Killing of James Ashley
James Ashley was a British man who, while unarmed and naked, was shot dead by police in his flat in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, on 15 January 1998. Armed officers raided the building on the suspicion that Ashley kept a firearm and a quantity of cocaine there, and to arrest him and another man in connection with a stabbing. Neither a firearm nor a significant quantity of drugs was found, the other man was not present, and it later emerged that Ashley was not implicated in the stabbing. Ashley, likely woken by the noise of the raid, was out of bed when an armed police officer entered his bedroom. On seeing the officer, Ashley raised one arm and the officer reacted by firing a single shot. Later that morning, Sussex Police chief constable Paul Whitehouse held a press conference in which he praised the conduct of the operation.
Two inquiries were held by other police forces under the auspices of the Police Complaints Authority, both of which strongly criticised the raid. The first found that the use of armed officers breached national guidelines, that the raid team had been inadequately trained, and that the officers in charge of it had received no training for their roles and had misrepresented intelligence to gain authorisation for the operation. The second inquiry accused Whitehouse, Deputy Chief Constable Mark Jordan, and Sussex's two assistant chief constables of colluding to obstruct the first. It suggested that Whitehouse knowingly gave false statements in his press conference, and recommended criminal charges against three of the four. The officer who shot Ashley was charged with murder in 2001 but acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. The officers who led the operation were charged with misconduct in public office and were also acquitted. No criminal charges were brought against the chief officers, but Jordan and Whitehouse both faced disciplinary proceedings. Jordan was suspended and allowed to retire in 2001. Whitehouse resigned in the same year under pressure from the Home Secretary, David Blunkett. His successor publicly apologised to Ashley's family in 2003.
Ashley's father and son sued the police for negligence and battery in Ashley v Chief Constable of Sussex Police. The police offered to settle all damages under the action for negligence and the other claims were struck out at the High Court, which the family appealed. The case reached the House of Lords, where the appeal was successful. The lords confirmed that the threshold for a plea of self-defence in a civil case was higher than in a criminal one and that it was for the litigants, not the judge, to decide which causes of action to pursue, even where no further damages were available.
Ashley's death has been compared to other mistaken police shootings in the United Kingdom, including those of Stephen Waldorf, John Shorthouse, Harry Stanley, and Jean Charles de Menezes. It was one of the cases considered in a 2003 report by the PCA which recommended stronger control of armed operations and equipping armed officers with less-lethal alternatives such as tasers.
Prelude
James "Jimmy" Ashley was a 39-year-old man from Liverpool living in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. Ashley and a group of friends occupied three of the six flats in a converted house in Western Road. He was suspected by Sussex Police of being involved in the distribution of heroin, and the police had heard rumours that he owned a gun. They placed the house under surveillance in October 1997, though the operation was wound up without producing any substantive evidence.On 7 January 1998, Ashley was present when Thomas "Tosh" McCrudden, a friend he had been drinking with, stabbed and seriously wounded another man in an argument outside a pub in Hastings town centre. Ashley's only involvement was to pull McCrudden away from the victim. In the following week, armed officers were deployed to pursue several leads but failed to apprehend McCrudden. Officers believed McCrudden was staying in the Western Road house and formulated a plan to raid it. Detectives obtained a search warrant based on a tip-off from an officer in the regional crime squad that a large quantity of cocaine had been delivered to the house, and the plan to use armed officers was authorised by the deputy chief constable, Mark Jordan, based on the rumour that Ashley had a firearm. The officers conducting the raid were briefed that McCrudden was dangerous and known to be in the flats and about the potential firearm. They were also told, incorrectly, that Ashley was wanted for shooting a man in Eastbourne and had a previous conviction for attempted murder. At the time, it was the largest firearms operation in Sussex Police's history, using 25 armed officers.
