, and have all kinds of allowances made for deadly violence if they just claim they felt threatened. They're held to a lower standard when on duty than the general public — they're almost never criminally prosecuted for their actions, for various reasons, and "qualified immunity" means it's virtually impossible to pursue civil action.

Random untrained members of the public, meanwhile, are expected to remain calm and rational when in fear for their lives, being threatened by armed officers who would likely face few repercussions for killing them. They're made responsible for de-escalating incredibly tense, deadly situations they've had no training in. And while police go about knowing that anything they do to a member of the public will be treated more leniently than usual, members of the public know anything they do to a police officer is categorised as a far more serious offence than the same action against an ordinary person.

Although there are more problems with US policing than the apparent assumption that it's okay to kill someone if they don't react quite right when you point a gun at them and scream, I don't think it really helps.

Also, what if the person's deaf, or autistic, or has dementia, or doesn't speak the language?

Not only was he unarmed but the police were in an unmarked car which had no sirens or lights, would I stop for a random car chasing me and trying to force me off the road - no, would I try to get away if cornered in these circumstances - yes.

I completely disagree with the OP, but this isn't entirely accurate.

He was followed by an unmarked police car, and was then blocked by a marked police car (this is where the armed officers where). Not that that justifies shooting him.

I have nothing to hide and have no issue being stopped by police anyone who refuses to stop must have something to hide.

Were you living under a rock when Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving Met police officer who used his warrant card to stop her, kidnap, rape and murder her?

Were you still under your rock when women were told by the police to flag down buses or call 999 if the police tried to stop them?

It was only this week announced that police wouldn't be able to stay on armed units indefinitely because they had toxic and dysfunctional cultures that allowed and encouraged abuse.

And now the officers from those toxic units are protesting about the possibility of being charged with murder if they murder someone. It's obscene.

I would thank all the officers who have handed in their tickets for identifying themselves as part of that toxic amoral grouping and sack them all. It will accelerate Rowley's clean up of the Met.

This, without a doubt.

It's exactly this attitude towards certain professions/roles that allows people to get away with rape and murder.

Can't possibly be in the wrong because they're a police officer/nurse/doctor/teacher.

Everyone's fallible and some people are just evil regardless of the job they do. And they should be held to account regardless of the job they do.

So if there were witnesses who say the police asked him 12 times to get out of the car then he drove at them, and the car was involved in gun crime the night before, not hus car, and the victim is a known gun user who has been in prison for gun offences before,

why are the BBC reporting it like an innocent black man was shot by unidentified police for no reason whilst driving peacefully in his own car? And why has the officer been charged with murder?

More than one article says he was approached though and dud not get out of the car, he either drove at the police car or the concrete bollards it seems. So there was warning?

Police should be held to a higher standard than civilians and if being held accountable for your actions makes you quit, then good riddance to bad rubbish.

I went out to demonstrate for Sergeant Alexander Blackman back in the day, but not here
Enough of the corrupt/inefficient/entitled/racist/sexist/partisan/cowboy attitude of the police

I have nothing to hide and have no issue being stopped by police anyone who refuses to stop must have something to hide.

By that token, why would any decent police officer have an issue with their actions being thoroughly investigated by the appropriate bodies, when those actions have resulted in a death? Surely any officer with nothing to hide should have no issue with their actions being scrutinised, and no desire to "step back" at the prospect of potentially being done for murder if they ever murder someone. If any officer is unhappy about the prospect of scrupulous investigation of their conduct, and being subject to disciplinary action and criminal charges if they have acted wrongly, it must be a sign they have something to hide.

Or, you know, perhaps even people who are decent and well-meaning can find it intimidating, insulting, anxiety-inducing, or just bloody inconvenient when someone with the authority to make things very unpleasant for you steps into your life.

Yes, people should stop when instructed to by the police. And police officers should have their actions investigated when they've killed someone, just like everyone else, and be convicted if they've committed a crime.

I have nothing to hide and have no issue being stopped by police anyone who refuses to stop must have something to hide.

So the lad that doesn't stop because he panics because he has a bit of cannabis in his car deserves to be shot in the head. The woman that doesn't stop because she has been shoplifting and is already on a community service order for it deserves to be shot in the head? The guy who had a few pints too many the night before and is scared he is going to get a driving ban and lose his job deserves to get shot in the head?

They may have all had something to hide, but that something to hide might just be a minor offence. We thankfully don't live in a country where our police force go around shooting people for minor offences. They are highly trained to know when it is appropriate to use lethal force and if the officer has been charged with murder there must be evidence to support that and there are questions to answer.

Of course he deserves to be up on a murder charge, he murdered someone.

I wouldn't want any gung ho armed police however I also understand the pressure to make split second decisions . Not a job I'd do so am very grateful to those who do .

I think we can all agree that one way or another the police are in a huge mess.

Exactly this.

If the possibility of dying while on the job did not dissuade officers from being a part of these armed units, but the prospect of being held accountable for indiscriminate violence does, then it’s fair to assume part of their attraction to the job is the use of violence. We do not need police like this. Also, I’d much prefer those who are more confident they won’t kill unarmed civilians.

This happened in my area. I don’t want an unaccountable police force. Agree with the above.

It's a sad case with no winners. I even feel bad for those charging the officer as they will be criticized whatever they do here.

I come from an area like this, and the tensions between police and the community are often simmering. It's only a matter of time before something like this happened sadly. Perhaps a solution is tranquilizer guns? Would that be possible?