From: Rusty�Bullethole, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Indepedent Family's anger over decision not to charge police who killed man carrying a table leg By Ian Burrell, Home Affairs Correspondent 5 December 2000 The family of Harry Stanley, the man shot dead by police as he walked home carrying the leg of a table, reacted with anger yesterday when the Crown Prosecution Service said it was not charging the officers over his death. The CPS said it had made its decision on the basis that the officers from a Metropolitan Police armed response unit believed the table leg was a shotgun. They "honestly" believed they were at risk, it said. But yesterday Mr Stanley's son Jason said the family was furious at both the decision and the way it had been treated by the police since the shooting. The family is now considering a legal challenge to the CPS decision. "It just proves that nobody is safe on the streets," he said. "If this can happen to my dad, it can happen to anyone. When will somebody be held accountable for their actions?'' The shooting in September 1999 has become one of the most controversial killings in the recent history of British policing. Mr Stanley, 46, a painter and decorator, had been walking home in Hackney, London, and was just 100 yards from his door when he was struck by two police bullets. One went through his hand and the other hit him in the head, killing him instantly. It emerged that the highly trained officers from SO19 had been acting on a tip-off from a drinker in the Alexandra pub in Hackney, where Mr Stanley had stopped for a glass of lemonade. The caller thought the coffee table leg that was wrapped in a carrier bag and had just been repaired, was a gun. The error, which prompted a 999 call to the police, was compounded by the mistaken belief that Glasgow-born Mr Stanley had an Irish accent and may have been a terrorist. What exactly happened in the moments after Mr Stanley was challenged in the street at 7.54pm by two marksmen may emerge at the resumption of his inquest (a date has not been set). At the opening of the inquest in September 1999, the coroner was told Mr Stanley was challenged twice before being shot by officers carrying Glock 9mm self-loading pistols. Yesterday the CPS said: "It is an established principle of English law that when a man honestly believes he is facing an immediate risk of suffering serious injury, even is that belief is mistaken, he is entitled to use such force as is reasonably necessary to defend himself.'' The CPS said it had taken into account the evidence of witnesses and the opinions of medical and forensic experts. "The CPS considers whether the officer's response was commensurate with the degree of risk which they honestly believed had been created by the threatened attack that they believed they were under.'' In the view of leading and junior counsel, there was "not sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offence having being committed by either of the two officers involved''. But the explanation for not putting the case before a jury was greeted with anger by Mr Stanley's relatives. They are aggrieved not just at losing a relative to a police bullet but at their treatment by the investigating authorities. Despite the proximity of the shooting to the family home, Mr Stanley's wife, Irene, was not informed of his death until more than 20 hours after the incident, by which time the initial post- mortem had taken place with no family members present. The oversight occurred in spite of Mr Stanley carrying his passport. The family were also wrongly given the impression police would pay for the funeral and were angered by the line of police questioning of some relatives, particularly a suggestion he may have been deliberately trying to get himself killed. Yesterday the family's lawyer, Daniel Machover, said: "The family is considering a judicial review of this remarkable decision by the CPS, who appear to be protecting police officers from the criminal justice system by applying the most conservative approach possible to the law and the evidence.'' Mr Machover will make a request to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner asking for conformation that he will be publishing in the public interest the report prepared by Surrey Police into the shooting. The charity Inquest which, investigates deaths in custody, described the family's treatment as "scandalous". -------------- It would appear that in cases such as these, what a police officer and a member of the public "honestly believes" as a threat are, in the eyes of the CPS, two entirely different things. http://www.gn.apc.org/inquest/briefings/stanley.html Rusty Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A http://www.topica.com/t/17 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
