Ex-police marksman who was cleared of murder calls for ‘better understanding’ of officers who use lethal force
Tony Long is a member of a small, exclusive club he’d rather not belong to.
He’s one of four police marksmen who have stood trial for murder after shooting dead a suspect.
The most recent was Martyn Blake who was cleared today of murdering Chris Kaba in south London in September 2022.
I asked Mr Long a question he has been asked many times: how does a firearms officer feel after killing someone?
“Me personally, a sort of emptiness,” he replied. “Feeling a sort of guilt, but not feeling guilty, if that makes sense.
“You know, for me and for all of us, really, I suppose, taking human life isn’t something you take casually, not unless you’re a psychopath. And I also felt anger.”
The former police marksman, now 67 and long-retired, has vivid memories of shooting dead Azelle Rodney, a suspected gang member who officers thought was on his way to commit an armed robbery in north London in 2005.
Azelle Rodney was shot dead in April 2005
Police stopped the car he was in and Mr Long shot him six times because he feared 24-year-old Rodney’s movements meant he was reaching for a gun.
“I had to sit at the scene for ages and I watched my colleagues trying to do first aid on the young man that I’d shot,” Mr Long said.
“And then eventually an ambulance arrived and said; ‘He’s gone’, which we knew, but we have to try. And they covered him up with a blanket.
“Of course, it’s a crime scene now, so I had to just sit there and look at this red blanket, and the more I looked, the more angry I got.”
Tony Long leaves the Old Bailey during his trial in 2015. Pic: PA
Mr Long had to wait 10 years to stand trial, subject first to a long investigation and a public inquiry which had concluded he wasn’t legally justified in opening fire.
In court, he was acquitted by the jury.
Since 1990, police in England and Wales have shot and killed 83 people.
Before Mr Long’s trial, an officer was tried and acquitted of murdering David Ewin in southwest London in 1995, a verdict delivered after two previous juries had failed to make a decision.
Another officer was tried and acquitted of murdering James Ashley in East Sussex in 1998. Four other Sussex officers were cleared on lesser charges.
In 2021, PC Benjamin Monk was jailed for eight years for manslaughter over the death of former Aston Villa footballer Dalian Atkinson, who was tasered multiple times and kicked in the head. The officer was cleared of murder.
A police officer was jailed for the manslaughter of Dalian Atkinson (pictured). Pic: PA
Mr Atkinson was involved in a stand-off with police after suffering a mental breakdown.
In a long career with the Metropolitan Police, Mr Long had been commended seven times. He had previously shot dead two other suspects but had faced no criminal or disciplinary action.
“It’s impossible to be a police officer for too long nowadays without having to get in a violent confrontation with people,” he said.
“We actually know the reality of real life conflict. But the people that are judging you they don’t understand that. And they go, well, you said this and now you’re saying this or your colleague doesn’t say that.”
Mr Long followed the trial of Blake over the death of Mr Kaba who was stopped while driving a car thought to have been linked with a shooting incident the night before.
The prosecution had accused Blake, in statements to police, of giving false or exaggerated accounts of what happened and his responses.
Chris Kaba was shot dead by a police officer in September 2022. Pic: Family handout/PA
Mr Long said: “You and I could be literally feet apart. We could be shoulder to shoulder, and I would see a need to shoot somebody. But you wouldn’t have seen it just because of, you know, a foot difference in angle and your recollection won’t be the same because when you’re in a high threat situation, there’s all sorts of chemicals released into the body that mess with your normal daily cognitive way of dealing with things and understanding things.
“If you’ve not been in that position and you’re judging purely on what you’ve seen on a body-worn camera in the comfort of (a) little studio and rewinding it, then playing it forward and then freeze framing it, you may think you understand what went on, and in real terms you might have a better understanding of what actually happened and the people that were there.”
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has called for more legal protection for officers who use lethal force, but it’s not clear to Mr Long how that would work.
He said: “We ask those police officers to look after us. And if we train them to use these varying degrees of force, ending up potentially with lethal force, then I think we should be, not cutting them some slack, but we should have a better understanding. And you can’t just automatically say, well, that police officer shot someone and then go, well, charged with murder.”
UK
Post Office scandal: At least 8 convictions may be linked to second IT system used by Post Office
At least eight convictions predating the Horizon Post Office scandal are being looked at by the body investigating potential miscarriages of justice, Sky News has learned.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has confirmed it is examining multiple cases of former sub-postmasters affected by Capture software.
The computer accounting system was used in the early 1990s, prior to Horizon being introduced to Post Office branches from 1999 onwards.
Horizon was at the centre of the Post Office scandal and saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of stealing from their branches.
The Kroll report, commissioned by the government earlier this year, found that Capture had bugs and glitches and there was a reasonable likelihood it had caused cash shortfalls too.
