Shooting to kill' Taking slow precise anc deadly aim

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'Police marksmen are taught to fire a pair of bullets at the part of the human target, the chest. As one instructor Unfortunately for Stephen Waldorf, they tried to kill the wrong man. Scotland Yaid, has expressed its 'deep regret' over this. Apparently they would not have felt any need to express regret if the victim had been the 'right man' , even though he had offered no resistance, and had been attacked without warning. or any opportunity to surrender ...à point already made by many, he Irish community to get intorration about friends of friends. ondoners are unjustifiably etained and excluded under its rovisions.

ro you support the establishment I black and other self-defence roups?

It is thoroughly understandble that, for example, in the East nd Asians and Blacks should set P groups of this kind. But in remselves they offer no definit'e solution: We support certain leasures they take, but not verything they do.

The important point is to put ressure on the police - like the emonstrations outside the police ation in Hackney - and not go ff into ghettos and organise ¡dependently. This is a recipe for rettoisation.

Pressure on the police and self efence are not counterposed to Ich other necessarily and we 'ould not try and persuade them › disband, but we see them as rmptoms not as a solution to the roblem. They may be useful for sians in particular housing itates or for workers on picket nes, but they are not good at all women threatened with sault on the streets or in tubes.

he campaigns for police accounbility have been attacked from e left as utopian and reformist. What is your view?

As someone who has been burgled four times in eight months, I am not prepared to wait. for socialism to get protection. We want a police service that will protect the community rather than a police force over the community. We need a police which will protect Asians and Blacks from racist attacks, women from assault, ordinary ' working class people from having their houses burgled.

At present the police are failing to do this and wasting their resources on political surveillance, preparing for demonstrations and the like. There is a great crisis in policing now.

In London, we have the most inefficient, most expensive and most corrupt police force in the country. We cannot wait for socialism before we do something about it.

*For details of local contact London and special reports, write copies of 'Policing to Police Committtee Support Unit, Room 567, County Hall, SE1.

Other useful addresses:

*Gay London Police Monitoring Group, 5 Caledonian Rd., London N1 9DX.

*Community Alliance for Police Accountability, Oxford House, Derbyshire St., London t2. (729-2652). "They are taught to kill.' " any opportunity to surrender including several Labour MPs.

One point that has not been made requires a closer look at the history of police shootings over the last ten or so years. The newspaper excerpt above tells us that police al C trained to fire two shots at the chest of a human target, i.e. to shoot at that part of the target easiest to hit without taking precise - and therefore slow - aim. The official reason for this is that the police will only be firing in defence of themselves or others, and will therefore have to disable the opponent quickly as possible. But the same excerpt tells us that they are trained to 'shoot to kill.' The puzzling thing here is that this is a direct contradiction.

The British police draw their official tactical doctrine on gunfighting from the United States. For the same reason their regulation-issue handgun is, almost always, the 38 Special Smith & Wesson - US-made, and a standard weapon of the American police.

Yet, generally (and perhaps surprisingly), US police doctrine is not one of 'shooting to kill' but of 'the instant knock-down' because what is crucial in a real gunfight is to instantly incapacitate an opponent, not to kill him, and these two objectives tend to actually conflict. For a hit which is fatal may not instantly 'stop' an opponent, while a hit which does may well not be fatal - which is why, of people shot down the by US police, 80% in fact survive. The two chest-hits of the official doctrine will usually not kill, if they are delivered from a .38 Does this mean that the abovequoted police instructor is confused, and that the British police do not in fact shoot to kill? Unfortunately not... for while only one in five people shot by US police die from their wounds, six of the 11 people shot by the British police between 1970 and 1979 were killed.

Two Pakistani youths were shot dead by the Special Patrol Group at India House in 1973. One was shot once - through the heart. The other was shot once -through the head. No shots had been fired except by the police - the vouths were 'armed' with toy 'guns (not even with the 'replica' guns about which MPs and the bourgeois press raised such an outcry as their response to the shooting). An armed robber was shot dead in South' East London in 1978. Again, the main was shot once, through the head.

What this suggests is that the police gunmen have not had to fire 'under extreme pressure. and 'in defence of human life' but have had the time to take slow, precise - and deadly - aim.

Stephen Waldorf was not struck by such accurately-placed widest put it (Sunday Telegraph, January 16)

à point already made by many, make the arrests, when asked if he wanted his men issued with pistols, is said to have replied "No, if we don't take guns I don't think the Micks will use theirs" (from Fabian of the Yard' by R. Fabian). .

Of course, there were exceptions - then and now. The most conspicuous exception in the last thirty years was the shooting dead of three unarmed detectives at Shepherds Bush, in the mid-'60s by some small-time thieves.