Azelle Rodney

On 30 April 2005, Azelle Rodney was a passenger in a VW Golf that was intercepted by Metropolitan Police in Edgware, North London, using a "hard stop" manoeuvre. Police believed the occupants were on their way to commit an armed robbery. During the stop, a specialist firearms officer identified as E7 (later revealed as Anthony Long) fired eight shots from a G36 carbine in just 1.1 seconds. Six of those shots hit Rodney, killing him instantly.

The inquiry, chaired by Sir Christopher Holland, was a devastating critique of both the individual officer's actions and the police's operational planning. Holland ruled that while the first few shots might have been justified if the officer genuinely believed Rodney was reaching for a weapon, the final four shots—which were fatal—were entirely disproportionate. He found that Rodney was not holding a weapon at the time and that E7’s account of seeing Rodney "duck and dive" to pick up a gun was "not to be accepted."

The report also highlighted that the police had "flawed intelligence" and could have arrested Rodney much earlier in the day in a far less volatile environment. This finding of unlawful killing led to the Crown Prosecution Service charging Anthony Long with murder in 2014. Although Long was ultimately acquitted by a jury in 2015, the inquiry's findings fundamentally changed how armed police operations are planned and overseen in the UK.