Shooting
On 15 January, at approximately 04:30, officers from Sussex Police executed a search warrant on the Western Road house. The operation had three stated objectives—the apprehension of McCrudden, the retrieval of the cocaine, and the seizure of the firearm. It used a technique known as "Bermuda", which was originally designed for hostage-rescue operations but had become standard in Sussex Police for rapid entry operations to secure evidence. The technique was known to be high-risk as it involved lone officers rapidly entering an assigned room before calling in backup if a threat was found, and had previously been criticised in the media, while other police forces had discontinued its use. Only four of the six occupants of the flats were the target of the raid, but the police did not have details of which occupants lived in which of the flats. The police also lacked plans for the building, which hampered the raid when they encountered a locked internal door. Once opened, the door blocked the entrance to Ashley's flat, further delaying the officers.Ashley had been naked in bed when his girlfriend woke him to investigate a noise, likely caused by police forcing doors in the building. As he moved towards the door of his darkened bedroom, he suddenly encountered one of the officers. Ashley raised his arm, to which the officer reacted by firing a single shot at a range of about. Ashley was hit in the armpit and the bullet travelled to his heart, killing him almost immediately. At the conclusion of the raid, no firearms or significant quantity of drugs was found. Three men in two other flats were arrested but McCrudden was not among them and none were wanted by the police; all three were later released without charge. On the day of the raid, Sussex Police's chief constable, Paul Whitehouse, held a press conference at which he announced that Ashley had been wanted for attempted murder. He praised the conduct of the operation, and claimed that the deployment of armed officers had been justified and necessary.
Inquiries
An inquiry was launched by neighbouring Kent Police under the supervision of the Police Complaints Authority, and led by Barbara Wilding, an assistant chief constable. Two police constables were suspended, along with three more senior officers—a superintendent and two inspectors. Two superintendents from other police forces, experts on police firearms policy, gave evidence to the Kent Police inquiry that the operation did not follow national guidelines for police use of firearms, and that the use of armed officers was not necessary to apprehend McCrudden as there was no evidence that he had access to firearms; further, if a firearm was believed to be in the flat, the preferable tactic would have been to arrest the suspects on the street rather than send police officers into the building. The investigation further found that the use of armed officers in earlier attempts to arrest McCrudden also breached national guidelines, in that senior officers improperly granted authority for the use of firearms, and that on several occasions armed officers self-deployed without authorisation at all.The inquiry revealed that neither the police officer in charge of the manhunt for McCrudden nor the intelligence commander on the operation were adequately trained for their roles and that they had been warned against the use of the "Bermuda" tactic by national experts because it presented too high a risk for the stated objectives, and that the police had failed to prepare for the operation by obtaining plans for the building and details of other occupants. It also emerged that the officers deployed on the raid had never trained as a group in the use of the tactic, and that Sherwood had never been trained in it individually. The Kent inquiry concluded that the basis for the raid was "not merely exaggerated, it was determinably false" and that the officers involved in its planning had "concocted" the evidence or planned to misrepresent it to justify the operation.
The PCA commissioned a second inquiry, convened in August 1998 and chaired by Sir John Hoddinott, chief constable of Hampshire Constabulary, to investigate the conduct of Sussex's chief officers, after Wilding's report accused them of obstructing her investigation. Hoddinott interviewed Whitehouse, Jordan, and Sussex's two assistant chief constables, Nigel Yeo and Maria Wallis, over allegations that they had misled the original inquiry by claiming that they could not recall key details and that they had misrepresented the intelligence that led to the raid. The Hoddinott inquiry suggested that the incident commander and intelligence commander both knew that neither McCrudden nor the cocaine were in the building, or that they at least exaggerated the strength of the intelligence, to bolster their case for authorisation to the deputy chief constable. In particular, the tip off from the regional crime squad was in fact in relation to a potential drugs shipment to an unrelated address, the belief that McCrudden was inside was exaggerated from a report of an unidentified man entering the building, and the report of a firearm was based on nothing more than rumour.
Hoddinott sharply criticised Whitehouse and the press conference he held on the day of the raid, in which, according to the report, Whitehouse "wilfully failed to tell the truth as he knew it; he did so without reasonable excuse or justification and what he published and said was misleading and therefore likely to injure the public interest". His report suggested there was "evidence of collusion between some or all of the chief officers" of Sussex Police to conceal what they already knew at the time of the press conference, and that "an arguable case of attempting to pervert the course of justice might be made out", though he concluded that a charge of misconduct in public office was more credible. Hoddinott also accused Jordan of malfeasance, discreditable conduct, and supporting Whitehouse's false statements, and Yeo, one of the assistant chief constables, of malfeasance.