Ian Tomlinson

Of course they are, they Innocent until Proven guilty, same as anyone else and the death was not recorded as suspicious at all.

20/10/2005
The Crown Prosecution Service announced today it has advised Surrey Police that there is insufficient evidence to charge Chief Inspector Neil Sharman and Police Constable Kevin ***an with any offence in relation to the fatal shooting of Henry (Harry) Stanley in a London street in September 1999.

In October 2004 an inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing. In line with the Attorney General's guidelines into deaths in custody, the CPS reviewed the case again. As part of this review the reviewing lawyer, a senior prosecutor, requested the re-examination of some of the evidence. This led to the discovery in January 2005 of significant forensic evidence - two bullet holes to the top left shoulder of the jacket that Mr Stanley was wearing when he was shot.

This forensic evidence appeared to indicate that Mr Stanley may have been shot as he began to turn towards the officers, in contradiction to the statements provided by them. On this basis, the officers were arrested by Surrey Police on suspicion of murder, gross negligence manslaughter, perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice on 2 June this year.

In late June, following a request from the officers' defence team, the CPS and Surrey Police agreed to an extension of bail in order to allow the team to secure independent forensic evidence. This evidence was provided to the CPS in mid-September. The CPS considered this evidence and obtained the opinions of other forensic experts who confirmed that the evidence relating to the fatal shot could reasonably permit interpretations consistent with the officers' belief that they were acting in self defence.

The charges the CPS considered against Chief Inspector Sharman and PC ***an were murder, gross negligence manslaughter, perjury, attempting to pervert the course of justice and misconduct in a public office.

The offence of murder requires proof of unlawful killing with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm. In this case the officers say they acted in the honest belief that they were under imminent threat and that the force they used was proportionate to the threat they perceived.

For a prosecution to have a realistic prospect of conviction, it would be necessary to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that they did not have such a belief or that the force used was excessive.

The CPS has concluded that the prosecution evidence is insufficient to rebut the officers' assertion that they were acting in self defence. We have also concluded that the threat which they believed they faced made the use of fatal force reasonable in the circumstances as they perceived them.

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.
The offence of gross negligence manslaughter requires proof that the officers owed Mr Stanley a duty of care and that it is more likely than not that they breached that duty in a way that was a substantial cause of death and in a way that was grossly negligent.

The CPS considered that it is arguable that the officers' haste and lack of planning led them to breach their duty of care to Mr Stanley and cause his death, but there is insufficient evidence to place before a jury to enable that jury to be sure the degree of negligence was gross. Gross negligence requires something beyond even serious mistakes and errors of judgement.

Perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice would rely on the prosecution proving that the officers had lied about what happened in this case. The forensic evidence referred to above precludes showing to a criminal standard that the officers' accounts were lies and that they intended to interfere with the course of justice.
The charge of misconduct in a public office was also considered but, in light of the conclusions above, there is insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.

Mr Stanley's family and Constable ***an and Chief Inspector Sharman have been notified of this decision and the reviewing lawyer is today meeting with Mr Stanley's family.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/press_releases/153_05/


Besides I will shed no tears or lose any sleep over the death of Harry Stanley, any more than I would if some Ned gets gunned down in Glasgow.

 

I'm assuming by "these people" you mean the firearms officers.

You certainly don't appear to cut any slack on the timescales but you freely point out failures.

Like I said that there is no system or procedure that can deal with these situations that is faultless. No matter what protocols the police have, members of the public haven't been trained in them, so each situation cannot be pre-determined by a protocol. People will respond in a multitude of ways and very often officers have to think on their feet and do the best they can with the situation they have.

But it is a proper damned if you do and damned if you don't.

If police followed these protocols to the letter and lives were lost, then people would rightly criticise police for not thinking outside the box and reacting to what they were presented with.

Would you be happy for police to hide behind protocols then? I doubt it.

The nature of these incidents can be very fluid and the response needs to match - protocols or not.

 

No, I haven't been directly involved in a large scale protest but I have witnessed a couple in progress and observed how a crowd can be whipped up to near hysteria - either by a few of the participants or by the over-reactions of the police, so my instinct was to go in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. Indeed the worst occasion seemed, to me, to be caused by the over-reaction of the police which actually greatly exacerbated the situation but I didn't hang around long enough to see the outcome. That is not to say that I have not seen a few malcontents on another occasion who were hell -bent on stirring up trouble or indeed that there are not 'protests' with which I have sympathy but (perhaps selfishly or maybe just self preservation) I don't care for going along with the crowd and having my decisions made for me.

I believe that in the case of the policeman charged with the unlawful killing of Mr Tomlinson there will, of course, be people who have already passed judgement either in his favour or against - such is the nature of things. As I have said, my main interest will be in the evidence which has yet to come to light on which the jury will have reached their verdict, perhaps notwithstanding that this evidence has already persuaded the inquest jury that Mr Tomlinson was unlawfully killed.

