This book arose directly from the resurfacing of the term ‘shoot to kill’ following the killing of an innocent man by the Metropolitan Police Service – colloquially referred to as the ‘Met’ – in London in 2005 at Stockwell Underground Station. My academic curiosity was aroused by that extraordinary event and the implications for British policing, but already before that affair I was interested in issues of operational and institutional accountability in policing. Recently, moreover, I began to pay attention to these crucial subjects in relation to the police use of firearms. This was for two main reasons.

First, I have often collaborated with police practitioners in my work and publications. In the age of smart cops the contribution of these ‘reflective practitioners’ brings valuable insights from insiders both about strategic and operational issues and especially about the predicament of the front-line officer at the delivery end of the most important government agency in society. We can, for instance, ruminate on firearms policy, but we must always consider the sometimes crude reality and acute dilemmas facing the officer confronting a gun, without a weapon or with a firearm. The latter carries the awesome responsibility of being able to take the life of a fellow citizen. The state has abolished the death penalty, but has delegated a form of ‘capital punishment’ to a law-enforcement officer low in the formal hierarchy.

My focus in this work draws, then, on the knowledge and experience of several reflective practitioners but especially that of Geoffrey Markham, who served in the Essex Police for over 40 years (1957–99). He became Assistant Chief Constable (ACC), was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) for 16 years and served on nine ACPO committees including the Joint Standing Committee on Police Use of Firearms. Geoffrey became an authority on firearms and contributed to The Manual of Guidance on the Police Use of Firearms (ACPO, 2001). He has handled major incidents during a period of rapid and significant change in British policing. During his training in 1957, for example, there was no attention paid to firearms: ‘They were only mentioned in relation to the law on weapons and licensing and also with regard to humane use against animals. But there was no thought given to weaponry at all, although there must have been an arsenal somewhere’ (interview, Markham).