‘No! You’re Just Supposed To Shoot The Drunken, Gun-Wielding Chavs!’

…not the fine, upstanding (when not drunk) lawyers!

Thus spake Stephen Glover in the ‘Daily Fail’ on the case of trigger-happy lawyer Mark Saunders:

The inquest at Westminster Coroner’s Court into the killing by police of the barrister Mark Saunders has not yet ¬inished. When it has, the jury will deliver its verdict. Whatever that verdict may be, questions have been raised that go far beyond this case, and concern the good sense, humanity and accountability of the police.

Well, that’s not going to go down too well at Inspector Gadget’s blog (and for once, I'm in agreement), but does he have a point?

No doubt like many others reading reports of the inquest, I have been troubled by aspects of the evidence. But it should be said in defence of the police that Mr Saunders must have at first seemed a potentially very dangerous character.

Only ‘at first’? What, exactly, changed?

While police were investigating this, he allegedly fired at them, though neither at this nor at any other stage was anyone hit or wounded. After this happened, reinforcements were reasonably called in. He could, after all, have been a terrorist or a lethal, professional killer.

A shotgun is pretty lethal, Stephen. Just because he missed, doesn’t mean his aim mightn’t have got better once he sobered up….

Some people will say that if a man lets off his shotgun in this way he deserves whatever happens to him. I suppose this may be true.

Pretty grudging of you. How about we park a drunken cokehead with a loaded shooter in your neighbour’s house, see how you feel then?

Yet the police were dealing not with a dangerous terrorist, but with a wildly drunken young man of previous good character who was evidently temporarily deranged, and probably seriously mentally ill.

Thank you for that, Dr Glover. It is ‘Dr’, isn’t it? After all, there you are, making a diagnosis..

And I can’t see anywhere how the mental state of the shootee makes the gun somehow magically less lethal.

Let me say what worries me most about this terrible story. In the first place, it is the apparent absence of good sense on the part of the police. If they had every reason to pour in resources when shooting started in the belief that they were confronted by a dangerous man, they should have backed off and put negotiators in charge when they learned that they were dealing with a drunken, vomiting lunatic.

Negotiators were there. But they can’t make a drunken, coked-up lunatic put down the shotgun within 45 minutes. No, not even if you do employ the cute pair from Fox’s sadly-cancelled ‘Standoff’.

This is reality, not a TV show…

All this overkill — so characteristic of the modern police — for one drunken, disturbed man whose sole weapon, a shotgun, has a limited range and, unless it is used close to its target, is not an accurate weapon.

Hey, if you want to stand in front of one, don’t let me stop you. But you don’t get to determine whether others have to take that risk…

Worse still, there seems to have been a lack of humanity. Despite ¬persistent requests, neither Mr Saunders’ best friend nor his wife Elizabeth were allowed to see him. The barrister had actually asked to see his wife, but she was prevented from doing so by the police.

And if he’d exchanged a final few words with his wife and then *kaboom*, would you be castigating the police for unwittingly allowing his suicide or her murder?

I bet you would…