The ongoing controversy over the shooting of a Brazilian man in July this year brings back memories of a famous case nine years ago when PC Patrick Hodgson shot dead David Ewin.
Later and to the amazement of seasoned campaigners involved in the struggle for police accountability Hodgson was actually charged with murder.
Hodgson’s trial started on December 2nd 1996. What follows is a series of articles taken from the magazine of the Colin Roach Centre in Hackney at the time. Alterations have been kept to a minimum.
The slaughter of children at Dunblane School by Thomas Hamilton has fuelled a nationwide campaign to have handguns banned. There are also calls for the banning of knives, with the Labour Party trying to outgun the Tories on the “law and order” ticket. A climate has been created by the politicians and mass media that the greatest threat to people’s lives is crime, or rather the fear of it and not unemployment, low wages, lack of decent accommodation or a run-down National Health Service.
At the same time as the restrictions on guns and knives gathers momentum, the State itself is continuing to dramatically increase its own access to military equipment and hardware. The police now have access to CS gas (which killed Ibrahima Sey in Newham in April 1996), the long-handled baton (which killed Brian Douglas in Clapham in May 1995) and an increasing number of police officers are continuously patrolling the streets of London carrying a range of guns and other lethal weapons. There have been no calls for these to be controlled or banned.
It is against such a background that the case of David Ewin, or rather that of PC Patrick Hodgson, comes before the Old Bailey on 2 December. Hodgson is charged with the murder of Ewin on 28 February 1995 following an incident in Barnes to which Hodgson, as a member of the Metropolitan Police 5019 firearms unit, was called.
Hodgson, along with Sergeant Carol White and PC Kelley, formed an armed response unit and all carried a 9mm Gloch handgun containing a full clip of 17 rounds and two spare magazines. In the safe in the boot of their unmarked Rover, were two Heckler and Koch MP5 carbines loaded with 40 rounds each. They were on routine patrol when they received a call about a stolen Toyota MR2, which they later spotted in Castlenau SW13, which runs from Hammersmith Bridge Road to Barnes.
Hodgson and Kelley got out of the car and would have witnessed Ewin take a can of beer from a fridge in the “Costcutter” shop, then run for it, leaving the beer on the counter. Jumping into the stolen car, Ewin attempted to drive off, but was blocked in by the police car (driven by Sergeant White). At the same time, a white box-van driven by a Mr Cudey and Mr Gadgel cut off Ewin’s other escape route. A bus had blocked the road behind him. Ewin was trapped.
Hodgson ran round to the driver’s side of the car, taking out his gun and hammering on the windscreen. In Ewin’s desperate attempt to escape, he hit a car parked immediately in front of him. Hodgson attempted to gain access to Ewin’s MR2 but was almost crushed between the side of it and the police car. When the car stopped, PC Kelley arrested the passenger, Charles McKray. No gun was used during this arrest.
Hodgson, clearly desperate and presumably angry at his inability to make an arrest, ran from the driver’s side of the car to the passenger’s side where he crouched down and fired two shots into David Ewin through the opened window. Ewin was taken by air ambulance to hospital and died on 16 March 16th “multi-organ failure after firearm injury”, that led to infection and internal bleeding.
Hodgson claimed at an ‘old style” committals hearing in March 1996 that he feared for his life and had acted reasonably. This was not accepted. In training a police officer is taught that a firearm may only be used as a last resort. One of Hodgson’s colleagues, PC Kelley, made clear that he did not consider that this was such a situation. In fact, Hodgson appears to have emptied his gun as a first resort against an unarmed man - Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 states that a person may use reasonable force under the circumstances, to apprehend someone.
As such:
Hodgson could have attempted to turn the ignition off or asked the bus to move forward blocking the Toyota in so that it could not move at all. Hodgson must have panicked. Ewin must have been panicked as a consequence of Hodgson’s behaviour and therefore ignored the demands to stop and instead drove as he did.
There must have been a time when the MR2 was still allowing McKray to be arrested and Hodgson to move around to the passenger side, where he then had other options at his disposal.
Shooting is not the usual course of action taken by officers dealing with a stolen car. It was unlawful of Hodgson to pull his gun, it was dangerous for him to hit the windscreen with it and it was unnecessary for him to fire it.
As an aside, it should be noted that at the time (and without seeing any evidence) the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Paul Condon, praised Hodgson as being “a very brave officer”.
The police also gave statements to the press which were wildly inaccurate and claimed that Hodgson had been clinging to the front of a (boxed-in) car which was being driven at tremendous speed. Apparently he was able to take out his gun, warn Ewin, shoot him and come to no harm when the car came to a halt! Afterwards, when they discovered that Ewin had a string of previous prosecutions, the police released these to the press thus putting Ewin “on trial” rather than Hodgson and the Met Police as a whole.
When the Colin Roach Centre was approached by David Ewin’s widow Sarah, who was five months pregnant at the time of David’s death, we issued a press release stating: “This is the clearest case yet of a premeditated murder by a Metropolitan Police Officer.” However, we never for a moment expected Hodgson to actually be charged with murder. Along with Sarah Ewin, her son Albert David Ewin, family and friends, we will be attending the trial of Patrick Hodgson more in hope than expectation that the state is capable of convicting “one of its own”. Readers are invited to do the same. – rpm issue 2.
The trial of David Hodgson comes at the end of a year in which the police have continued to be given increased access to military equipment and hardware. The sight of armed officers is no longer uncommon. The people of England, Scotland and Wales are becoming accustomed to seeing a para-military police force in operation.
