The High Court slams the police watchdog for letting this ‘trigger-happy’ officer off scot-free [VIDEO]

Holding the police to account

Holding the police to account and trying to get justice can take years of struggle – something the grieving families of those killed in custody know only too well.

A case in point is Azelle Rodney, who was 24 when he was shot and killed by the police in April 2005. After ten years of struggle by Rodney’s supporters, the officer, Tony Long, was finally put on trial for murder in 2015. Despite having given no warnings before shooting Rodney four times in the head, he was acquitted as the jury believed he had acted in self-defence.

Long has recently spoken out about the IPCC, claiming that “firearms officers are being treated like criminals by the IPCC”. He also made veiled threats over the ability of officers to combat terrorism effectively if they are questioned over their actions:

My former colleagues are saying: ‘We will stand by for a Paris-type attack, but when you want us to go out and do an intelligence-led operation against criminals you might need to satisfy us that the intelligence is perfect, or we’re not going out’. I think we’re quite close to that situation.

It is not clear why Long feels that police officers should be treated any differently from any other citizens. For example, anyone who commits an act of violence in self-defence is liable to be treated as a criminal: arrested, questioned aggressively and adversarially, often ending up having to justify their actions in a court of law.

But Long was only put on trial after ten years of determined legal wrangling from Rodney’s family to try and get justice. If left to the IPCC unchallenged, it would be virtually impossible to get justice even when there is clear video evidence.

There is though, one matter on which Long is right. He stated:

the problem is the interpretation of the rules and the way in which officers are treated.

This is exactly the problem. Officers are not treated by the same standards that the rest of us have to live by. They are allowed to lie, obfuscate and manipulate their way out of accountability for their actions. And the IPCC is their lapdog, happy and ready to wag its tail and let them get on with it.

It shouldn’t take teams of dedicated campaigners, solicitors, and families of grieving relatives to hold the police to account – although we are lucky to have them. There needs to be a truly independent policing body which investigates complaints with rigour and takes meaningful action against officers who have transgressed.

If not, we will continue to live in a world where officers feel they are able to get away with spraying CS gas into the faces of protesters and, at the other end of the spectrum, killing people on our streets.

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Featured image via YouTube