London Police Chief: Armed Cops To Wear Video Cameras

Yesterday, a jury in the U.K. ruled that Mark
Duggan, a 29-year-old man who was shot and killed in London by
armed police officers in 2011,
was killed lawfully. Duggan was shot after fleeing a taxi he
was in which was stopped by police. Although Duggan did not have a
gun when he was shot, the BBC
reports that the jury “said it was more likely than not that Mr
Duggan had thrown a gun from the vehicle just before he was killed.
The weapon was found about 20ft (6m) away from the scene.”

Duggan’s killing prompted deadly riots across
London and other parts of England.

Today, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police
Service (which polices all of the
Greater London area except the
City of London) said that armed officers will wear cameras.

Perhaps the most notable incident of London’s police using
firearms since Duggan’s shooting was during the response to Lee
Rigby’s murder, when armed police shot and wounded Michael
Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, who had killed the soldier. Last
month, Adebolajo and Adebowale were
found guilty of murdering Rigby.

Video of that shooting below (from 1:24).

It’s good news that armed police that work in most of London
will be wearing cameras. Unfortunately, as former Reason
intern
Jess Remington noted in October last year, not very many police
departments in the U.S. (where police officers are armed) have
cameras on uniforms.