The murder of Harry Stanley (long)
Alexander Baron
Subject: Interesting Transcript: Re the Police Murder of Harry Stanley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_1343000/1343572.stm
Tuesday, 22 May, 2001, 21:11 GMT 22:11 UK
Frontline Scotland: The Shooting of Harry Stanley
This is the transcript of the Frontline Scotland programme
The Shooting of Harry Stanley broadcast on 22 May, 2001.
ROSS McWILLIAM: Harry Stanley was shot dead in a London
street by police officers. The Scottish grandfather was
mistaken for an Irishman carrying a shotgun. In fact, he was
carrying a newly mended coffee table leg. There have been no
charges against the policemen who killed him, and no
explanation or apology for his widow and three children.
IRENE STANLEY (Harry's wife): I was only like a wife, mother,
grandmother, and I didnae think that I was going to be doing
something like this campaigning. You know, it has, it's
changed my life completely.
JASON STANLEY (Harry's son): If I'm going to the pub,
drinking, I still expect him to be at the corner of the bar,
I still expect him to be here when I come into the house.
It's just somebody gone now.
ROSS: Irene, the night that Harry died, what do you remember
of that?
IRENE: I remember that I was in the kitchen with Kyle, my
grandson, and I heard two shots - bang bang - and I came
straight out my front door which was round there as I lived
round there, it's about 100 yards from here. I came out, my
neighbours and everybody was out in the street, and we seen
a police car at that end, and there was like yellow tape
straight across, and I came up to the barrier which was at
the bottom there to try and see who it was but I couldn't
see, and I didn't even know it was him, you know. And I was
speaking to all my neighbours, to children in the street
because everyone was out, but I didn't even know it was
Harry.
ROSS: Harry Bruce Stanley was born in Bellshill near Glasgow.
His first 19 years were spent in Scotland. But in the early
Seventies Harry moved to London in search of work. He got
married, had children, and grandchildren, and was living in
Hackney. The 46-year-old painter and decorator was also
recovering from a major cancer operation that had threatened
his life. On Thursday, September 22 1999, Harry's task for
the day was a bit of DIY - mending a table leg broken at a
party.
IRENE: The last time I see Harry was ten o'clock in the
morning. He was going to his brother's to get the coffee
table leg. And he just, he got ready, and he had porridge
and toast, he has his breakfast, and he says: 'I'll be back
later on in the evening to watch the football', and he said:
'I'll have stovies when I come back'. So he gave us a kiss,
Kyle a kiss, and off he went. I never seen him again, that
was the last time I seen Harry, and his stovies was still
in the microwave when I got told what happened to him. I
never seen him again and that was that. Just, it was like
an ordinary day, he said cheerio and that was it, he
kissed me, and then he kissed Kyle and off he went.
ROSS: It was an ordinary start to the day. A short stroll
to a neighbouring estate where his brother lived. It was
also the beginning of a bizarre sequence of events that
was to end with a table leg costing an innocent man his
life.
PETER STANLEY (Harry's brother): He came over in the
morning, it was about half ten, eleven o'clock. He asked
us if he could repair the coffee table leg. So we had a
cup of tea here, laughed, when all the brothers got the
tools out, repaired the table leg. He cut himself on the
thingamay with his stanley knife when he was taking the
glue off the leg. We were laughing about him being a
wimp cutting himself, a wee nick, with a great big
plaster on it. And repaired the coffee leg, had a couple
of cups of tea, and ended up leaving at half past two.
He wanted to go down for a game of pool and I didnae
feel up to it. He went down and had a game of pool,
phoned me up, he says there wasn't a lot of people in
the pub, nobody to play pool with, come down. I says:
'na, I just cannae be bothered'. That was the last I
talked to him.
ROSS: And when he left you what kind of mood was he in?
PETER: Oh he was happy, he was having a laugh and a
joke so he was, as happy as Larry.
ROSS: Harry set off home with the newly mended table
leg wrapped up in a plastic carrier bag. He decided to
break his journey at a local pub that wasn't one of
his usual haunts. Harry wanted a rest and a lemonade.
