Should we bring back the death penalty for police killers?

In October 1997, PC Nina Mackay was stabbed to death in a raid in Stratford, east London, by paranoid schizophrenic Magdi Elgizouli. Elgizouli, 32, was detained indefinitely after being found guilty of manslaughter.

In April 1984, 25-year-old WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead outside the Libyan Embassy in London while controlling a crowd of demonstrators.

Her killer has never been brought to justice and film director Michael Winner founded the Police Memorial Trust as a result of her murder.

More than 160 police officers have been killed since 1900 while on duty. Their names are recorded on the National Police Memorial Roll of Honour in central London.

Among them is North Yorkshire special constable Glenn Goodman, who was shot on the A64 near Tadcaster by the IRA's Paul 'Mad Dog' Magee in 1992. Magee was convicted of murder and given a life sentence, but was released by the Government in 2000 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Other North Yorkshire policemen to have lost their lives in the line of duty are PC David Haigh and Sgt David Winter, both victims of gunman Barry Prudom. PC Haigh, from Harrogate, was killed at Norwood Edge, near Beckwithshaw on June 17 1982, Sgt Winter a few days later in Malton. Prudom, who also murdered civilian Geoge Luckett, eventually shot himself after being cornered by police in his hideaway at Malton Tennis Club.

Among the most famous cases of policemen who gave their lives for their duty is PC Keith Blakelock, a 40-year-old father of three, who was set on by a mob and hacked to death with a machete during the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985.

Others include PC Ian Broadhurst, 34, who was murdered by David Bieber on Boxing Day 2003. Like PC Sharon Beshenivsky, he was a member of West Yorkshire Police. Bieber also shot two of PC Broadhurst's colleagues after he was pulled over in Leeds. The American bodybuilder, who was wanted by the FBI for ordering two killings in Florida, was later jailed for life.

Detective Constable Stephen Oake died during a raid on a flat in Crumpsall, Manchester, in January 2003. Kamel Bourgass stabbed the Special Branch officer as he tried to escape. The Algerian was sentenced to life for murder.

Should we bring back the death penalty for police killers?

Yes, says Kenneth Bowker, retired policeman and Huntington parish councillor

I SERVED with the Metropolitan Police for 28 years, mainly in the Wembley area, and before that was a police cadet in York for a couple of years.

I went down to join the Met in 1957, and not long after that the death penalty for murdering police officers and prison warders was revoked.

For a while it did make us feel very vulnerable. We were all walking the beat in those days, and especially around the back of Wembley Stadium there were some large estates, some big factories. You could come across people with knives, flick-knives, other weapons, and the death penalty being revoked did have a kind of psychological effect on us for a while. When it was there, you always felt there was a deterrent, something that would make these people think twice about using a weapon on you.

I'm not saying that if there had been a death penalty in place for killing a police officer PC Sharon Beshenivsky would not have been murdered. You can't put yourself into the criminal's mind. But they obviously set out armed, with the intention of using those weapons if they were caught, and I think they would certainly have thought twice if they had known they might have been subject to the death penalty.

I do agree that probably there should be no special case made in the case of a police officer being murdered. A police officer is normally the first person on the scene to respond to a violent incident, but I don't think a police officer's life is intrinsically more valuable than that of anyone else.

So I would be in favour of the death penalty for a police officer, a prison warder, a householder defending their property, or anyone else violently murdered.

With modern advances in the use of DNA and other forensic evidence, it is highly unlikely these days that there is a real risk of a miscarriage of justice. And while I'm not saying that if we brought in the death penalty, nobody would ever be murdered again, it would certainly reduce the vulnerability of a lot of people.

At the moment there is no deterrent whatsoever.

When it comes to the question of police being armed, I don't think a high percentage of police officers want to carry weapons.

There should be proper back-up available, a method whereby properly trained firearms officers can be called to the scene more quickly. But the danger of arming the policeman on the beat is that it would drive a wedge between the officer and the community.

If you go abroad, to Spain for instance, the Spanish police walk around with firearms. To be effective, a policeman has to be at the heart of the community.

What chance is there of a member of the public taking their friendly neighbourhood policeman into their confidence if he is carrying a gun?

Some people have questioned whether women police officers should have been asked to respond to the kind of incident at which PC Beshenivsky was killed. My view is that a woman joins the force as a peace officer in the same way that a man does.

In the modern age, a female police officer can and should do all that a male police officer does, and I am sure no woman police officer would want it to be any different.

No, says Sgt Mark Botham, chairman of the North Yorkshire Police Federation

THE death of Bradford police constable Sharon Beshenivsky was tragic, an appalling waste of the life of a young woman and mother.

It has led some, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Lord Stevens among them, to call for the restoration of the death penalty for those who kill police officers.

The police federation nationally has always been in favour of the death penalty for certain capital crimes. But I personally have always been against it, and remain against it.

Even with safeguards, mistakes are always going to be made - look at Timothy Evans, who was hanged in 1950 for the murder of his wife and child, and later posthumously pardoned.

And look at the way our attitudes, and our understanding of mental illness and psychological conditions, both change.

In the First World War, young men who refused to go back to the trenches because of what they had experienced were executed. We now understand they were suffering from shell shock, but that condition wasn't recognised then.

Who is to say that the Mark Botham who might be executed for murder if the death penalty were to be brought back would not, 20 years later, be found to have been suffering from some illness we don't at the moment know about?

For these reasons, I am against the death penalty. And I am particularly against Lord Stevens' call for the death penalty to be reinstated specifically for those who kill police officers.

How do you differentiate between what one life - that of a police officer - is worth and what another life is worth? By what kind of value judgement is my life as a police officer worth more than someone else's life?

I know there is the argument about the police being employed in the protection of the public. But that still doesn't make my life worth more than that of Sarah Payne, or Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, or Victoria Climbie.

All of those deaths were absolutely appalling, absolutely tragic: so do we also bring back the death penalty for child killers? I personally find it repulsive when someone kills a frail old age pensioner. Do we bring back the death penalty for that, too? Where do you draw the line?

There would be all kinds of problems associated with restoring the death penalty for killing a police officer.

Would it only apply to a police officer killed on duty? Would it include a Police Community Support Officer? Would the death penalty only apply when a police officer in uniform was killed, or would it also apply in the case of a plainclothes officer? And what about civilian investigators, who are employed on police business?

I'm also against the idea of routinely arming police officers so they can defend ourselves. We have just equipped officers with Tasers, which are a less lethal option, but I think equipping officers with guns could lead to an escalation of violence, as criminals arm themselves because they know police will be armed.

I don't in any way want to trivialise the death of PC Beshenivsky, who was killed doing her duty. I think that, yes, we are a more violent society than in the past.

But it is worth remembering that in North Yorkshire, we have not had an officer killed for 13 years, since PC Glenn Goodman. Whenever it happens it is tragic. But I do not think having armed police on the streets is something that any of us wants to see.

Updated: 10:38 Tuesday, November 22, 2005