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Police force fined £40,000 for shooting 'disaster'
Ben Bailey24.09.09
A police force was fined £40,000 today after one of its firearms instructors accidentally shot and nearly killed a former rifle marksman.
Pc David Micklethwaite, who had failed a gun training course, mistakenly loaded a powerful Magnum .44 revolver with a live round from an old Quality Street tin - a practice the judge branded a "disaster waiting to happen".
The 52-year-old then pulled the trigger while pointing it at a civilian colleague during one of his classroom tutorials. He was fined £8,000.
The bullet hit Keith Tilbury, 51, at Thames Valley constabulary headquarters in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and caused devastating injuries, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.
Mr Tilbury, a phone operator who used to shoot for Britain, underwent five hours of life-saving surgery for an "exploded" bowel and kidney, as well as lung and liver damage.
He was unconscious for 12 days and has not returned to work.
Both Thames Valley police and Micklethwaite, who were also ordered to pay £25,000 and £8,000 costs respectively, admitted breaching health and safety rules.
Sentencing, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said it was clear the police force failed to provide "basic firearms awareness training to ensure, so far as it was reasonably practicable, persons in their employment ... were not thereby exposed to risk.
"The major failings for this offence was the control in ammunition.
"It is vital for public confidence that the police should be seen to be safe with weapons at all times and the guns and firearms and ammunition must be carefully audited and monitored.
"Such a system was properly in place but there was an informal and parallel system used by instructors."
He said that involved using various makeshift containers such as the Quality Street tin to store rounds, something that had been going on for up to 10 years.
The tin, whose contents were not subject to inventory, was not marked in any way and contained a mixture of "inert, pulled and live rounds".
He continued: "The inherent danger in such a system is glaringly obvious. There was nothing to indicate this tin contained live ammunition and there was no certain way of knowing whether rounds were live or not."
The judge said the force was also guilty of "serious lapses" in the control and provision of the firearms training course to police staff.
"The firearms training manual specifically states every gun should be treated as loaded. No gun should be pointed at anyone unless you intend to shoot them.
"These rules, I would have assumed, would have been paramount and instinctive to firearms instructors.
"However, these rules were not adhered to as absolutely as they should have been. Different instructors interpreted the rules differently. That seems to me because there was no planned or specific risk assessment for the course."
Reader views (2)
This is frightening. Why was a police officer who had failed a gun training course being allowed to instruct other officers? This officer should not have been allowed near weapons, let alone arm them and instruct other officers in their use. Somebody´s head should roll here.
- Graham Rodhouse, Helmond, Netherlands
This incident, along with the poor firearms officer who was killed during a Manchester Police training exercise, is the worst case of wrecklessness I have ever heard of.
PC Micklethwaite should have been prosecuted for manslaughter at the very least - it is utterly shocking that a supposedly trained officer could load a magnum with LIVE round and then point and fire the gun at a person inside a building....
I am not a firearms officer but even I know that you don't even EVER point an unloaded firearm at someone. You always point in down towards the ground for safety reasons.
The token fines issued in this case are laughable - I feel so sorry for the poor victim here.
- Anon Pc, London, UK