 

I think that's the crux of the matter, was he unlawfully "Killed" or was this an accident? I think the prosecution will have to be very persuasive to convince a jury that he was "killed" by the actions of the Copper alone, I suspect (though I may be wrong) that the jury will think the same way as I do, in that Tomlinson's pre existing Cyrhosis was probably the main cause of death. Moreso because at least two of the post mortems have said he had injuries due to a police baton strike to his abdomen, the problem is the video evidence shows him being hit on the back of the legs.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

 

Copper shouldn't have hit him like that

Agree that there was such an outcry the CPS had to pursue the case, but having him on manslaughter charge means it will be hard to prove without reasonable doubt the copper striking him did kill him & the copper could walk away with nothing other than few months off work!!

 

Having read a bit about the Copper it is a ****ing mystery why he was there in the first place.

He was drummed out of the Met, joined another force and was seconded back to the Met which he then was allowed to join full time again.

Something fishy about that.

 

Masonic **** probably

 

You are Probably correct.

 

Dev as an ex copper I understand you are never wrong and the police in Scotland, as far as you are concerned, never do wrong either.
Do you think the policeman nearest N. Lennon would have been seen to do his job more correctly by watching the crowd nearest him where
John Wilson came from, and an area that no other policeman, could watch as carefully, or was he doing his job better watching across the pitch
hoping to see a Celtic fan misbehave. He knew there were many other policemen watching the same crowd from much closer range.
Maybe you could answer that without going into a rabble of insults because going into the insults just reinforces my opinions of coppers and ex coppers.

 

Did you read any of what I said?

Where did I say the police in Scotland are never wrong?

Would it interest you to know that I lost my job as a Police officer partly because another Cop lied in a statement about me?

The Police are not to blame for John Wilson, John Wilson is to blame.

 

Wasn't it just a case of ...

"oh no, armed units are handing back their guns over this...we'd better reverse the decision"

 

Or maybe they saw their colleagues being made scapegoats and decided to back them in the only way they could?

 

You don't have to prove innocence in a court of Law Reb come on, that's a shoddy argument. If people had to prove their innocence there would be a lot of people still in jail now who have been released.The death of Harry Stanley was only made suspicious by the fact that people deemed it so, his family for example.

He was a painter and decorater, a new grandfather, a quiet man recovering from cancer treatment. All bullshit excuses to hide behind. The man was a violent criminal with a long list of previous convictions and doubtless a real hatred for the police as most career criminals have. He had only recently been released from prison after doing a 4 year stretch for GBH, father Abraham this guy was clearly not.That's why the case annoys me so much, he got himself killed. Carrying a table leg in a plastic bag? Who the **** does that? Is it coincidence that he just happened to stop at a boozers where he had never drank before, therefore the locals never knew him and called the police (allegedly, asno one has ever came forward to say they were the anonymous caller). Did he phone the Police himself? Who in London would mistake a broad Glaswegian accent for that of an Irishman?

If he was terminally ill what better way to go than have the coppers kill him?

Look at the timing of the shots from the two officers, less than .17 of a second apart, if this was a straightforward case of two policemen killing an innocent man who had turned his back then their planning must have been miraculous and immaculate. Did they perhaps wink at each other so as to coordinate almost identical response times? I doubt it most sincerely in fact I find it impossible to understand what plan they could have come up with which would see both men react as one just so they could kill an unarmed man.

Thank **** we had more officers involved in the Raoul Moat shooting - which was entirely justified, even so plenty of inexpert critics came crawling out of the woodpile to say that Moat could have been taken alive. Utter bollocks of course but that'sthe world we live in where everyone is an expert in things he knows little about. (that's not a dig by the way ).

I have no sympathy for Stanley at all, but if I did suspect the two cops killed him with any malice or had lied, my opinion would perhaps change. I don't personally think they did anything I would not have done given the circumstances.

 

Given that the evidence persuaded the inquest jury to conclude that Mr Tomlinson was unlawfully killed, an interesting scenario has been set up in relation to the manslaughter charge. I understand that the appropriate standard of proof for an inquest jury to consider is that unlawful killing must be beyond reasonable doubt. Presumably, in this case, then, the evidence was so overwhelmingly obvious that death resulted without anything else being taken into account. If that criteria had not been met, then, on the balance of probabilities, one would think that a verdict of accidental death or death by misadventure would have been considered. It remains to be seen, therefore, how the jury in the criminal court will view this evidence in considering the manslaughter charge.

However, as you say....we'll have to wait and see!

 

What ever happens whichever one of has the best memory (probably me, i'm a pedant) will have bragging rights in October/November.

 

I never at any stage said it precluded free thinking. I was saying that officers might have to work outwith protocols. Two different things. Just because a protocol isn't followed doesn't automatically mean it is wrong.

The manual for firearms incidents is about 100 pages long and contains over 500 points. A solicitor on day one at solicitor school could find something that wasn't followed in that manual, so it is hardly surprising that Mansfield and his team of barristers would find mistakes.

There are a whole raft of issues well away from firearms protocols that led to de Menezes' death. A lack of officers, confusion as to his identity, poor communications and even the actions of De Menezes all played a part. For you to say that failure to follow protocols resulted in a loss of life ignores all of these and simplifies the situation so much so as to distort what actually happened.

De Menezes' death was as regrettable as it was avoidable. That said, protocols could have been followed perfectly and he could still have died. That is because there were so many other facets to this rather than just procedure.