Charles de Menezes. Waldorf was a film editor shot and seriously injured by police officers in London after he was mistaken for an escaped criminal; he later sued the police and was awarded substantial damages. John Shorthouse was a five-year-old boy who was shot dead during an armed police raid on his parents' home in Birmingham. Stanley was shot dead by a police armed response team who mistook a table leg he was carrying for a firearm; after two inquests, a criminal investigation, and an independent inquiry it was eventually decided that the officers involved would not face criminal or disciplinary proceedings. Menezes was a Brazilian electrician who was wrongly identified as a fugitive terrorist involved in a failed suicide bombing the day before and was shot by counter-terrorism officers when he boarded a London Underground train. A 2005 article in The Independent, following the dropping of charges against the officers who shot Stanley, also drew comparisons with Ashley's case and listed it among 30 fatal police shootings in the preceding 12 years, none of which resulted in a successful prosecution of a police officer. Maurice Punch, an academic specialising in policing issues, described the ramifications of the Ashley case as "profound" in that an individual police officer was charged with murder for actions taken "in the course of his duty and under the command of superiors" and for Mrs Justice Rafferty's comments regarding upward accountability, a theme Punch compared to the shooting of three Provisional IRA members by the Special Air Service in Gibraltar in 1988 (Operation Flavius). Among Jones's first actions as the new chief constable was to strengthen Sussex Police's procedures for the deployment of armed officers. In January 2003, a PCA report considered 24 police shootings from 1998 to 2001, including Ashley's. Among its recommendations were that armed police officers also be equipped with non-lethal options, such as tasers, to reduce the chances of further shootings, a recommendation that was endorsed by Ashley's mother. The report also recommended stronger command and control of firearms operations. See also Police use of firearms in the United Kingdom List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United Kingdom Notes References Bibliography Citations 1958 births 1998 deaths 1998 in England 2008 in British law 2008 in case law 1990s in East Sussex 2000s trials Deaths by firearm in England Deaths by person in England Hastings House of Lords cases