JASON: Well, what we believed happened is he walked
into the pub, and as a result he walked through the
door, he threw the table leg on the seat, walked up
to the bar, ordered a lemonade, and by the time he
had done that they believed he was an Irishman and he
had a sawn off shotgun. And by the time he left the
pub they took it upon themselves to discuss if it
was a shotgun or not. And one of them was so adamant
that it was that he made the phone call.
ROSS: Harry Stanley finished his soft drink and left
the pub completely unaware of the suspicion that he'd
aroused. He was still feeling the after-effects of a
cancer operation, and would have taken his time on
the short walk home along Victoria Park Road. He was
oblivious to the fact that he was now at the centre
of a major police alert.
Harry Stanley was almost home. He was looking forward
to his dinner and a quiet night in watching football
on television. He never made it. These were to be his
final steps.
Metropolitan Police officers in an armed response
vehicle pulled up here. Two officers, both carrying
hand guns, got out. They shouted to Harry Stanley:
"Stop, armed police". Still carrying his table leg in
a plastic carrier bag he turned. They shot him from
just fifteen feet.
JASON: By the time my old man got to that point the
armed response officers had just caught a glimpse of
him, jumped out their vehicle, and allegedly
confronted him before unloading two bullets, one which
resulted in the fatal shot to the head, and the other
one in the hand.
PETER: The helicopter had been up in the air for hours,
and I turned on Teletex to see what had happened, and
I saw somebody had been shot on Victoria Park Road. And
I never ever dreamed it was my young brother. I never
dreamed that.
IRENE: The door banged, it must have been about, I
think it was about five o'clock, and Charlie said: "It's
the police, they want to speak to you", I said: "If it's
about that shooting round there I don't know nothing", I
says: "because I never seen anything", and she said "No,
they want to speak to you". So I went all the way
upstairs, and there was a detective, and there was two
constables with hats on, and they took me in the sitting
room, and he says: "When did you last see your husband?",
and then I just . . .something . . . a feeling came over
me, that . . . I knew it was Harry=BFthen he said: "I'm
sorry to tell you that he's dead".
ROSS: Harry Stanley had died just a few yards from his own
front door. The police immediately descended on the area
in large numbers and a detailed investigation began
immediately. But his family were among the last to learn
that the victim of the police shooting was Harry.
IRENE: It took them 18 hours to tell me, and he had his
passport inside his pocket, he had his birth certificate
inside his pocket. And eh . . .the day before he'd been
at the Social Security, and that's how he had them inside
his pocket, and I mean, it only happened a hundred yards
from our front door, do you know I even heard the two
shots in here, but I didn't even know it was Harry. It
happened about quarter to eight, and he lay down there
till about three o'clock in the morning, and that evening
I think it had started raining, you know it was like
raining. He lay round there all that time, and they they
left all the blood there as well, you know. And friends
and all that were coming to say they were sorry, and you
about, they had seen it on TV and all that. And eh, the
blood and everything was round there, a neighbour had to
wash it all away, everybody was standing in it.
JASON: For me personally it was really tough. The press
was there, I I'd my old man's body wishing it weren't
him, hoping it weren't him, but it was. Trying to be
strong for everybody else. For me it was tough, just
like if anybody else's father dies it's . . no matter
what circumstances it's tough for you. But that just
seemed to be . . . I was under the spotlight and it
was really hard. And to know somebody had killed him
was unbearable.
ROSS: The grieving Stanley family struggled to cope with
the shock of Harry's death, but they were also angry.
Instead of getting an explanation and apology from the
Metropolitan Police they found themselves on the
receiving end of some unwelcome attention.
IRENE: I felt it was bad how we were treated as a family.
I felt if we had done something wrong - if we were guilty
and we hadn't done anything wrong, they had killed my
husband. It just went on for days and days, these police
being in the house and all that - it was as though they
took over my home.
JASON: I just described them as the Gestapo. We were
made to feel like we were the villains of the piece. We
were wrong. My old man was wrong for walking down the
street at that precise time. It was all brought on us
that it was our problem.
ROSS: And to add insult to injury the police appeared to
be hitting at a bizarre theory - Harry had wanted to get
himself shot dead.
