At 2.30 in the afternoon on September 22, 1999, Harry Stanley left the Alexandra pub in Hackney, east London, with a blue plastic bag containing a table leg that had been repaired by his brother. Unbeknown to Stanley, someone in the pub had called the police to report ‘an Irishman with a gun wrapped in a bag’ and minutes later, 100 yards from his home, two armed officers arrived. They challenged the 46-year-old (who was in fact Scottish) before firing two shots. He died instantly.
Five years later, a jury at the second inquest to be held into Stanley’s death returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ and the officers involved, Inspector Neil Sharman and PC Kevin Fagan, were suspended from duty. The decision, by Scotland Yard, sparked outrage among their colleagues and around 100 of them withdrew from armed duties in protest.
The sense of anger which was felt then, by members of the Metropolitan Police’s specialist firearms command, is present again now, following the death of Chris Kaba earlier this month.
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