Jermaine Baker’s mother says public trust has to be earned as Hogan-Howe warns officers are deterred from firearms role

Families of people shot dead by police criticised Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe’s warnings that officers are being put off volunteering to carry a gun because they fear being treated as suspects if they open fire.

Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, used his last set piece speech to urge greater support for armed officers, on a par with the public support offered to the military.

His comments came as police chiefs await a decision on whether an officer who shot dead Jermaine Baker in December 2015 will face charges. Some within policing fear any decision to charge would lead to some officers downing their weapons, in turn threatening urgent efforts to increase the number of armed officers to counter a Paris-style gun attack on Britain’s streets.

Margaret Smith, Baker’s mother, said: “I’m really upset about the commissioner’s comments. It sounds as if the commissioner wants one law for the public and another law for the police. While the officer involved in Jermaine’s killing has been on bail for 14 months we have been going through 14 months of hell and our hell is going to continue.”

The officer involved, known as W80, was arrested by the Independent Police Complaints Commission on suspicion of murder 14 months ago. His case has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The decision to arrest the officer, and the way it was announced before a heated public meeting, caused anger among armed officers.

Baker was sitting in a car with two other men suspected by police of planning to spring from custody a prisoner who was being brought to Wood Green crown court in north London. Five men, including the two in the car who survived the police shooting, were later convicted of an attempt to break a criminal out of a prison van. Baker was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car and was pronounced dead at the scene. A replica Uzi gun was found in the footwell of the back seat of the car.

Two cases were uppermost in the commissioner’s mind that led him to make the plea for support for firearms officers the key point of his last set piece speech.

One is the Baker case, the other is that of Azelle Rodney, suspected of being part of a gang on their way to stage a heist in London. In 2005 Rodney was shot by a police marksman who a decade later was put on trial and acquitted.

The prosecution came only after an inquiry found the killing to be unlawful and concluded that the account from the armed officer, Anthony Long, could not be true. The officer shot him six times in seconds with four bullets striking the suspect’s head.

Solicitor Daniel Machover, who represented Rodney’s family, said: “Bernard Hogan-Howe’s statement asking for ‘more trust’ in firearms officers is unwarranted and rings hollow at a time when numerous scandals have damaged public confidence in the police. Trust is not something that can be asked for. Both the police and the IPCC need to improve the way in which firearms incidents are handled immediately post-incident.”

One thing police involved in armed operations and the families who have loved ones agree on, is that the IPCC has to improve the quality and speed of its investigations.

Police cite the decade that Long spent in limbo as evidence of the high price they pay volunteering to carry a gun to protect the public.

But the main reason for the delay was the authorities saying intelligence related to the police operation could not be shared with lawyers for the family at any inquiry – and claiming that the intelligence used by law enforcement came from intercepts, whose disclosure to lawyers and the family would be unlawful.

Lethal police armed operations put police and community relations under a big strain. The 2011 shooting of Mark Duggan in north London triggered riots across the capital which spread throughout the UK and became the biggest riots in post-war English history.

In 2014 the commissioner’s tone, if not his thinking, appears to have been different about the scrutiny of armed operations. In an interview conducted when the Met feared the inquest into Duggan’s death would find police actions unlawful, Det Supt Mark Welton, then in charge of what police do after a shooting, told the Guardian that from the commissioner down there was a view that change was needed: “You can’t have a process the cops are confident in and the people of London are not. You are trying to defend something nobody else likes apart from yourself.

“These processes do not support the officers or make them appear truthful witnesses. I’m not surprised the family and the public don’t like it, as it is administered by the police.”

The interview was sanctioned by the Met with the officer speaking in his official capacity.