PETER: They were questioning us going right back two
weeks before Harry was killed, trying to find out his
state of mind as if he was committing suicide, which
is a joke. It's a disgrace. I think that's what they're
trying to make out with the questions that they were
firing at us. Because they kept on saying: "What sort
of mood was he in, what sort of mood was he in", and
we kept on saying to them "He was happy, he was happy".
They were still coming back maybe twenty minutes later:
"What sort of mood was he in?"
ROSS: So did you get the feeling that as part of the
investigation they were trying to find out if your
brother was depressed?
PETER: Yes, yes.
ROSS: And saying that perhaps he wanted the police to
shoot him=BF.
PETER: . . . to shoot him, aye, that's the way things
were coming across. All the questions that they were
firing at us, definitely.
ROSS: How do you feel about that?
PETER: I felt diabolical.
ROSS: The whole remarkable chain of events was full of
unlikely scenarios. There were rumours the police were
worried about active IRA cells operating in London. But
ould a terrorist really go into a pub with a shotgun in
open view? Can a Glasgow accent be mistaken for an Irish
one? And just how easy is it to confuse a piece of wood
with a deadly weapon?
PETER: I can show you here on the coffee table. It's
near enough the exact same as his, the legs is. What
had happened was that this bit here had been broken
off, off this coffee table. So he's brought the leg on
this up, bored a couple of holes through it so it could
fit back on, and this is near enough the exact same
leg. And there's no way you can make that look like a
shotgun, no way whatsoever with all the different
thickness. Then he just stuck it in the blue bag when
we were finished.
ROSS: And that's about 12 inches long, and that's what
he put in the carrier bag to take home?
PETER: Yes, that was it.
ROSS: The police intelligence that had sparked off the
alert relied solely on the phone call from the pub, and
that claim that Harry - a Glaswegian - was Irish. Was
that an easy mistake for Londoners to make.
Testing Glasgow accent on London street
ROSS: Can you recognise that accent?
MALE: It's Scottish I suppose.
MALE: Ireland.
ROSS: You think that's an Irish accent?
MALE: I do, yeh.
MALE: Scotland.
ROSS: And you're quite sure of that?
MALE: Yes.
MALE: It's Scottish or Irish, one or the other anyway.
FEMALE: Scottish.
ROSS: Could it be Irish do you think?
FEMALE: No. No.
ROSS: Harry's death has outraged the community in
Hackney. A public meeting was arranged just two weeks
after the shooting. His eldest son, Jason, was invited
to speak, and the campaign to get justice for Harry
Stanley was born. It became part of a wider movement
already calling for an independent investigation into
deaths in custody at the hands of Met Police officers.
MALE: The fact that 250 people showed up at that meeting
indicated that the community locally was very, very angry
in the way in which Harry had met his death. I think
they're also very, very upset and disturbed by the way
in which Harry's family had been treated by the police.
And there was a need from then on that we set up a
campaign to support the family. A campaign run by the
family and friends of Harry Stanley, and the aims that
we have is that we would see an end to deaths in police
custody, that there is a need for an independent public
inquiry into those deaths in police custody, that armed
response units are taken off the streets of Hackney.
ROSS: Instead of a public inquiry the Stanley family got
a secret investigation supervised by the PCA - the Police
Complaints Authority. When an armed officer kills someone
in the line of duty another force is automatically called
in to investigate. In this case it was officers from
Surrey who reported to the PCA. It's a system that has
been heavily criticised.
DEBORAH COLES (Inquest): The shooting dead of an unarmed
man on the streets of London is clearly a matter of
desperate public concern. We, as an organisation that
works with families of people who die in custody, have
major concerns about the whole process of investigation
following such deaths. The fact that these deaths are
investigated by the police, so it's a system where the
police investigate the conduct of other police officers.
This government promised disclosure to families of
information during the course of police investigations.
The problem with the disclosure policy is that it's
voluntary. The police do not have to disclose
information to families. And what you see is in the
very, very controversial cases, such as the death of
Harry Stanley, families get little, if any, information
which clearly adds to the whole grief and distress that
they have.
JASON: I haven't got any faith in that sort of system.
You might as well . . . it's like me doing something
and my brother investigating me, I'm going to get off
with it. So for me looking at that situation I can't
see any outcome for us.
