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CPS considers charges over Chelsea siege
Justin Davenport and Robert Mendick29 May 2009
Police officers may face charges over the shooting of an armed barrister after a five-hour siege at his Chelsea home.
The police watchdog today recommended that the killing of Mark Saunders be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service “for consideration”.
The CPS could also bring health and safety charges against the Metropolitan Police.
Mr Saunders, 32, an Oxford graduate and high-flying divorce lawyer, died in a hail of police bullets at the £2.25million flat in Markham Square he shared with his barrister wife Elizabeth, 40.
Armed with his legally-owned shotgun, Mr Saunders, who had been drinking heavily, began shooting from his kitchen window in Chelsea on 6 May last year. The Independent Police Complaints Commission today announced it had finally completed its year-long investigation into the shooting.
The decision to refer the case to the CPS rather than send the report straight to a coroner will be a blow to Scotland Yard, already under scrutiny for the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 riots and following its conviction over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.
The IPCC phoned Mr Saunders's family with its decision this afternoon before releasing a public statement.
His parents Rosemary and Rodney and sister Charlotte have argued that he need not have died and that negotiations should have continued before he was fatally wounded. They insist Mr Saunders posed no danger to the public at the time he was finally killed.
The IPCC said today: “Commissioner Tom Davies decided that the case did meet the criteria for referral.”
Mr Saunders was the first person shot dead by Met officers since Mr de
Menezes was killed in July 2005 at Stockwell Tube station after being mistaken for a terrorist suspect.
Since the IPCC was established in 2004 there have been 19 fatal police shootings and the watchdog has carried out investigations into 16 of them.
Of these, five cases were passed to the CPS to decide if charges should be brought. Only in one did the CPS decide on action — the de Menezes criminal prosecution under health and safety laws, which ended with the Met being fined £175,000.
No individual officers have been arrested or prosecuted, although the Met now faces a series of IPCC probes into accusations of the use of excessive force at the G20 protests.
In a statement on Mr Saunders's death the Met said: “It is only right and proper in circumstances such as this that a thorough investigation is carried out. This review by the CPS is part of this process.
“Our thoughts are with Mr Saunders's family, and the officers involved.”
