Shoot to kill

By Sarah-Jane Hollands, London Correspondant

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Yesterday's London Evening Standard carried a piece by Richard Edwards, Crime Reporter, under the banner headline, 'Police given sweeping new powers on shoot to kill'.

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The first two paragraphs read as follows: "Police are extending a controversial shoot-to-kill policy to deal with 'extreme' cases of kidnapping, stalking and domestic violence.

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New Scotland Yard guidelines will allow firearms teams to shoot suspects in the head when the offender is holding a gun or a knife to a victim's head and on the brink of murder."

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Perhaps it's a case of bad journalism. I sincerely hope that Mr Edwards has misread the guidelines.

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I thought in this country, actual murder didn't carry the death penalty - now, it would seem that at worst, attempted murder is punishable by death.

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Of course, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes know only too well that being in the wrong place at the wrong time can be a death sentence at the hands of trigger happy police officers.