Officer Blake's prosecution raises questions about support for firearms officers

Firearms officers are likely to be thinking hard about their future in the Metropolitan Police after Officer Martyn Blake's experience at the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service.

In a combination of underfunding and overwhelming disciplinary procedures, the decision to charge and name this firearms officer with murder has put the safety of firearms officers and the public in jeopardy.

I only know what has been reported about the circumstances of Blake firing the round that killed Chris Kaba, 24, after an armed police chase in south London in September 2022.

I wasn't there, but even if I had been, I wouldn't have known what Blake was seeing, hearing, or feeling. No one can.

I have met many UK firearms officers from different constabularies, including the Met. I was a guest speaker for the US Department of Homeland Security at the US Embassy in London in April 2022, and the Met's firearms offices were invited along.

It was five months before the incident involving Blake, but even then, the sentiments these officers were expressing was very much the same as those now compelling them to return to regular duties - or to leave the police altogether.

Their concerns were that they were immediately deemed guilty if involved in any incident and had to prove themselves innocent. They were not backed up by the leadership that put them out on the streets.

The length of any investigation caused overwhelming stress to themselves and their families as they waited to discover if they would be prosecuted.

In one case, a firearms officer was investigated for murder eight years after he had shot dead an armed robber.

Why put yourself and your family in such a difficult position for, on average, £10 extra a day? That won't even buy two lattes and a couple of sticky buns.

Of course, there must always be investigations into events that cause a death. Giving police officers the authority to use deadly force is something that must be governed and controlled.

The problem is that history is always written in the calm and comfort of the present day and always with an agenda beyond the facts of the incident.

I do sympathise with these firearms officers. During tours of Northern Ireland, I had experience with both the civil rules of engagement and limits of exploitation in the use of lethal force.

I was a teenage infantryman patrolling the streets and hedgerows, and as a 19-year-old, I killed someone.

Not for the last time in my army career, I was interviewed, and statements were taken before waiting for the announcement that the outcome was justified.

That contact (firefight) was a clear, rightful action. But sometimes, it can become more complicated, as it did when I later became a SAS 'strategic asset' fighting the darker, grimier side of the conflict, and then as an undercover operator, living the local life while trying to discover terrorist ASUs (active service units).

All these activities were governed by the police, as they were the law enforcement power in Northern Ireland, and of course, their rules of engagement came from the government.

There has also been official criticism of the Met's firearms officers from the House of Lords, and accusations of bullying, arrogance, racism and sexism.

I don't know if these are justified, but I do know that if someone is on your street attacking innocent people with a firearm or machete, you will want these officers on the scene at the speed of light, and you expect them to take action.

But what happens to firearms officers when faced with a life-or-death threat?

They arrive at a scene. People are about to be killed, the public is at risk, and something has to be done about it.

The fact is, anyone, male or female, can be trained to kill as an act of aggression, say as an infantry soldier. But a police officer, whose purpose in killing someone is to protect themself or others, has far more legal, social, and political considerations to deal with alongside their physiology, and that is not exactly helping them.

You might think there's enough problems for a firearms officer to be dealing with while confronting someone wielding a machete on a crowded street with just seconds to decide whether to take the shot or not.

But there is more. The multitude of restrictions, rules of engagement, and limits of exploitation in the use of lethal force they have to consider before they decide what action to take against what is in front of them.

Remember, this stuff is happening in seconds and split seconds: there is no time to think and have a mental debate. Not that that would happen anyway because the more recently evolved part of the brain, the part that makes us human, that gives us things like judgment, thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, emotions and learning, will have closed down.

Your body doesn't need that nice cuddly part of you when the chips are down, so why waste oxygenated blood on it? Let's get that blood to the old part of the brain, the basic, raw part all animals have that keeps them alive in the wild.

Within that first few seconds of this physiological reaction taking place - and not helping them at all - the firearms officer still has to make a decision about their deadly force encounter.

