From: RustyBullethole, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sunday Telegraph 10.12.00 (OCR) In September 1999 a father recovering from cancer surgery was gunned down in the street: last week, his family was told that no one will be prosecuted. But as ANDREW ALDERSON and ADAM LUSHER report, his 48-year-old widow is still determined to have her day in court. Soon after 10am last Monday, the family of the late Harry Stanley gathered in their east London home and waited nervously for a telephone call from their solicitor. It finally came just before 11am. Jason, Mr Stanley's eldest son, took the call in the living room of his mother's terraced house in Hackney, sitting in a navy blue leather chair. Until his death, it had been his father's favourite. On the other end of the line was Daniel Machover, who has represented the family since Mr Stanley was shot dead as he walked home clutching nothing more dangerous than a repaired table leg. "I am afraid I have some bad news for you," Mr Machover said. "The Crown Prosecution Service has decided there will be no charges." He then read from the three-page letter that the CPS had faxed to Hickman & Rose's ground-floor offices in Islington, north London. It concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute two firearms officers for murder or manslaughter. Disappointment quickly turned to anger as Jason Stanley, 27, relayed the news to his mother, Irene, 48; brother, Jamie, 19; and sister Charlene, 18. Mrs Stanley was so shocked that she spent the rest of the day in her bed-clothes, unable to find the will to get dressed. "I felt so depressed. We wanted this to go to trial, so a judge and jury could decide if what happened was wrong," she said. Less than 15 months after flowers, candles and children's toys marked the bloodstained spot - no more than 100 yards from his home - where Mr Stanley was shot, the family found themselves at a new low. They still had no answer to questions that had tormented them: how had Mr Stanley, a family-orientated grandfather of three, come to be shot dead in the early evening by the very people who were meant to be protecting him? How could two experienced marksmen become convinced they were in danger from an unarmed man, left weak after surgery and who was carrying only a 15in piece of wood wrapped in a rolled-up plastic bag? Furthermore, the-CPS's decision not to bring charges meant that the family may never know the identity of the inspector and constable who shot Mr Stanley, or of the three witnesses to the incident. It was at 7.30pm on Wednesday, September 22, 1999, when Mr Stanley stopped at The Alexandra pub, 500 yards from home. Just two days earlier, more than 20 stitches had been removed from his stomach following an operation for colon cancer. Feeling weary, he called in at the pub to rest on his way home. He had ordered a lemonade and placed the plastic bag beside and, occasionally, under his foot. Others in the bar were unable to see that the bag held a coffee table leg that had been broken during a party. Mr Stanley had just collected it from his brother, Peter, a DIY enthusiast living a mile away, who had repaired it. At 7.44pm, Mr Stanley left the pub to walk home, where he had planned to watch Manchester United's Champions League match on television. Unknown to him however, a pub customer had become suspicious. Mistaking Mr Stanley's Glaswegian accent for an Irish one, the customer rang the police and reported that a man -whose description he provided-had left the pub carrying what he believed was a sawn-off shotgun. A two-man armed response team arrived just before 7.55pm in a marked Rover 827 police car. The two officers, members of Scotland Yard's S019 specialist firearms team, jumped from their patrol car close to the junction of Victoria Park Road and Fremont Street. As Mr Stanley turned down Fremont Street, the officers challenged him to stop, identifying themselves as armed police. Mr Stanley turned to face them in the well-lit street, clutching the table leg in his right hand. The officers, who were standing apart in the road, each fired one shot from their Glock 9mm self-loading pistols from 10 yards. One bullet struck Mr Stanley in the head, the other in the left hand. When ambulancemen arrived, he was dead. Mr Stanley's wife had heard the shots and come into the street. As police put up tape to cordon off the body, reports quickly spread that a man had been shot. "That's somebody husband, somebody's son," said Mrs Stanley to a neighbour before shutting her front door. That night, when he failed to arrive home, Mrs Stanley assumed her husband had decided to stay with his brother. It was not until the next day that she learnt that the victim had, indeed, been someone's husband: her own. At 47, she had been widowed by two bullets which, she will always remain convinced, should never have been fired. By Tuesday morning last week, 24 hours after learning of the CPS's decision, Mrs Stanley's dismay had turned to fury. She decided, through her solicitor, to press for a judicial review of the case in the High Court to try to force the officers to stand trial. "I will not let this rest. I want justice: for Harry's sake, for my own sake and for the sake of our children," she said, wearing a tartan ribbon that has come to represent the Justice for Harry Stanley Campaign. Although nervous about public speaking, she agreed to address a meeting at St John's church, Bethnal Green, the following evening, attended by 150 campaign supporters. In the wake of the Macpherson report into the death of Stephen Lawrence, which identified "institutional" racism in the Metropolitan Police, Mrs Stanley believes her husband would have been less likely to have been shot if he had been black. "If Harry had been black, it could have been different. They