The family of a man shot dead by a police officer during a foiled prison break have accused Scotland Yard of evading accountability after a case against the marksman was thrown out.Baker’s family said there was no justification for the killing and questioned how W80’s action had escaped scrutiny. The police watchdog said the case has dented public confidence in police accountability.
There was every justification for the shooting since their family member was a criminal engaged in criminal pursuits. It’s insane that once again a cop who did his job is persecuted for it.
The officer, known only as W80, shot Jermaine Baker as police stopped a plot to snatch two prisoners from a van near Wood Green crown court in 2015.Baker, a father of two from Tottenham, north London, was shot at close range by counter-terrorism specialist firearms officer W80, who thought Baker was reaching for a gun. Baker, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of a stolen Audi A6, was unarmed. An imitation firearm was later found in the back of the Audi, the misconduct hearing previously heard.
The fact it wasn’t a real gun means nothing.
Prosecutors said in 2017 that there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges over the shooting, but the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) directed that the officer should face misconduct proceedings, prompting a lengthy legal dispute between the watchdog and the Metropolitan police.
The IOPC is not fit for purpose and needs to be shut down.
The guardian article is interestingly - if unsurprisingly - reticent on the fact that the ‘two prisoners’ Baker was helping to break out of police custody (along with other members of the same gang) were on trial charged with firearms offences over a spate of gangland shootings.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the IOPC policy is on police shootings where there is abundant previous evidence of firearms involvement; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they are required to ignore it and consider each case as if starting from a blank slate in a perversion of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
(As a possibly satisfying coda, one of the prisoners was subsequently transferred to serve the remainder of his 21-year sentence in a Turkish prison. He escaped and ended up in Moldova, where he was gunned down outside a café in 2024.)
So that's life (or in this case, death) in Moldova. The country is on the EU joining programme. So, I wonder what it is about Moldova that is so attractive to the EU. Or are NATO pushing their application through so they can establish military bases there against Russia?
DeleteOh dear, how sad, never mind.
ReplyDelete