Hollow point bullets - police rules of engagement
This was written in September 2011 and published on the Prisma Multicultural Newspaper site, but unfortunately it is yet another article that is no longer available following a hacking attack , and until it can be restored it is being published again here in full. After 14 years it very likely needs updating and I will get onto that when I have more time.
There has been little coverage of the effects of these bullets elsewhere in the media, aside from reports on Channel 4 TV and in the Guardian on May 12th this year.
Their use by the Metropolitan Police only came to light at the inquest on Jean de Menezes, killed in London in July 2005, but since then they have become standard issue for all armed officers in the MET.
The Prisma is setting out the situation in some detail with sources that readers can refer to for more information.
Characteristics of Hollow Point bullets
The 1899 Hague Convention banned expanding bullets in warfare as being designed to cause unnecessary suffering. (1) These bullets open up by about 50% of their diameter when striking a target, and are intended to come to a stop within the body, so that they transfer all their kinetic energy to the target, instead of passing through and wounding. A single shot to the chest area with this type of ammunition is often fatal, for 3 reasons: direct organ damage, massive blood loss and a hydrostatic pressure wave which in some cases can reach the brain via major blood vessels, thus causing almost instantaneous incapacitation. The difference from conventional (Full Metal Jacket) rounds is dramatically shown by firing them into a melon. The FMJ round passes straight through leaving a small wound channel, while the melon often explodes when struck by a hollow-point bullet if it is travelling at supersonic speed, which is the case for the police MP5 carbine used at close range.
The Metropolitan Police showed C4 a film test of the bullets fired into a gelatine block but refused to release it to the public on ‘sensitivity grounds’.
These bullets have been adopted by many police forces including the FBI and French police for two reasons: if the bullet exits the target there is a risk of it striking a bystander, while on the other hand, if an armed target is not incapacitated they may return fire. The key word here is ‘incapacitated’ of course, it is not always necessary to kill someone to stop them being a threat.
In the case of a suspected suicide bomber a shot to the head will ensure that they do not even have seconds in which to detonate the device, but in all other cases there is a question of when alternative non-lethal methods should be used. This brings us to the police Rules of Engagement.
Police rules of engagement
The Times published a legal briefing on Aug. 18th 2005 (1), describing Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 which puts responsibility on the individual officer unless the incident has not been completely managed, and requires that he has a defence of “such force as is reasonable or necessary in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or a suspected offender” Reasonable force can be used in self-defence or the defence of another and the onus is on the prosecution to disprove this defence before the officer can be guilty of murder. In a trial it is necessary to decide whether the officer may have honestly believed that it was necessary to defend himself or another person, as well as whether the force used was reasonable in the circumstances.
The Police are governed by the ACPO Manual of Guidance on the Police Use of Firearms , which has been updated several times, most recently in 2010. These guidelines are not all in the public domain, an unknown proportion are reserved for Police use only. The remainder, called the Public Facing part, can be downloaded from www.NPIA.police.uk/en/6533.htm. The introduction states that the guidelines are not mandatory, which introduces another element of uncertainty.
After stating that lethal force is only used as a last resort, Section 2:44 governing the discharge of firearms, states that the primary purpose is to prevent immediate threat to life. “In most cases”, it says, “this is achieved by aiming at the central body mass”. This is very likely to result in the death of the target when the chest is aimed at with hollow-point rounds.
Intelligence-led decisions
Armed police tactics are also designed to be intelligence-led, as in the case of Jean De Menezes, and this is another reason for public concern. A police officer is required to act in a dangerous fast-moving situation, based on what he thinks he sees in front of him and simultaneously to take into account intelligence information being relayed in real time that may conflict with his on-the-spot assessment. This seems like a recipe for fatal mistakes. Surely time to wonder what other methods could be used to incapacitate the suspect, or to simply delay the moment of crisis until a reliable picture is available.
The case of Harry Stanley is instructive in regard to ‘intelligence’. In 1999 Mr. Stanley who was Scottish, stopped off in a pub in Hackney carrying a chair-leg which he had just repaired, in a plastic bag. After he left the pub someone dialled 999 to say they believed that a man with an Irish accent was carrying a shotgun in a plastic bag. When armed police stopped him in the street and ordered him to drop the ‘gun’ he waved the bag in the air, perhaps in disbelief, and was shot in the head by a marksman, who said he had believed himself to be under immediate threat. The first inquest recorded an open verdict, but Mr. Stanley’s family campaigned for justice and in October 2004 a second inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing, which led the Crown Prosecution Service to order a new investigation by Surrey Police, which uncovered new forensic evidence. As a result two police officers were arrested for murder in June 2005, but the CPS decided in October that the evidence was insufficient.
The new evidence was two bullet holes discovered in Mr. Stanley’s jacket, which offered support to the belief that the police opened fire moments earlier, while he was still turning towards them.
This case illustrates the risk of hastily acting on ‘intelligence’, which then leads to a situation in which the police may indeed have believed themselves threatened; and also the extremely slow pace at which inquiries are carried out. Why it took 5 years for the bullet holes in Mr. Stanley’s jacket (or their significance) to be discovered is not clear, but one wonders how they could have been missed by hi-tech forensic methods. And 6 years is a very long time for all the people involved to suffer the stress of waiting for an investigation to be properly concluded.
Public Concern is widespread
This is shown by the fact that the Daily Mail (26th Sept. 2010) published a list of the 33 people shot dead by police since 1995, pointing out that only 2 of the 55 armed officers involved had ever been named. In the article the Barrister Stephen Simblet says he is concerned that Coroners are frequently over-influenced by the sheer numbers of lawyers that the police deploy to argue for anonymity, despite the Coroners’ guidelines which state that “any departure from open justice must be a stringently regulated exception”
Public confidence in the use of armed police will not be restored until the IPCC is made completely independent of any police force and non-lethal means of incapacitating armed suspects are always in practice the first option to be used. Without more attention to strategy armed officers will be placed in situations where they may believe there is no choice but to fire at the torso of the suspect.
The police consider it inflammatory to talk about shoot-to-kill policies, but the weapons used and the way officers are trained are designed to incapacitate in such a way that there is a high probability of death, and too many people who were not holding firearms, or were completely unarmed, have died as a result.
(1) Much detailed information is available from Wikipedia and other internet sites.