Shoot to kill

The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at London's Stockwell tube station in 2005 raised acute issues about the operational practice, legitimacy, accountability, and policy-making regarding police use of fatal force. It dramatically exposed a policy - amounting to "shoot to kill" - which came not from Parliament, but from the non-statutory ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers). This vital and timely book unravels these complex and often misunderstood matters, and it provides a fresh and much-needed overview of the UK's firearms practice and policy in a traditionally "unarmed" police service. Drawing on international examples of police use-of-force and firearms, it questions how existing police policy has been made covertly.