Gun Cops face questions

metman

Experts say Met needs a shoot to wound policy
Robert Mendick, Kiran Randhawa and Justin Davenport
19.05.08

Nine police shot at barrister

The barrister who was shot dead by police at his £2.2 million Chelsea flat after a five-hour siege rarely drank and never rowed with his wife, his closest neighbour has told the Evening Standard.

The comments will serve to fuel the mystery over just what pushed Mark Saunders, 32, a respected divorce lawyer, over the edge on the day he began firing a shotgun from the windows of his home in Markham Square.

Until now, reports have suggested that Mr Saunders was an unstable alcoholic, possibly taking anti-depressants, whose short marriage to fellow divorce barrister Liz Clarke, 40, was in difficulty.

A Standard investigation also raises questions for the police over a "shoot-to-incapacitate" policy that one expert said left the barrister little chance of surviving.

One firearms expert said it was time the Met explored a new policy in armed standoffs that would allow trained snipers in certain situations to wound a gunman before capturing him. He said the Chelsea siege could have been one of those occasions.

Mr Saunders's funeral was led by Ms Clarke at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on Friday. Some mourners and friends there were wondering why more attempts were not made to capture him alive.

The Standard has reconstructed events on Tuesday 6 May. We have also obtained floorplans of the couple's flat at 46 Markham Square, spread over three floors, all of which suggests he was killed at his kitchen window as he took pot-shots at police marksmen positioned in houses 50 feet away.

Fearing their lives were in danger, nine officers shot back. One source likened it to the "shoot-out at the OK Corral".

Mr Saunders was hit by at least five bullets, which caused severe damage to his brain, heart, liver and the main vein of his lower body.

We can also reveal:

• Police were under orders to prevent Mr Saunders leaving the flat at all costs, fearing he would embark on a killing spree in the nearby King's Road.

• He was almost certainly using standard "birdshot" shotgun pellets which reduces the threat he posed to the lives of police.

• Officers, however, feared he might have possessed further weapons obtained during a stint in the Territorial Army.

Sources close to the family have been deeply upset by suggestions made about his drinking and the state of his marriage.

Alastair Laidlaw, 54, who lives in the flat below the couple, said: "They moved in last September and I never heard a cross word spoken above me. I never heard a raised voice. They were clearly devoted to each other.

"I would have known if he was a drunk. They put their rubbish out and there was never any excessive amount of bottles of alcohol. I never saw him drunk."

Mr Laidlaw, a French teacher at City of London school, said the couple would leave for work together every morning at about 6.45 and return in the evening.

He believes - but is not certain - they followed the same morning routine on the day Mr Saunders died, driving to their chambers at Queen Elizabeth Building in Temple where they were members.

A senior family lawyer stressed there was no evidence that Mr Saunders had a drinking problem. The lawyer said: "Family law is a very small world and London's top family lawyers all know who is going through a drinking problem. There were none of these rumours with regards to Mark.

"He had a very significant caseload, he was very well liked and there were no warning signs. If he was an alcoholic, solicitors would not have given him work."
Two weeks ago, Mr Saunders and his wife took part in a chambers social event. Nobody noticed anything untoward. In March, the couple had hosted a 40th birthday party for Ms Clarke - again friends detected no sign of strain in the 20-month marriage.

Ms Clarke could be key in explaining his transformation from serious barrister with earnings hovering around the £250,000 mark, to an apparently "crazed" gunman.

Some 36 hours after Mr Saunders's death, Ms Clarke telephoned her mother-in-law Rosemary, who lives in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge , to "discuss certain matters", according to his father Rodney.

"She had a conversation with my wife but that is something very personal as I am sure you can imagine," said Mr Saunders last week, adding: "My wife is very upset. [But] She is no clearer."

Police are trying to find out why Mr Saunders returned home early? One witness to the siege said police told him that Mr Saunders had been drinking in a nearby pub for at least part of the day.

At 3.45pm - 45 minutes before the shooting began - Mr Saunders arrived at his flat, according to Jane Winkworth, who lived in the basement-flat below Mr Laidlaw's. Ms Winkworth, a shoe designer, was in her garden and heard doors slamming. At 4.30pm, she saw Mr Saunders shooting from his kitchen window into the courtyard gardens below.

