From Yesterday's Sunday Times

Police get 'licence to kill' without questions
David Leppard

GOVERNMENT lawyers have told police chiefs preparing to “shoot to kill” suspected suicide bombers that they are likely to escape criminal charges even if they kill an unarmed or innocent person.
The legal advice is contained in confidential legal papers prepared for the Metropolitan police Special Branch and chief constables.
[snip]

This weekend Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the human rights group, said that she had resigned from the review panel set up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which last week declared the guidelines “fit for purpose”. She said: “It was window dressing, the review was a sham.”

The leaked documents reveal that at the time of the shooting, Scotland Yard’s firearms officers and senior commanders were acting on advice from one of the government’s top lawyers: that they could mount a successful defence to murder or manslaughter charges even if they killed a person who was not carrying a bomb.

The police had been told that they did not have to prove that they had acted reasonably in shooting dead an unarmed person. All they had to show was that they “believed” they were acting reasonably, a much more liberal level of defence.

Critics say that the advice amounts to a licence to kill innocent or unarmed people. In Israel, by contrast, police have to demonstrate that a suspect is actually carrying a bomb before they are permitted to open fire.

And Ian Blair is secretly taping his conversations, whilst the cowardly Police spend their time harassing pensioners with Daily Mail views and arresting people for wearing anti-government T-shirts.

How the bloody hell did this happen?

Oh, of course, Tony Blair.