ROSS: The PCB's final report was passed on the Crown
Prosecution Service, but still the family were given
no details, only a few meaningless facts - the number
of witness statements, and the number of man hours
spent on the investigation. And then fourteen months
after Harry's death a letter from the CPS to the
family Solicitor brought the news the Stanley's had
been dreading - the officers who shot and killed him
would not face prosecution. It's not surprising that
a few prosecutions against police officers involved
in shootings are brought, and there have never been
any convictions.
NOGAH OFER (Solicitor): I certainly couldn't blame the
Stanley family for feeling that maybe the death of
their father would have been dealt with differently if
the people who had shot him were not police officers,
and that they're bound to feel, partly because of the
vale of secrecy surrounding the investigation, partly
of how long it's taken, and that after this very, very
long investigation the decision that has been made
doesn't seem to make sense. They're bound to feel that
perhaps these officers are being treated differently to
other ordinary members of the public.
ROSS: But the letter from the CPS contained some
startling admissions including the fact the police
officers who shot Harry Stanley may have lied during
their account of what happened that night.
NOGAH OFER: Even after the CPS decision was made the
family still don't know what the officers have said
about what happened, what eye witnesses have said about
what happened, and they have been told that there is
reason to think that the officers may have lied about
certain aspects that they've put forward, but the
family haven't been told what those things are, why
there's reason to think they may have lied. So
although there is an attempt on the fact of it to
keep the family updated, it's just superficial
procedural things and not actually the substance of
hat happened.
ROSS: It was yet another setback for a family who had
spent over a year trying to come to terms with Harry's
death.
IRENE: Jason, he's 28, he's the eldest one, he done a
lot with me when it happened, Jason, he took a lot off
my shoulders and all that, and dealt with a lot. And
he's . . .he's keep quite a lot in, he don't show his
feelings. And Charnel's like Jason and that, but they
can speak about Harry and that. And then there's the
middle son, Jamie. He doesn't even want to talk about
Harry. He goes upstairs to his bedroom and all that.
But it has changed our lives completely. One minute
he's here, then he's gone.
I get very angry. I get very angry. I mean he had
colon cancer before this happened to him and that.
But, I mean I could have handled the cancer and dealt
with that, there was things I wanted to say and all
that. But the way it happened was he got taken away
and I didn't have a chance to say goodbye.
I haven't sorted my life out, it just seems to be
campaigning, campaigning. That's what I'm doing all
the time. My life is campaigning.
ROSS: The legal and moral pressure finally forced
the CPS to look again at its decision not to prosecute.
The Stanley's' Solicitor thinks there is enough evidence
to convict the officers of manslaughter as a result of
gross negligence.
NOGAH OFER: Well certainly one of the things that
officers can do is carry out some surveillance to see
what a person is doing. From what we know that didn't
happen, it was only really a matter of a couple of
minutes at most, if not a lot less than that they
observed Harry. Secondly, officers can take cover and
take care in the way that they approach someone who
might potentially be armed, and to be standing in
the middle of the road and call out to someone who
you believe to be armed suddenly creates a dangerous
situation which didn't exist before seems that they
may well have created that danger completely unnecessarily.
ROSS: If the officers had taken cover they may have
felt more protected, and not fired on an unarmed man,
and could they have observed Harry Stanley for longer?
These and other crucial questions remain unanswered.
The officers who shot and killed Harry Stanley belong
to London's police force - the Metropolitan. We asked
them to comment on the case, their fire arms policy,
and the investigation into the shooting - they said no.
The Police Complaints Authority supervised the
investigation into Harry Stanley's death. That
investigation is now complete, but when we asked them
to comment on the case - they refused.
The Crown Prosecution Service decides if there are to
be any charges brought against the police officers who
killed Harry Stanley. Again - no comment.
Even the Association of Chief Police Officers refused
to talk to us. ACPO is responsible for issuing guidelines
on the use of fire arms. We asked for an interview about
its general policy, but the Association said it was
unwilling to take part in any programme that was looking
into the shooting of Harry Stanley.
