§ Mr. SheermanTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many police authorities currently have armed response units;
(2) how many non-fatal injuries have resulted from the deployment of armed response units in each police authority area in each of the past five years;
(3) how many members of armed response units have been killed or injured in each police authority area in each of the last five years;
(4) how many deaths have resulted from the deployment of armed response units in each police authority area in each of the past five years;
(5) how many people have been killed or injured by police marksmen in each of the last 10 years.
§ Mr. MacleanThe following information is available centrally. On 31 December 1993, 33 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales operated armed response vehicles. The number of people killed or injured as a result of shots fired by authorised police firearms officers, including armed response vehicle officers, in England and Wales between 1984 and 1993—figures for 1994 are riot yet available—was as follows:
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Killed Injured 1984 — 5 1985 2 2 1986 no deaths or injuries 1987 5 6 1988 — 3 1989 Metropolitan Police 2 — 1990 Metropolitan Police 3 — 1991 Cheshire 1 — Northumbria 1 1 West Mercia 1 — Metropolitan Police — 1 1992 Metropolitan Police 1 3 West Yorkshire 1 — Suffolk 1 — Durham — 1 Surrey — 1 Sussex — 1 South Yorkshire — 1
Killed Injured 1993 Kent — 1 Devon and Cornwall 1 — Metropolitan Police 2 1 The number of Metropolitan police armed response vehicle officers injured during the first three years the force operated these vehicles were one in 1991, none in 1992 and two in 1993. None was killed. Corresponding figures are not centrally available for the rest of England and Wales although statistics for notifiable offences in which a police officer on duty was injured by a firearm are set out in table 3A of the published criminal statistics for England and Wales 1993, Cmnd 2680.