Wouldn't it be wonderful if American cops didn't carry guns like the British cops? Original Article Police shooting stuns British, raises anxiety Alan Cowell New York Times Jul. 23, 2005 12:00 AM LONDON - It was around 10 a.m. on a sunny, summery Friday morning when London crossed a once-unthinkable line in its unfolding war on terror. In a city where most policemen do not carry guns, the shock from the shooting death of a man in a subway car was palpable. It raised questions about police firearms practices, kindled uncertainty among Muslims and deepened the anxiety of a city that looks, these days, under siege. The police said they had trailed a man, described as South Asian in appearance, from a house in Stockwell that they had under surveillance. He was clad in bulky clothes on a warm summer's day, witnesses said. He vaulted over a turnstile and dashed onto a train, with plainclothes police officers right behind him. The police said the man did not obey orders to stop, so the officers shouted at the passengers to get down and take cover. The man stumbled onto a train, and a passenger, Mark Whitby, told the BBC: "I looked at his face. He looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified, and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him." The officers "couldn't have been any more than 2 or 3 feet behind him at this time," Whitby said, "and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor, and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand." The officer with the gun "held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him," Whitby said. The gunshots reverberated much further than the grimy confines of Stockwell station in a hardscrabble neighborhood of south London. It was the first such shooting in memory. Between 1997 and September 2004, police opened fire on 20 occasions, killing seven people and wounding 11, according to the Metropolitan Police. The statistics do not specify where the shootings took place. Although most London police officers are unarmed, since 9/11 Londoners have grown used to seeing special armed units, who have been given anti-terrorism training. Police rules require officers to give warning if they intend to open fire and to "ensure that their responses are proportionate and appropriate in the circumstances and consistent with the legitimate objective to be achieved." Police officers are supposed to aim for immobilizing body shots, but TV reports said Friday that shoot-to-kill shots had been authorized to prevent suicide bombings. Even as Londoners absorbed the news of the shooting, a debate unfolded whether it was justified. Although no information was available about the man's identity or ethnicity, many Muslims feared that Britons were blaming them. "The police may have a good reason to shoot this man dead, but they have to explain why," said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. People milled through the streets and pubs of Stockwell on Friday night, trying to sort through confused, sometimes contradictory, emotions. "I think it's disgusting that they had to shoot him," said Carol Marriner, a 41-year-old homemaker. "He could just have been late going to work." But then, said Lois Cowley, a 17-year-old student: "One of my friends was on that tube, and, to be honest, I'd rather this guy got shot than him blow up my friends. Death is too good for him. The police did what they had to."