What weapon is best to protect and keep the public alive from their deadly force: carbine, handgun, or maybe their taser? Or is it too dangerous to the public if they use any of them, and some other form of brute force is called for to protect the public?

Then, if they have decided to use deadly force, the actual mechanics of shouting warnings, drawing down their weapon, and making sure their sight picture is clear and correct, all have to take place before the trigger is squeezed.

That's a lot to overcome before the weapon's rounds end the situation and, in turn, protect the public or the police officers.

But what if, because of the way firearms officers fear they may be treated, they end situations but do not protect the public?

Ever since that decision was made to prosecute Blake, firearms officers will have had that nagging doubt that the very people who pay them, train them and expect them to take life and death decisions do not have their back. This could cause a situation on the ground where the public isn't protected.

Just imagine you're the firearms officer who's been dispatched to a scene. A machete-wielding man is running about the streets, and he's homing in on a defenceless victim, a young woman frozen to the spot.

You have battled your physiology in order to assess the situation. You have a good, unobstructed sight-picture of the guy with the machete. He's running across the road towards the young woman, who is so petrified she can't hear you shouting for her to run.

You know why she can't hear you. You know why her body won't let her run: her physiology has put her into submissive mode. You know she's a static and easy target.

You have two kids. The youngest has just started school, so your partner can now return to the workforce to help with the escalating mortgage and utility bills. Life is looking good; maybe you can get finance on that new car.

The machete man is just a few strides now from his potential victim. And what you see, hear and feel is that he will kill the young woman if he isn't stopped.

You decide that deadly force must be used to protect her. You have just seconds. There is a lot to do.

You pull the butt of your Heckler & Kock into your shoulder while trying to control your breathing. Laboured chest movements could make the carbine move up and down in your shoulder and would affect your aim.

You try to shake the sweat from your forehead as it drips into your eyes. You need a clear sight picture of the target as he runs from your right to left. You are aiming on the leading left-hand edge of his centre of mass that is getting closer to the young woman, making a clean shot much harder.

As you push out what oxygen you have left in your lungs to prevent any more movement, you take off the safety catch with your right thumb. The end pad of your index finger is now inside the trigger guard and taking the first pressure on the trigger. All there is left to do is gently squeeze the second pressure to fire the round and hopefully keep the young woman alive.

The target raises the machete. He is three paces away from her. In less than two seconds, the long blade will make contact with the young woman's arms, cradling her bowed head as she submits to her fate.

But here's the thing: you are fully aware that if you take the shot before that blade has made contact, there'll probably be no backup from your leadership. The possibility of conviction could hang over you for years while an inquiry panel decides if the killing was lawful - and no one on that panel has ever been in this situation themselves.

So, do you take that second pressure and open fire? Because if you do, will it open up a process that will possibly affect you and your family for years.

Or do you maybe keep the sight picture and the first pressure on the trigger, but wait one more second until the blade hacks into the young woman's arms and neck? No one would ever know.

The target would be static, standing over the young woman as she fell to the ground - no reason to aim with a leading edge, and no problem of having to worry about her getting in the way of the sight picture.

The good news is that your leadership, the inquiry body, and the politicians will be happy to justify your actions and there will be handshakes all around.

Just bad luck on the young woman who now has life-changing injuries, that's all.

The burden of a close-up killing, even if the death was a justified one, can affect people in many different ways. You - our firearms officer - may feel guilt. That's normal with most close-up kills, even justified, along with denial and sometimes a loss of self-worth - all of which can affect an officer's well-being and that of their family.

Those feelings should be nipped in the bud, and that's a leadership responsibility: if they don't do it, they could lose a highly-trained member of their team regardless of the action they took that day after seeing, hearing, and feeling things that no one but the officer themselves would have a clue about because we didn't see hear or feel what the officer did at that very moment they squeezed the trigger.

• Andy McNab is a founder of weServed, a platform dedicated to empowering the UK's veteran community. Visit we-served.com for more information.