We do know Harry Stanley was shot twice in the head and
hand by police pistols. Hand guns are used by officers
who feel they're under an immediate threat. There's
strict training to guidelines to be followed by any
officer registered to use a fire arm. The police units
in the armed response vehicles are considered to be the
elite. The stress as they approach an incident is
incredible. Officers will tell you their heart rate
increases dramatically, and they develop super senses,
everything focusing on the target. A split second
hesitation can lead to an officer paying with his life.
But each incident could be assessed on its own merits.
MALE: The pistols carried=BFwhen I say pistol, it could
be a revolver or a self-loading, or what one calls
semi-automatic pistol offers immediate protection for
the police officers and to the public. If there's a
time to obtain a carbine there's very little different
except that they're far more accurate in the sense that
you have more time, you can aim at the subject, and you
are pretty sure where you're going to hit him you will
hit him. Whereas with a hand gun it's much more difficult
contrary to public knowledge to his somebody even though
they might only be five or six feet away from you.
ROSS: Most of us will never get caught up in an armed
incident. But Harry Stanley's death shows that if you
do it can have dreadful consequences. Armed police are
becoming an increasingly common sight are airports and
on the streets of Britain's main towns and cities. Last
year armed officers from Strathclyde Police were called
out on 277 occasions. In London the Met deployed armed
response vehicles 1,440 times, a tenfold increase on
1991, the year they were first introduced. Their
presence is meant to protect the public. They can also
pose a threat.
MALE: The public ought to be aware that officers arrive
at the scene and they're given instructions by armed
officers to stand still, don't move, freeze, or to move
in any direction, carry out any instruction, whatever
their feelings on the subject are they should do it in
order to prevent accidents occurring whereby an officers
thinks that a member of the public is going to something,
particularly where somebody is innocent, because innocent
people are more inclined to do things without thinking,
when somebody starts shouting you tend to look round=BF I
do think as a consideration the public should be made
more aware what to do when armed police issue orders.
ROSS: Eighteen months on is it still very hard to accept
that he died that way?
PETER: Oh yeh. Yes. Because I walked along there myself
a couple of times. And it still hurts, it still hurts.
You're thinking=BFyou walk along there, the road, and what's
going through your brain is him walking the same route,
and nearly thirty yards from his door, feet=BF.just
unbelievable. And it does . . it will always hurt. Even
if we got justice it would still hurt.
IRENE: He was 16 and I was 16.
ROSS: What was your first impression of him?
IRENE: Bright red hair. He had bright red hair, and he
used to wear black sunglasses and a long coat. That shop's
not there now. There's the Barrowland, we used to go
there on a Friday night. That's looking quite old.
ROSS: Irene has decided to bring the campaign for justice
to Scotland, Harry's birth place. It also gives her a
chance to visit his family and see for the first time
the memorial they've placed in the local cemetery.
ROSS: Do moments like this make it seem very real?
IRENE: It's moments like this it does, it makes it real,
when you see his name in memory, you see when he was
killed. That's . . .that brings it all back, and it's
there, you know what I mean. It's just so sad.
I feel as if a part of me is gone, and I feel lonely,
you know what I mean=BFI don't know, I just wish that
he was here to share in it, but unfortunately it's not
like that at all and he's gone, and I'll just need to
try and get on with it. I just keep thinking and that's
what's keeping me going I think.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
--
ITMA
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Embassy/2634/ITMA.html
Murder in the 1st degree
http://www.geocities.com/satpalramisguilty/
Paul Burridge
<A_B...@abaron.demon.co.uk> opined thusly:
>
>Subject: Interesting Transcript: Re the Police Murder of Harry Stanley
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_1343000/1343572.stm
>
>Tuesday, 22 May, 2001, 21:11 GMT 22:11 UK
>Frontline Scotland: The Shooting of Harry Stanley
>
>
>This is the transcript of the Frontline Scotland programme
>The Shooting of Harry Stanley broadcast on 22 May, 2001.
>ROSS McWILLIAM: Harry Stanley was shot dead in a London
>street by police officers. The Scottish grandfather was
>mistaken for an Irishman carrying a shotgun. In fact, he was
>carrying a newly mended coffee table leg. There have been no
>charges against the policemen who killed him, and no
>explanation or apology for his widow and three children.
[snip]
Typical.
>:-<
--
mea caligine tutus