Was Mark Saunders Murdered By The Police?
MARK Saunders has gun. Mark Saunders is alone. A call to the police. Police come. There have been shots fired.
Mark Saunders has been drinking. Mark Saunders is divorce lawyer. Mark Saunders has been rowing with his wife.
Mark Saunders lives in a £2.2million flat in West London. Police arrive and shoot Mark Saunders in the brain, heart and liver. Officers hurl gas grenades into Mark Saunders’ fat and go in.
Mark Saunders is dead. Mark Saunders did not fire a shot at the police, nor, as the Sun, says, did he aim his gun at them.
Andy McNab, the Sun’s “security adviser” in a silhouette, says the police did the right thing. John O’Connor, professional nodding wooden top, a former head of the Flying Squad, says the police did the right thing.
So that’s it, then. The Sun’s experts say that shooting dead a man dead who has not fired first at you is the right thing.
End of..?
September 15th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Probably not; the Judgement in the High Court about whether it is proper for police officers to be allowed to compare notes before giving evidence is yet to be handed down, and the question is one that could go all the way to Strasbourg.
Of course, if there really is a video showing that Mark Saunders was not pointing his gun at them, and the officers say otherwise, the question gets a great deal nastier…
September 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Nothing in this country works anymore. The so called ‘experts’ that change their views with the wind are a complete joke. Everytime I pick up the paper, for a chuckle, it’s experts this and experts that. Who are these experts that actually appear as experts on just being experts? The world is a joke in my eyes. Everything is all going wrong isn’t it….
September 15th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
leave it to the experts then
September 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Lone Pigeon
Too true, the World IS a joke, do we blame the Politicians or the Public who really
don”t care?
September 15th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
It’s time for another Festival of Britain! Bring on the dodgy architecture and technology that will be outmoded in a week.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Don’t worry, it will all be explained and justified, just like Menezes, no one apart from the victim and his relatives will suffer. Bureaucracies are unacountable and look after their own first - there is no second.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
The boys in blue usually always close rank in either country, I do believe. Certainly looks like a slight ‘over kill’ when it would only take one bullet to do the ‘trick’ to incapacitate him or kill him. Rather trigger happy - somewhat like in the Menezes case.
September 18th, 2008 at 1:26 am
To think shoot to kill used to be a controversial topic - now it’s open policy…
What happened to T.V. though???? Didn’t there used to be lots of crusading, government-bashing drama???
There only seems to be spoofs of New Labour - and bits of criticism - not the intense hatred there was in the Thatcher years (which they still teach us about like Mrs T. is still in power - maybe that’s the problem - they haven’t noticed it’s not the 80s anymore???
).
September 18th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
This is not an issue about the actions of individual firearms officers - they are very junior in rank and at the bottom of the ‘food chain’ in terms of planning the operation. The bigger issue, and one which has so far been overlooked, is the role of the senior officer(s) in command who set the strategy and implemented the tactics. It is intriguing to note that the most senior officer involved was none other than Commander ‘Dr’ Ali Dizaei (from whom God preserve us!), who apparently had scant experience of such matters. It will be interesting to see how rigorously the IPCC pursue him.