London Police Chief: Armed Cops To Wear Video Cameras

Credit: Arpingstone/wikimedia

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.

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