Unnamed officer NX121 was last week charged with murder for having shot Chris Kaba, 24, last year through the windscreen of an Audi in Streatham Hill, south London.
According to the Metropolitan Police, a “number of officers have taken the decision to step back from armed duties” in recent days as a result of the ruling.
Just over 6,000 officers are certified to wield a firearm in Britain, down from around 7,000 a decade ago. Just three people were fatally shot by forces last year.
This tally is broadly consistent with previous years, but shootings make up only a fraction of all deaths at the hands of police, according to data compiled by charity INQUEST. Many more occur during custody – where the person arrested is taken ill or dies from apparent suicide – or as a result of a road traffic collision during pursuit.
In fact, when compared to peer countries around the world, the proportion of police interventions ending in a killing is very low.
The death of Mr Kaba – who was shot in the head on September 5, 2022, despite being unarmed – stoked significant backlash against perceived excessive uses of police force.
Weighing-in on X over the weekend, Home Secretary Suella Braverman highlighted that armed officers often have to make “split-second decisions under extraordinary pressures.”
In total, since 1990, 80 people have been fatally shot by police – an average of 2.5 per year.
Alongside Mr Kaba, 35-year-old Marius Ciolac died last October after being shot in Derby, as did 40-year-old Sergii Kuzmenko in Carlisle in December.
From an international perspective, the number of people fatally shot by police in Britain per year is low – likely due to the fact that only around four percent of officers routinely carry a firearm.
In France last year, a record 13 unarmed people were shot dead by police according to French online outlet Basta Media. Including other uses of lethal force, this figure rises to 39, down from a record high of 52 in 2021.
In Germany, the magazine Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP has also been keeping tabs on deaths by police shootings. It found 11 instances last year.
In the US, there were 1,097 fatal shootings by law enforcement officers in 2022, a steady increase from 983 five years earlier.
Police routinely carry guns in these countries – which is not the case in New Zealand, where the law stipulates they be stored in a locked compartment in police vehicles. According to analysis by public broadcaster RNZ, officers there still fatally shot people at ten times the rate of Britain since 1990.
Over the 12 months to March 2023, there were a further 23 deaths in or following police custory, up from 11 the previous year and the highest figure since 2018. This includes four who were identified as ill at the scene of arrest and eight who fell ill in a cell and later died in hospital.
There have been 1,178 deaths in custody since 1990. Accidents in pursuit are typically the second-most common cause of death in a given year, claiming 13 lives last year and seven so far in 2023.
There have also been 155 fatal Road Traffic Incidents (RTIs) involving bystanders since 1990. Most recently, 81-year-old Helen Holland died as a result of being struck by a police motorbike escorting Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh after the Coronation.
The resulting drawdown of armed officers in the Met to even lower levels has prompted the Army to step in and provide Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA), assisting the capital’s constabulary only with tasks they were unable to perform otherwise.
