[lbo-talk] Shot dead in London

[Richard Harris]

> the police use of force is to be judged on 
the facts as they believed them to be ... That allows for a lot of
latitude, and in a court of law it is highly unlikely that the police
involved would be charged with murder.  My view is, on the basis of what I
have read, that they had very little basis for believing this individual to
be a suicide bomber.  If I understand correctly, then they followed someone
about whom they had no information because he emerged from a block of flats
that they were surveilling - where they didn't know which flat exactly they
were to be watching.  If the police believed that his skin colour, his
emergence from this block of flats, and his subsequent flight on being
challenged (by officers who appear not to have identified themselves), made
it likely that he was a suicide bomber, this will probably get them off.  Is
it reasonable, however?  I have serious doubts.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

The test will be that as far as the police officer who did the shooting is 
concerned, was the officer's belief (that there was an imminent threat of an 
explosion from a suicide bomber) an honestly held belief, even if mistaken?  
It clearly was mistaken. 

The issue of reasonableness in the law of self-defence concerns the level of 
force the accused used.  The force used must be proportional to the believed 
threat - so Tony Martin, who shot a burglar in the back whilst he was 
fleeing, was not able to use the defence of self-defence / prevention of 
crime as the judge ruled that the level of force used was not reasonable (so 
the jury did not get to hear the self-defence plea). 

It seems to me that if in the circumstances as the police believed them to 
be (will say they believed them to be), they thought killing was necessary, 
it makes no sense to question the amount of force used in the killing (one 
shot, five shots, eight shots). 

Many contributors to this threat have pointed to many anomalies in the 
police account that we currently have.  In the light of those, it seems that 
there are some grounds for wondering whether the police did have an honest 
belief that they were following a suicide bomber, as opposed to being 
paniced when the victim did a runner at a tube station and the police then 
shot him to stop him.