Without sounding emotive it sounded like an execution. Then it all went quiet. One guy in a balaclava who looked very professional started putting away his equipment and made a cutting the throat sign to someone else.
- witness to the Mark Saunders shoot-out.
Here are the stories of two deceased men who probably briefly lived contemporaneously in London, but who – until their dying moments, anyway - had little in common otherwise.
One was a public school and Oxford educated barrister on £500,000 a year, who resided in a £2m town house in Chelsea, one of the capital’s richest districts. The other was a Glasgow-born painter and decorator who lived in a council flat in rather less salubrious Hackney.
Imagine a second-rate novelist concocting characters purposely to symbolise given social classes, and you get some idea of the CVs Mark Saunders (pictured) and Harry Stanley.
On Tuesday this week, Saunders – described as ‘a binge alcoholic’ and reportedly prone to depression - knocked off work early began drinking heavily; one evening in September 1999, Stanley – just out of hospital after an operation for colon cancer, incidentally – stopped off at a handy boozer and ordered a lemonade.
Saunders got home and ended up having a bit of a domestic with the missus, another high-earning barrister. Neighbours heard raised voices and then the sound of gun shots. At least this was a genuine firearms incident.
By contrast, Stanley hadn’t had a row with anybody and wasn’t in possession of any weapon. He was, however, carrying a table leg which he had just picked up from his brother who had just repaired it; for some reason, another pub client rang the police to warn that an ‘Irishman’ was concealing a gun in a plastic bag.
As Stanley neared home, he was challenged by two armed police officers. As he turned to fact them, they shot him dead from just 15 yards. He didn’t have time to leave any words of farewell to his partner.
A jury at a second inquest in 2004 returned a verdict of unlawful killing, which was overturned in the High Court the following year on grounds of insufficient evidence.
There is still much to be explained about the Saunders case. But what we do know is that after a five-hour standoff - during which he threw into his garden a cardboard box on which he had written ‘I love my wife dearly xxx’ - the decision was reached to take him out.
Was there really no alternative but to kill? Doubtless we will learn more from the Independent Police Complains Commission inquiry and the inquest. But from the facts as reported in the press today, the move seems strangely precipitous. Couldn’t negotiations have gone on longer? Would not the use of non-lethal weapons have been more appropriate?
Realistically, there are occasions on which the police must be armed. There are even circumstances in which it must be right for the police to use those arms. Surely few would argue against shoot to kill where it would prevent terrorist carnage.
But that does not give the Metropolitan Police free reign to take lives on the basis of caprice, whether the victims be ordinary blokes from Hackney, Chelsea yuppies that suddenly go postal, or immigrant electricians trying to catch a tube on the Victoria Line.
It will be interesting to see if Saunders' social standing makes a difference to the way subsequent developments are reported. At this stage, we need some convincing explanations from the Met. And – unlike the Stanley and de Menezes cases – if somebody made a mistake, he or she should carry the can.
Posted at 14:21, 8 May 2008
Comments (10)
What worries me is that there's still an Irishman with a gun on the loose in Hackney.
I thought the presentation of the gun siege was massively distorted by Mark Saunders' background. Imagine a shotgun wielding drunk in Harry Stanley's position. Would we have got all the information about the state of his marriage, his exemplary work record, the glamourous locale, the legal status of his firearm?
His father has started to ask if it was necessary. It will be interesting to see if the police are held more accountable and whether his better placed family have more luck than those calling for justice in the Stanley and de Menezes cases .
Also in this case he did actually fire at people (or at least out of his window and narrowly missing people in their homes).
So far, as Jack points out, he is being portrayed more sympathetically and I don't think I have heard Boris call for places for barristers to go to 'rehab' and stop them shooting at people as he has on gun crime and young people.
In fact has he said anything , or is this sort of posh gun toting crime not fit in quite so neatly?
Big difference between the two cases.
In this one the guy definitely had a gun, had fired it and was in an unstable and unpredictable state - and they'd waited/tried to resolve for five hours.
I'm not a big fan of armed police but I don't see an issue here. The guy clearly had mental problems but at the end of the day he qualified for the 'dangerous nutter' category.
As to being sympathetically treated, I guess that's as much down to spin as class: here the police aren't feeling the need to cover mistakes or shoot-to-kill policies by character assassination. Indeed giving out this background info is probably seen by them as justifying the unfortunate end to a carefully controlled operation to contain and resolve the situation peacefully.
It's difficult because unless you have been in the military and somebody has pointed a weapon at you it hard to know what goes through a persons mind. What the hell did this bloke need a shot gun in his house for god sake. The bloke with the table leg I remember this case and the police officers should not be allowed to carry weapons.
But anyone who has a weapon like a shot gun which can cut a person in half drunk or sober I'll back the officers. I had an idiot point a shot gun at me, I was white and scared shitless, once he put it down and said it's alright mate just a joke, I gave him joke, if it was not for others I'd have killed him.
This time I do not blame officers.
Agree with other posters here - the fella was shooting at officers and members of the public. He had many hours to calm down and surrender to the police but didn't. Whilst it is regrettable that the police didn't manage to inflict non-fatal wounds and then overpower him, perhaps Saunders was determined to carry out 'suicide by cop'.
It's a better situation where he is dead rather than having any innocent bystanders / police offices killed.
I wonder if it's not possible for the Police to use tranquillizer darts in this sort of case? It always worked on Daktari, a raging lion would be instantly subdued.
It's not often I agrre with Richard Littlejohn but he has a point: 'Am I missing something here? Man shoots at police. Police shoot back. Man dies. Case closed.'
Buenaventura
As somebody on the left I seldom condone the use of police violence but in this instance.... A neighbour reported that this guy shot several times into his daughter's bedroom and as he says it was only a miracle that she was not there. He also shot, not once but several times in the direction of armed officers and was laughing(hysterically?) at their reaction. Personally I think it's a miracle that they didn't take him out considerably earlier. If he had mental health issues why the hell was he given a shotgun license?
Jeez, the police in London are beginning to act like the police in New York. When in doubt, shoot. And they are getting the same treatment in the courts, viz., they get let off.---I'm referring to the Stanley case, not the Saunders case, but also the recent case in New York in which police peppered an unarmed man with bullets and then weren't convicted of anything, not even manslaughter.