A former senior police officer in Britain, where officers are typically not armed, has disputed the common explanation from US law enforcement that they had “no choice” but to shoot dead civilians who had knives or were unarmed.
Lord Brian Paddick, an ex-deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan police who is now a politician in the House of Lords, took issue with arguments such as that used in recent days by James O’Connor, the police chief of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, who said his officers had to kill 36-year-old Kevin Allen when he reportedly charged at them with a utility knife in a public library on Friday.
Of the situation in Britain, Paddick told the Guardian: “If unarmed officers encounter someone who is armed with a knife who is threatening them, they would hold back and call for armed support. The armed officers would probably deploy Tasers in the circumstances rather than resorting to lethal force in the first instance.”
It would be common practice to call in officers trained in the use of riot shields, not guns, even if, as was reportedly the case with Allen, the individual was going berserk. “The fact that the British police are largely unarmed does not make that much difference [from the US situation] … It’s established practice for officers trained in using riot equipment to contain and subdue armed suspects [holding knives] using a plastic shield,” he said.
“There are alternatives to shooting someone armed with a knife,” he added.
“If someone’s life is in danger there is the option to use CS spray or batons. All officers are equipped with stab-proof vests. If someone has gone berserk and they are in possession of a knife, officers have a duty to try to contain them to make sure they do not escape, in which case they would try to use CS spray and batons,” he said.
“But if the circumstances would allow it, they would try to contain the individual and wait for properly equipped officers.”
The officers involved in the encounter with Allen on Friday used pepper spray and deployed their batons on Allen to no avail as he charged at them, according to Friday’s account at a press briefing by Lyndhurst police chief O’Connor.
Residents of the small town of 20,000 in northern New Jersey who spoke to the Guardian three days after the shooting were generally supportive of the action the police had taken, in what they said was a violent encounter out of character for Lyndhurst.
There have been no details supplied about whether there were Tasers available to the officers in the library or their colleagues based at the town police department, which is in the same building.
O’Connor said that on Friday his officers had “no choice” but to kill Allen.
“He brandished the knife,” he said of Allen, immediately after the officers had tried pepper spray and their batons to subdue him.
“Mr Allen still went after them aggressively and left them no choice but to deploy deadly force. There was nothing else they could have done,” said O’Connor.
But Paddick challenged that explanation in this and similar occasions of use of deadly force by police on suspects who are not armed with a knife, not a gun.
“There quite clearly is a choice. There are other tactics that can be used short of lethal force where people are armed with a knife,” he said.
Police in St Louis in April 2015 said they had no other option but to shoot dead a man with a knife.
A similar explanation was given in another police shooting last year, also in the St Louis area and involving a man with a knife.
