A Firearms Expert Speaks
The armchair quarterbacks are already hot on the case in the shooting of barrister, Mark Saunders in his Chelsea flat on Thursday.
Amanda Platell, in her Daily Mail article "Did police really need to shoot this broken man?" she criticises the actions which led police officers to shoot dead a man who had been taking pot-shots with a lethal firearm out the window of his posh London home, both at neighbours & police.
Showing her astute & intimate knowledge of dealing with deranged men with guns she says, "Why couldn’t they have fired tear gas into the flat? Or used rubber bullets or stun guns instead of lethal force? Why didn’t they allow his wife to try to talk him out, as she desperately wanted to do?"
I’ll give her a clue, because they didn’t want to risk themselves or any other innocent person dying!
She says, "As for speculation that Mr Saunders had sought "suicide by cop", it’s a convenient story."
Someone who lived opposite gave a little more insight into a man who had clearly lost the thread, the witness, named only as Lesley, said: "There was a man opposite my house shooting into my daughter’s bedroom. He just kept on firing cool as cucumber. He didn’t even bother to open the window, he was shooting through the glass. There are bullet holes in my daughter’s bedroom wall. People were screaming at him ‘What the f*** are you doing?"
Reports say that on 3 separate occasions the ‘broken man’ fired at officers. They tried to negotiate but after five hours they entered the house, shots were fired & Saunders was hit five times. There is some criticisms that he was hit so many times by more than one officer. I’m reminded of the time an American Officer was asked something along the lines of "Why did your unit fire 56 times at this man". He is said to have replied "Because that’s all we had."
It’s tragic when someone is killed in this way, but often they are masters of their own destiny. Whatever the reason he picked up a gun & started shooting at people the sad fact remains that there is a high chance you will be dealt with ‘appropriately’ and sometimes that means being shot dead. The fact that he happened to be a nice, rich & successful barrister is neither here nor there.
some bloke says:
Would Amanda Platell, in her Daily Mail article, have been so bothered had the shooter been in a council tower block in Tottenham ?
She omits to mention that the shooter was also firing potshots into the garden at the lady who lives in the basement flat.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Random Stan says:
Typical Daily Mail tripe really. Basically if he’d have been a young, black, coked up, jobless hoody taking pot shots at the public the paper would be falling over itself in praise. But this loon was from their part of town, with their kind of job and their kind of background - ergo it’s simply impossible for such a man to be criminal.
It’s undoubtedly sad but he set the wheels in motion much earlier in the afternoon and was still in control of the situation - he could have surrendered at any time.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Annette says:
I agree with Some Bloke, he was shooting at a neighbours garden, he could have hit somebody. He was not as innocent as she is making out.
No-one knows why he did it, only him, and he is no longer with us.
Tupc has blogged about this as well.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Civ_In_The_City says:
If he`d managed to kill someone with a shotgun from two stories up from that range he could have got on the Olympic team. And if the siege went on five hours without anyone being killed by him who`s to say it couldn`t go on another five hours while the wife talked him down.
But then, I wasn`t there so I honestly don`t know. I also agree that making up policy in the heat of the situation isn`t the right time, you work out your plan well in advance and stick with it. It`s indecision that causes hard. True of driving and true of firearms incidents.
It`s a shame he died, when he clearly needed help. There are equally violent people marauding our streets, the danger they pose is less obvious though so they`re dealt with less conclusively.
I can`t help wondering about Osama`s ‘right hand man’, isn`t he as much of a danger as the lawyer with the shotgun?
May 10th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Der Flange says:
I must say I find slightly worrying that people seem to have the opinion that shotguns are only slightly more dangerous than paintball guns in the dangerousness stakes. The media really know how to FUBAR the facts and make the Job look like guntoting maniacs.Bunch of fuquers!!
May 10th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
blueknight says:
‘Film fire’. The firearms trainee enters darkened room which has a film being played on a screen. A length of paper as wide as the screen is moved across the screen on rollers.
A scenario plays out on the screen and the trainee is the armed officer who responds according to the incident and the threat.
The (sound of) the gun fire stops the film and paper roller and a red light behind the screen shows the bullet hole.
It is all a question shooting the right person at the right time with the necessary warnings etc.
It is the nearest thing to a real incident and I challenge any member of the ‘chairborne forces’, who think they have all the answers to these kind of incidents, to try it.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:11 pm