Two police marksmen who mistakenly shot dead an unarmed man in east London should not face disciplinary action, the police complaints watchdog recommended today.
Harry Stanley, a father of three from Hackney, east London, was shot in the head and hand on September 22 1999 after a table leg he was carrying in a bag was mistaken for a sawn-off shotgun. His family have fought a long battle for his killers to be punished.
But a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), due to published in full later today, says that further action against the two officers is not justified.
The commission does however criticise police procedures following the death of Mr Stanley - in particular, the way officers were allowed to confer before writing up their accounts of an incident.
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Murder charges against Inspector Neil Sharman and Pc Kevin Fagan have already been ruled out, and an inquiry by Surrey Police had earlier recommended no disciplinary action. Today the IPCC agreed.
Irene Stanley, Mr Stanley’s widow, condemned the ruling. In a statement released through her solicitor, she said: “The public can’t have confidence in a system that ends this way.
“I fear the police will see this as a green light for their ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy and that innocent people are at greater risk from armed police after today’s decision.”
Mrs Stanley has fought a long battle for her husband’s killing to be punished by the authorities. Her moment of greatest success came in October 2004 when a second inquest into Mr Stanley’s death returned a verdict of unlawful killing, but the decision was quashed by the High Court last May.
Nevertheless Mr Sharman and Pc Fagan were arrested the following month as part of an investigation launched after the inquest verdict. The arrests prompted other London firearms officers to threaten strike action. The Crown Prosecution Service then announced in October that it would not be bringing murder charges against the officers.
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The CPS said that their explanation, that they shot Mr Stanley because they feared he was about to shoot them, was believable. Forensic experts had been of the opinion that “evidence relating to the fatal shot could reasonably permit interpretations consistent with the officers’ belief that they were acting in self-defence”.
The CPS statement added: “The forensic evidence based on the bullet holes in Mr Stanley’s jacket, which might have gone some way towards showing the officers may have lied in their detailed account, is now insufficiently persuasive.”
It also said there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction on charges of gross negligence, manslaughter and misconduct in a public office.
Daniel Machover, the Stanley family solicitor, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The family is left with a sense that they haven’t had justice from this process, and that they want there to be real changes that come out of this.
“Immediately after an incident like this, the officers know they are going to be the subject of a serious criminal investigation. And when they know that, they should not be able to pool their recollections and write up their notes together.
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“In this case it is so clear that the officers’ identical accounts lacked credibility that it must stop now. At both inquests, the police officers’ accounts were not believed by two separate juries. I think the police must accept that, in this case, this system has been discredited and should be put aside.”
Charles Clarke said today that he would look seriously at any IPCC recommendations. But the Home Secretary warned that the individual officers did a very hard job and should not be vilified.
“I do not think we should ignore the fact that police officers who are in firearms units are under immense pressure, including risking their lives, and they are often in a very difficult situation,” he told the Today programme.
“We have to get the procedures right, and we have to investigate properly through the IPCC, which is what we are doing, and we have to take the conclusions seriously, which we will. But let’s not vilify the officers who are doing an often very difficult job.”