Anthony Grainger death

On 3 March 2012, Anthony Grainger was shot in the chest by a firearms officer (known as Q9) during a "hard stop" operation in a car park in Culcheth, Cheshire. At the time, Grainger was sitting in a stolen Audi with two other men; he was unarmed, and no weapons were found in the vehicle. The police were acting on intelligence that suggested the group was planning an armed robbery.

Judge Teague’s report was an unsparing indictment of the GMP's firearms unit. He found that the operation (Operation Shire) was based on "seriously flawed" and exaggerated intelligence. Commanders had inaccurately briefed firearms officers, leading them to believe Grainger was a much more dangerous individual than evidence supported. The judge concluded that while the officer who fired the shot (Q9) held an "honestly held belief" that Grainger was reaching for a weapon, that belief was a "catastrophic but genuine mistake" caused by the ineptitude of his superiors.

The inquiry also exposed a culture of "complacency" and "arrogant disdain" within the GMP's specialist units. It revealed that command logs had been completed after the event rather than contemporaneously, and that senior officers had provided "misleading" evidence to the inquiry. Furthermore, the report criticised the use of an unauthorised CS gas munition during the stop, describing it as "entirely unsuitable." The findings were so severe that the inquiry essentially ruled the killing to be a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life).