Thinking he was firing at pigeons with an airgun, she asked him to stop. But Mr Saunders continued and Ms Winkworth, by now fearful for her own safety, phoned the police.

About 15 minutes later, the first armed officers arrived. They were Diplomatic Protection Group officers travelling in an armed response vehicle. The DPG has armed officers on permanent patrol in central London.

One of these officers returned fire when he was shot at by Mr Saunders, according to sources, shortly after 4.45pm.

Police from Scotland Yard's specialist CO19 firearms unit - equipped with Heckler & Koch MP5 semi-automatic carbines - were next on the scene, attempting to secure the area, positioning officers at 4 Markham Square, opposite the front entrance to No 46 and at numbers 1 and 3 Bywater Street, securing the rear of the building. They were also positioned on the roof of a shop on the King's Road. Each officer is trained to fire a single shot in response to a threat and then make a new assessment of the situation before firing again.

One source told the Standard there was huge concern Mr Saunders could "do a Michael Ryan" - referring to the gunman who ran amok in Hungerford, Berkshire, in 1987, shooting dead 16 people and wounding 15.

For the next five hours police attempted to negotiate with Mr Saunders, as he paced the three-bedroom flat - the home bought by the couple in September last year.

Spread across the top three storeys of the terrace, plans show a main living area which stretched from the front of the house to a "through" kitchen at the back. Mr Saunders mainly shot through the narrower, rear kitchen windows.

The Standard understands that a specialist negotiator was brought in to reason with Mr Saunders, contacting him by mobile telephone, but that talks broke down.

"Saunders was given every opportunity to surrender but continued shooting with almost inevitable consequences," said one police source.

Ms Winkworth recalls the lawyer shouting, "I can't hear you", on a number of occasions, presumably as police tried to persuade him to give himself up.

Meanwhile, his wife, whose friends include the Tory education spokesman Michael Gove, had been at work. She returned to the square in the late afternoon to discover it cordoned off.

She was later seen in tears, walking away from Markham Square, prompting mistaken early reports that they had been in the flat together and she had fled after a row.

During this time some residents - including those in the line of police fire - were led to safety while others were told to remain indoors.

Mari Morgan-Rees, 48, a musician who runs the neighbourhood watch scheme, said: "I was not told a thing by the police. I was called by my friends who told me I shouldn't leave the house and when I stepped outside the house around 5pm I was shouted at to 'get back in' by a police officer hiding behind a bush in the garden."

At 7pm, the barrister threw a box out of the rear window into the garden below on which he had scrawled in black marker pen: "I love my wife dearly xxx." Just over two hours later he was dead, suffering the fatal wounds as he fired from the rear kitchen window during exchanges of fire that lasted from from 9pm to 9.30pm.

Certain the gunman had been hit, police entered the building at 9.45pm, battering down the front door and firing CS gas and stun grenades.

They were heard shouting "get down, get down" as they entered. No further shots were fired, the Standard has established, scotching suggestions that Mr Saunders may have been killed at close-range. In fact, he was already dead or dying.

Medics dragged him onto the street and worked to keep him alive, a scene witnessed by Rebecca Blond, 45, a theatrical agent, who had sought safety in an office on the King's Road.

Ms Blond said: "They carried Mr Saunders out and put him on a stretcher on the pavement. He had no top on and had blood all over his head. Around 12 people gathered around him. A huge light on a stand was shone down on him, he had a drip attached to him and they began performing CPR.

"More doctors arrived in orange jump suits and one of the team working on him told one of the doctors that he 'had been down for 10 minutes'. He then pointed at his head and said 'he's been hit there'. They worked on him for about 15 minutes before they covered his head with a blanket."

The question is: was Saunders's death as inevitable as it seemed in the hours and days that followed?

Mike Yardley, a firearms expert who has advised the Police Federation in the past, believes that the "shoot to incapacitate" policy is too inflexible, leading almost inevitably to loss of life in situations where negotiations between a gunman and police break down.