Lord Beamish, the former Labour MP Kevan Jones, has been supporting victims and is calling for the government to extend current legislation to automatically quash convictions.
The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act was passed in May but does not include Capture victims.
Lord Beamish told Sky News he has raised the issue with the Justice Secretary and called for a House of Lords debate.
“The government are going to have to take this seriously,” he said. “We can’t have a situation where we have a two-tier system where people get exonerated from Horizon and the Capture cases are either forgotten or have to go through a very lengthy legal process to get their names cleared.”
Chris claims his mother was wrongly jailed because of accounting problems with the Post Office software Capture
He added he had “little faith” in the CCRC’s “ability to deal with cases”, after multiple Horizon cases were referred to the body years ago.
“The problem with these cases is the lack of evidence… that has been destroyed or lost so actually proving some of these cases through that process will be very difficult.
“Therefore I think a blanket exoneration like we had with Horizon I think has got to be discussed and considered for these cases.”
The CCRC told Sky News it has five cases under review “in which the Capture IT system could be a factor”.
It also said it is “seeking further information” on eight cases referenced in the Kroll report.
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The CCRC added that the time taken for a case review to be completed was dependent on the “complexity” of each case “and how readily available information about it is”. In a statement, it admitted: “The availability of information can be a particular hurdle in older cases.”
Chris’s mother died earlier this year following a battle with Alzheimer’s and never got to clear her name
Chris Roberts’ mother, Liz Roberts, was convicted in 1999 of stealing £46,000 from the Post Office and spent 13 months behind bars.
Liz, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, passed away earlier this year.
Chris said she was jailed four days before he turned 17, and he used to have “nightmares” that she was “going to die in there”.
“There was no evidence of any financial gain because they went through everything. And obviously the money wasn’t in our accounts because it didn’t exist,” he added.
Despite being offered “three deals” by the Post Office to plead guilty, Liz refused and was sent to prison.
Liz Roberts during happier times before she was jailed for theft – her son insists she was innocent
Chris believes that the 2019 High Court win by Horizon victims was a missed opportunity for the Post Office to look back at Capture cases.
“It would have been worth something then because my mum would have died knowing that everybody else knew she was innocent,” he said.
“My dad would have died knowing that the love of his life wasn’t vilified as a criminal.”
Chris wants his mother exonerated and “those actively responsible” to “stand up in court… and justify themselves”.
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Sky’s Adele Robinson examines Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice
A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “We were horrified to learn about the issues with the Capture system and are working closely across government to thoroughly examine Kroll’s independent report and consider what action should be taken.
“We continue to listen to postmasters and others who have been sharing their views on the report’s findings since its publication last month.”
Official accounts have revealed for the first time how much the King’s 2023 coronation cost UK taxpayers.
According to the accounts, the government spent £72m on the coronation – the first in Britain since Queen Elizabeth II’s in 1953.
The figure includes £50.3m of costs attributed to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which coordinated the coronation, and £21.7m in costs for the Home Office for the policing of the event.
By comparison, Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and events during the period of national mourning cost the government an estimated £162m – £74m for the Home Office and £57m for the DCMS as well as costs to the devolved governments.
The figures come from the culture department’s recently released annual report and accounts.
The department said it had “successfully delivered on the central weekend of His Majesty King Charles III’s Coronation, enjoyed by many millions both in the UK and across the globe”.
People walk past a souvenir shop during the coronation. Pic: Reuters
It described the event as a “once-in-a-generation moment” which provided an occasion for the “entire country to come together in celebration”.
Both the King and Queen were crowned at Westminster Abbey in May last year, in a ceremony attended by dignitaries from around the world.
A star-studded concert at Windsor Castle, featuring Take That and stars such as Olly Murs, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie, took place the following night.
It had been described ahead of the event as being a “slimmed-down affair” – with the country still in the grips of the cost-of-living crisis – and accounts show an “underspend” related to the coronation of around £2.8m.
Olly Murs performing at the Coronation Concert. Pic: Reuters
Did coronation boost the economy?
Despite talk of a coronation boost, the UK’s economy actually contracted in the month of May 2023.
However, experts said that was mostly due to the cost of the additional public holiday for the event, which weighed on output.
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Each bank holiday costs the UK economy around £2.3bn, with the extra bank holiday for the late Queen’s funeral estimated to have cost around £2.4bn, according to government figures.
With the extra coronation bank holiday, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed negative growth of 0.1% during May 2023.
However, that was slightly better than economists had predicted ahead of the event.
Prior to the event, economic forecasters, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), had predicted a boost of £337m for the UK’s economy due to the coronation – including £104m in extra pub spending and an estimated £223m spend from tourism to the UK during the period.
Hotel revenue was also said to be up by 54% compared to the same point in the previous year, while bookings for UK-bound flights for the coronation weekend jumped by 149% within 24 hours of the day being announced, according to TravelPort.
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