Mark Saunders | |
|---|---|
 Family photograph of Saunders | |
| Born | 1975 or 1976 Alderley Edge, Cheshire, England |
| Died | (aged 32) Markham Square, Chelsea, London |
| Cause of death | Gunshot |
| Occupation | Barrister |
Mark Saunders was a British barrister who was shot dead by police on 6 May 2008 after a five-hour siege at his home in Markham Square in Chelsea, London. Saunders was a successful divorce lawyer who struggled with depression and alcoholism. He had been behaving erratically and drinking heavily in the hours before the incident. Neighbours called the police after Saunders repeatedly fired a shotgun from a window shortly before 17:00 (BST, UTC+1). When armed police officers arrived, Saunders fired at their vehicle and the siege began. More armed officers arrived and took up positions in surrounding buildings and on the street. Saunders fired on two more occasions and the police returned fire, slightly wounding him. Around 20 minutes after the previous round of shooting, just after 21:30, Saunders waved the shotgun out of a window. As he lowered it in the direction of a group of police officers, seven officers fired eleven shots, of which at least five struck him. Police entered his flat minutes later and Saunders was taken to a waiting ambulance where he was pronounced dead.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated the shooting as a matter of course. During the investigation, the Saunders family applied for judicial review of the investigation, claiming that the practice of conferring between the police officers involved made it inadequate; the practice was found lawful and the case dismissed, though it prompted a review of the practice. An inquest held in September 2010 heard that Saunders repeatedly asked during the siege to speak with his wife and a friend (both of whom were at the scene) but that the police refused the requests. It also learnt that Saunders' shotgun was in the open position and not capable of being fired when the police recovered it. The police officers who fired testified that they acted out of fear for their lives and the lives of their colleagues, and felt that they had no choice. The jury returned a verdict of lawful killing, but found several flaws in the police handling of the incident, including the lack of consideration to allowing him to speak to his wife, confusion in the chain of command, and a failure to take account of Saunders' drunken state. The jury did not consider that any of these factors significantly contributed to the outcome of the incident. They could not decide whether Saunders had intentionally aimed his weapon to provoke a lethal response from the police ("suicide by cop").
Some journalists criticised the shooting, contrasting it with incidents where the police waited longer before resorting to force. Retired police officers and academics responded that the police had previously been criticised for not acting quickly enough, and observed that the police faced a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma. The shooting was one of two by the Metropolitan Police in 2008; in the other, deemed to be a "suicide by cop", a man pointed a replica firearm at police officers. In the same year, the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes—shot by police in a case of mistaken identity in 2005—was ending, resulting in renewed public interest in police shootings. In 2010, the Metropolitan Police created a unit of senior officers to manage similar incidents.