might have shown more restraint," she said. Daniel Machover, her solicitor, said that the anger of the family was aimed at the behaviour of the two officers in the seconds before they challenged Mr Stanley. There was only the flimsiest evidence that he had a gun and was dangerous: the fact that Mr Stanley was walking into a quiet residential street alone suggested he was no risk to the public. "There were a number of options available to the police, perhaps the most obvious one being to observe what he was doing and evaluate whether he posed a danger," said Mr Machover. "By challenging him, it meant that unless Mr Stanley dropped the table leg - which there was no reason for him to do- he was likely to turn towards them and, therefore, to be shot." Mr Machover said that the limited evidence supplied to him by the CPS had "supported rather than detracted" from his belief that the officers should be charged. The family is, eventually, likely to seek compensation. The Stanleys remain unhappy that fellow police officers - in this case from the Surrey force - conducted inquiries on behalf of the Police Complaints Authority. They also have concerns that the CPS is "protective" towards officers with whom they work when bringing prosecutions. Inquest, a campaigning group that investigates deaths in police custody and police shootings, fears that, at the coroner's inquest into Mr Stanley's death, the officers may be able to remain anonymous and says that anyone can refuse to answer questions that may incriminate them. In the two officers' defence, firearms experts say that they would have had only a split second to decide whether to open fire. The Metropolitan Police says that, when its officers fire their guns, they "shoot to stop". Privately, the men who pull the trigger admit that they shoot to kill. One firearms officer said: "In an ideal world, you'd be the cool cowboy crackshot, blow the gun out of his hand without injury and he'd smile ruefully and say: 'It's a fair cop, guv'. Alas, we live in the real world and you go for the biggest target area available because you have to stop him. So you go for the chest shot." Both officers are said to have described Mr Stanley's pose as the "classic position" for firing a sawn-off shotgun. They said he looked as if he was about to fire from the hip, with his left hand clutching what they thought was the barrel of a gun, the right hand over what they believed was the trigger. The fact that both men fired supports their contention that they were in danger, said officials close to the investigation. Three independent witnesses are also thought to have largely corroborated the officers' account. One of the armed officers was so convinced that the victim had been holding a gun that, after the shooting, he kicked the wrapped table leg away in case the man they had shot was still alive and tried to reach for it. Investigators insist that the inquiry was thorough: the police questioned some 1,000 people, collecting nearly 700 statements. The two marksmen were rigorously questioned in the presence of their solicitors. The CPS lawyers studying the file are said to have been horrified that someone could be shot dead for holding a wrapped table leg at his side, and admit that Mr Stanley was not in any way to blame for his death. They have, however, decided that it would be wrong to press any charges. It was ruled that there was insufficient evidence to provide a "realistic prospect of conviction" on charges of murder or manslaughter by negligence. In its statement explaining its decision, the CPS said: "It is an established principle of English law that when a man honestly believes that he is facing an immediate risk of suffering serious injury, even if that belief is mistaken, he is entitled to use such force as is reasonably necessary to defend himself." The Metropolitan Police has faced controversy over shooting incidents in the past. In January 1983, armed officers fired 14 bullets into a yellow Mini driven by Stephen Waldorf, then a 26year-old film editor. Five of the bullets hit and seriously injured Mr Waldorf, who had been mistaken for an escaped prisoner suspected of attempting to murder a policeman. Since August 1999, the Metropolitan Police has issued firearms to its officers on 2,862 occasions. Many of these incidents were false alarms. Officers fired a total of seven bullets, hitting five people. Two of them, including Mr Stanley, died. Peter Fahy, the Assistant Chief Constable from Surrey who headed the inquiry, has visited the Stanley family to offer his sympathies over the tragedy. He accepts that the case highlights public anxieties about one force investigating another. "These sorts of cases offer a very strong argument about whether we need an independent body to investigate issues of this seriousness," he said. The Home Office is planning to announce new reforms for investigating procedures before Christmas. As the family awaits advice this weekend from a barrister on its next move, Mrs Stanley is keeping her husband's ashes in an urn in a glass cabinet in the living room. "I can't bear to scatter them now," she said. "I will - in his native Scotland but only when I believe we have seen justice." -- Hmm, the fact that one bullet hit Mr Stanley in the hand and the other in the head means it is possible if the first shot went into his hand that the second officer could have "chain fired" at the sound of the first gunshot and taken the time to do a headshot, it was only ten yards after all. If he was convinced his partner had detected a lethal threat and opened fire, and the guy was still standing, then going for the head is what you are usually trained to do. I don't think the defence that they both opened fire at the same time holds water. Steve. 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