Currently, armed officers are authorised to open fire to stop any imminent threat to life - be it their own or that of a civilian's. They are trained in first instance to aim for the torso - and if the body is not visible - then the head. The torso is the first choice because it is the easiest to hit. The problem is there is no option to merely wound a gunman by deliberately aiming for the arm or leg or hand. Mr Yardley explained: "There ought to be a wounding option as part of the training process and protocols employed."

He said that when officers open fire they "they are not shooting to kill - they are shooting to stop - but death in those circumstances is a high possibility."

Was there a chance to shoot Mr Saunders in the shoulder or arm and then storm the flat?

Family and friends will wonder if a round of rubber bullets or even the use of a Taser gun, effective up to 15 feet, could have then been used to subdue the barrister and capture him alive.

The problem is the current guidelines do not actually include "shoot to wound" as an option.

Instead, it has now emerged, officers positioned in buildings surrounding the flat appeared to open fire at once in retaliation at being shot at, aiming at Mr Saunders's body and head.

"It was like the OK Corral," said an insider, apparently questioning the need for such a massive response to a lone gunman.

A further question will be raised over the extent of the actual threat posed by Mr Saunders. True, he had military training - he had served in the Honourable Artillery Company for five to six years during and after university - while he had also been drinking on the day he died, making him more difficult to deal with.

But his shotgun, if firing only birdshot, poses a real risk to life over a distance of around 30 to 40 yards, according to experts. Family and friends will want to know exactly how much danger he posed to armed police positioned behind walls and windows.

Of course, Mr Saunders may have had other weapons and certainly police feared that.

Moreover, shotguns can also be fired using "rifled slugs", ammunition deadly over a range of 100 yards and used for such purposes as hunting wild boar. Police will not have wanted to take any risks.

Paul Robinson, a former superintendent in charge of CO19, said: "He came to the window of the property and started to fire on the people who were trying to contain him.

"You cannot withdraw these people because otherwise he would not be contained. They have to be there. In fact these officers put their lives at risk in order to prevent him from causing a risk to others."

---

As the dust settles the fingers start pointing.

Shoot to disable/wound/disarm? Hasn't this been debated ad nauseum already?

In my experience (albeit military) there isn't any such thing when using live ammunition. If you want to use beanbag rounds, taser etc then sure....

In the paper it quoted an anonymous source in CO19 (always reliable anonymous sources:rolleyes:) who said Snipers could aim to disable. Now most sniper weapons I know use at least a 7.62mm round. I don't really see this doing anything other than putting a large lethal hole in its intended target.

What I did find interesting was a paragraph in the paper that said it wasn't entry teams from 19 that effected entry into the premises, but ARV crews and DPG, who did the shooting, but were accompanied by SFOs who didn't fire any rounds.

Oh and I like the way a shotgun is suddenly portrayed as a glorified water pistol because it was 'only' firing standard shot; ah yes, harmless to police officers ye olde buckshot!

Comments?

Article source.

civdef

The firearms "expert" quoted - Mike Yardley, comes from a clay shooting / hunting background - regularly writes for magazines in these fields etc.

Nothing to qualify him to talk about police tactical ops. He should know better.

metman

civdef wrote: »

The firearms "expert" quoted - Mike Yardley, comes from a clay shooting / hunting background - regularly writes for magazines in these fields etc.

Nothing to qualify him to talk about police tactical ops. He should know better.

Highly qualified individual then.

Also good to know the Fed is allegedly taking advice from him on policing matters pertaining to firearms.....or is that just what he told the paper :rolleyes:

JonAnderton

Oh please... Why do these 'experts' get print space...

yep. It was your bog standard search to contact ARV boys and girls that did it... DPG were first on scene and put in the inital containment then 19 came along and did their stuff..

The SFO's were lurking about somewhere though...

I reckon, the next seige happens, we get Mike Yardley and a team of Evening Standard journos to sort it out, they obviously know best...

Fyr.Fytr

Your always going to get this, surprised amnesty and other such groups haven't called for resignation of officers etc like they did after the Lusk post office shooting.

19 have a job to do and have a split second to make the decision. Eighter fatally wound the gun man or wound him still leaving him the ability to hit officers and maybe civilians about the place.

