Threat to life guide launched by specialist law firm

A specialist firm of solicitors based in Leeds has published a practical guide for the police to assist in handling threats to life.
McKay Law Solicitors & Advocates, which also writes a weekly column for Police Professional, launched The Guide to Handling Threats to Life this month, a practical booklet on ensuring that when police receive reports that a threat to someone’s life has been made, they can identify the issues that need to be dealt with in accordance with the obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
There have been a number of high profile cases where individuals have been murdered where allegations are made that the police knew about the threat and should have done something about it. Last year, the House of Lords considered the legal position in the case of murdered optician Giles Van Colle. Their Lordships adopted the Strasbourg test set out in the well known case of Osman v United Kingdom. The House of Lords reversed earlier findings against Hertfordshire Constabulary that had awarded Mr Van Colle’s family damages for breaching Article 2 of the European Court of Human Rights.
The author of the guide, Simon McKay, has worked extensively in the arena of covert policing and witness protection for a number of years.
He said: “This guide is part of an ongoing programme we have of educating police officers and other public authority employees on the critical aspect of their work in this area. It has been written in a straightforward way with a lot of emphasis on practical solutions to the problems officers confront on a daily basis.”
The guide also comes with a key card, which officers can carry around with them and consult as required.
Mr McKay added: “The emphasis is on avoiding adding another layer of bureaucracy for police officers and building on their instinctive and commonsense policing. Our aim is to ensure that every police officer has access to some resource that will assist them in determining when a threat to life exists, and enable them to respond to it.”
The guide has already had a warm reception from police forces throughout the United Kingdom and one force has expressed an interest in providing every officer with a copy.
“I am delighted with the initial response,” said Mr McKay. “Policing doesn’t get much more difficult that when an officer has to make a decision to either act on or treat a threat to life as not being serious; we have tried to aid officers draw the distinction.”
The publication is not without controversy though. It encourages police officers to move away from terms such as ‘Osman Warnings’ and ‘Reverse Osman Warnings’ and replace them with terms like ‘protective security warning’ and ‘disruption notices’.
“The courts have expressed some concern about the use of ‘Osman’ in some of the documentation police officers use,” said Mr McKay, “so we have tried to meet the desire on the part of officers to use terminology, while ensuring this can be translated in a way that is more consistent with how the law stands.”