Britain’s top police officer will warn that there may not be enough armed officers to fight terrorists on London’s streets if they are not given more trust.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, who retires later this month as commissioner of the Metropolitan police, will use his last set-piece speech to make the plea.
The background to the speech is anger among armed officers at plans to toughen up the rules if they open fire and fears of being treated as suspects for years if they shoot in the line of duty.
Hogan-Howe says officers are being put off volunteering for firearms role because they dread spending years under investigation, or even being put on trial.
According to extracts of his speech to be made on Tuesday in central London, the commissioner will say the mood among armed officers represents a tangible risk. “This a dangerous place to be – in two ways,” he is expected to say. “We simply don’t have enough people now wanting to do these jobs. The failure rate in training is high.
“Secondly, we can’t afford to have officers think twice because they fear the consequences of shooting someone. That’s how they get shot, or the public gets hurt or a criminal gets away with a gun.”
The other implication of this is a direct impact on national security, according to the commissioner’s thinking. Police chiefs across Britain ordered the recruitment of extra armed officers after the November 2015 attacks on Paris by terrorist gunmen who killed 130 people. That toll, according to a brief received by British police leaders, was lessened because French police are routinely armed and could fill the streets with guns during the Islamic State attack.
Hogan-Howe ordered 600 more armed officers for London and in his speech on Tuesday will say that the force has recruited 400 extra and is on course to meet the target. Some will see in his speech the beginnings of an excuse in case that target is missed.
Police need a large pool of volunteers – roughly twice what is operationally required – willing to carry a gun because armed officers face tough training with a high failure rate, eventually those who have passed the course retire and some decide to switch back to unarmed duties.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is the usual target of the anger of firearms officers, who resent being treated – as they characterise it – as criminal suspects for opening fire in service of the public, rather than being treated as witnesses.
Hogan-Howe will say, before an audience at the Royal United Services’ Institute: “When people look at what we do, there should be less suspicion and more trust.”
After the Paris attacks, an armed officer was arrested by the IPCC after Jermaine Baker was shot dead near Wood Green crown court in London. Fourteen months later the officer’s case remains unresolved.
Hogan-Howe will refute claims of trigger-happy armed police officers by saying that in 2016 they were called out on 3,300 occasions without firing a shot. The Met took 700 firearms off the streets last year and 12 people were shot dead by criminals.
