Have you noticed that whenever there is an armed siege these days the police quickly seal off the area, surround the site with at least 20 marksmen, send for the trained negotiators and, um …wait until the victim is good and dead before they venture in to have a peek at what’s going on?
I expect that’s probably a gross oversimplification ‘ and one which will have police commanders up and down the country in an apoplexy of rage. But it has the ring of truth about it, doesn’t it?
I have been haunted by the case of Lorraine Whiting. She was the woman who bled to death while on the phone to an emergency operator. Her estranged husband had shot her in the legs. He had always promised to maim her if she left him. After shooting her, he shot himself. Lorraine Whiting then spent more than an hour on the phone pleading for someone to come and take her to hospital. The operator kept her on the line saying, ‘Hold on, the ambulance is on its way.’ And then she died. The police didn’t storm the house because they wouldn’t risk being shot themselves. At the inquiry, Kent police said that they had no way of telling whether or not her husband was still alive ‘ she had told the operator about 25 times that he was dead lying by her side, but the police said he could have been pressuring her into saying that. That was in 1995, and there are signs that things are getting worse.
Take the example a few weeks ago of the poor woman from Hermitage, in Berkshire. At 7.10 in the evening the police received a very distressed call from her saying that her husband had a gun. At 7.45, neighbours reported hearing gunshots. But it wasn’t until 1.45
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