Split second decision that rests singly on the individual officers, we weren't there so cannot comment but whats available to us suggests they did right.

civdef

I'd love Mike Yardley to explain how shooting to wound will reliably prevent someone carrying a gun from firing it.

metman

Or answer the question; how many pigeons, clay or otherwise, have engaged armed police and civilians in a siege where said pigeons have been armed with a shotgun? We need an answer to this question if we're going to decide how we can 'wing' if you will, these pigeons, rather than take them out.

Satan Polaroid

metman wrote: »

Or answer the question; how many pigeons, clay or otherwise, have engaged armed police and civilians in a siege where said pigeons have been armed with a shotgun? We need an answer to this question if we're going to decide how we can 'wing' if you will, these pigeons, rather than take them out.

:pac:

Blame the Police for all of Society's ills, I say :rolleyes:

Random

Someone with a gun shooting people. No reasonable explanation provided. Shoot to take him out in such a way that he can't injure you or the public. If this is a kill shot, so be it. If there are wounding options, then take them.

Satan Polaroid

Fyr.Fytr wrote: »

Your always going to get this, surprised amnesty and other such groups haven't called for resignation of officers etc like they did after the Lusk post office shooting.

A complete disgrace.

The lads involved in Lusk deserve medals for their bravery. These people are taking on dangerous criminals head on, yet are vilified for it. Ridiculous.

Eru

Its just laughable. Either that or cry.

And just why do people think a person is less dangerous when shooting a gun because he rarely drinks? Do drunks normally shoot straighter????

cushtac

There's more spin on that article than a turntable.

random wrote: »

Someone with a gun shooting people. No reasonable explanation provided. Shoot to take him out in such a way that he can't injure you or the public. If this is a kill shot, so be it. If there are wounding options, then take them.

It's easy for us to play the hurler on the ditch. There's no way to guarantee that a non-fatal wound can incapacitate someone to the extent that they no longer pose a threat. Those officers had to think about the safety of themselves, their colleagues and the public. They could not afford to take such chances.

yayamark

That piece is such a load of drivel i wont give it a dignified response.

TheNog

Fyr.Fytr wrote: »

Your always going to get this, surprised amnesty and other such groups haven't called for resignation of officers etc like they did after the Lusk post office shooting.

Why can the investigations and follow-up media reports be likened to a witch-hunt?? To sell more papers probably.

The investigations should be to establish whether proper procedures were followed and if not, why not?

Sully

Karlitosway1978 wrote: »

And just why do people think a person is less dangerous when shooting a gun because he rarely drinks? Do drunks normally shoot straighter????

Thats not the point being made. Its part of a description of the character. He didn't drink much, never had big arguments and was always a friendly person. Hence, it came as a shock when he got a shotgun and started firing at police. And before you say it, such characters would yes actually be seen as less of a threat compared to the man who is always arguing, is violent, is known to the police, is a heavy drinker etc.

I actually feel sorry for the chap. Stress and Depression is often not spotted by friends and family and you wouldn't notice it. Clearly something triggered him and he just went a bit odd and resulted in a shoot out. Police cleared the area and surrounded the area, armed, to protect everyone. Now the rest we cant say for certain what happened but it would be assumed that he fired at Police and was shot back at (acceptable I suppose). Eventually they stormed the building.

Eru

Sully,
From reading the post I believe its implied that his general previous character is or should have been a factor in the shooting considering its also speaking about shooting to wound. Just my opinion however.

Sully

Karlitosway1978 wrote: »

Sully,
From reading the post I believe its implied that his general previous character is or should have been a factor in the shooting considering its also speaking about shooting to wound. Just my opinion however.

Karlitosway1978,
I read your earlier comment asking how such remarks could be made by the press / witnesses. I simply pointed out why these comments are made. I was in no way justifying what happened.

Traumadoc

It could have been acute psychosis, or suicide by police, either way I woul not have liked to to put my life on the line to stop him, unfortunately I think there was only one likely outcome.

mc-panda

Reports indicate damage to the interior walls of residences across the road from the incident with buckshot being found embedded in the plasterboard. Therefore, to say that this individual posed a limited threat to civilians and/or police is not a true reflection of the event.

The individual had a weapon which he fired a number of times in the direction of police personnel. He also had MH difficulties which makes the outcome all the more sad. However, the response was both appropriate and proportionate in my opinion.