The case thus has enormous political implications. Campaigners have speculated as to why the state has decided to bring a charge of murder. Was it capable of convicting a police officer for murder? Had a decision to prosecute been taken in order to show that the state could, even if only in “exceptional circumstances” discipline “one of its own”? Or was the whole trial a massive exercise in deception, the aim being to show that whilst “the police” could be expected to be put under the spotlight, and even face a trial, they (no matter the evidence) could never actually be found guilty of murdering someone. Would a conviction demonstrate that there are safeguards to protect people against the increasing arming of the police?
Was Hodgson to be the fall guy, the one to take “the rap” for all the other police officers that have murdered people (like Brian Douglas, Shiji Lapite and lbrahima Sey)? We were interested to see how vigorously the barrister for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would question Hodgson and how far he would go in trying to get a guilty verdict for murder. The trial went some way to answering some of these questions, but by no means all.
A number of points also came to light at the trial. Hodgson, aged 49, was actually a firearms instructor, a role he had undertaken for three years from 1991.
He had been in the police force for 26 years, but he had remained as a police constable throughout. Something must have happened to stop him being promoted, but the judge decided that whatever it was should not be brought to the attention of the jury. The judge claimed that this was not relevant just as David Ewin’s previous history of criminality was of no relevance. However, the jury knew about Ewin’s record without it being disclosed in court because it was in every paper.
The CPS barrister, Mr Armani, turned out to be better than expected. His questioning was persistent and fairly thorough. He was by no means perfect but overall he did a fairly good job. Both of Hodgson’s colleagues confirmed that they did not see the incident as requiring an armed response and had been surprised to witness Hodgson’s actions, PC Hodgson, in the witness box for less than two hours, turned out to be absolutely hopeless.
Hodgson continually contradicted himself - although he claimed that he believed Ewin and his co-passenger might be armed, he could not point to anything in his previous written and verbal reports that suggested he thought this before entering the witness box.
Asked why he should stand in front of the car if he thought those in it were armed, he simply could not answer. After stating that he “wasn’t conscious of anything except what I was doing” he then totally contradicted himself by referring to others around him.
Although totally blocked in and unable to escape, Hodgson was convinced he (Ewin) was going to accelerate away” and “in a split second I fired a controlled pair of shots.” He admitted that from the moment he got out of his car to when he shot Ewin he “never thought about backing off.” and his shooting was a “last resort.” For Ewin it was but not Hodgson!
The impression was of a man out of control dashing from a police car, pulling out a gun, threatening Ewin, smashing the windscreen and, when unable to drag out Ewin from the car he clearly flipped and enraged by Ewin “not doing as he was told”, (a quote he denied although clearly recorded at an earlier old-style committal hearing) Hodgson shot him. Ewin died 17 days later.
Hodgson also claimed that be thought the incident was an armed one from the moment he saw Ewin run from a shop. So running from a shop can now be regarded as such a threat that police officers have to pull a gun and shoot someone. What next?
On Tuesday 10 December 1996 the barrister for the CPS was in the process of summing up the prosecution’s case when two people stood up in the public gallery and shouted that Hodgson had known Ewin before the incident. The man and a woman, had been friends of David Ewin but in the period between his death and the trial had never been seen. They turned up at Sarah Ewin’s flat on December 9th claiming to be disgusted at the coverage of the trial. They pressurized her into shouting out their unsubstantiated claim. She refused.
The following at court during the lunch break they intensified the pressure. Sarah refused and was so scared she collapsed before the court returned at 2pm.
After being dragged out of the court by the ushers the man and the woman were able to leave the Old Bailey without arrest. Those sitting in the public gallery during the trial had included plain-clothes security guards. Hodgson, sitting in the dock and charged with murder, had to make do with only one security guard.
Although totally uninvolved in the disturbance, a man from the Cohn Roach Centre found himself being questioned by the police and having his address taken.
The trail was stopped by the judge and adjourned to the following morning when Hodgson wanted it to continue knowing that if he was found guilty under such circumstances he had immediate grounds for an appeal.
However, the judge discharged the jury and ordered a re-trial stating that what had occurred “was a calculated attempt” to disrupt and as such was “gross contempt”. Why it took him a night to decide this rather than actually during the intervention itself marks him down as an idiot or an actual accomplice in a wider State plot to disrupt the trial because of a fear that a Jury was about to convict a police officer for murder. Perhaps we will never know if the two who intervened were involved in something wider - one thing’s for sure, the re-trial due to start on April 9th 1997 at the Old Bailey should interesting.
Imagine having your husband or son shot dead in cold blood? Naturally, you’d want to see whoever did it arrested, charged and convicted. You’d probably also expect the killer to be remanded in custody whilst awaiting the trial to begin. When you attend the trial you would expect that the court ushers and officials would be sympathetic, even though you know that security surrounding the trial would be pretty tight - especially when the trial’s at the Old Bailey.
Well, it seems that you expect a lot, especially if your loved one’s been killed by a serving Metropolitan Police Officer! David Ewin, as readers of the last few issues of RPM will know, was shot dead by PC Patrick Hodgson on February 28th 1995, and subsequently charged with murder - a decision which amazed ’seasoned’ campaigners.
As we’ve covered the case in earlier issues we won’t go back over it. The original trial was abandoned. The Prosecution barrister was ending his summing up when two people from the witness gallery shouted out claims that Hodgson had known Ewin before his death. There was no proof of this and even though the two had just caused the termination of a major trial the police allowed them to leave. The friends and family of David Ewin had nothing to do with the interruption. A re-trial was ordered and began in early April 1997.
Once again, Hodgson acted as if he owned the place. No need for an armed escort to court for him, he simply took the train from his home and walked into court.
Hodgson also, once again, sat in open dock with only one security guard near to him. Hodgson regularly chatted with him during any break in proceedings. I don’t know what he was saying but let’s hope it was better than what he said when he was called as a witness as he was hopeless again.
Meanwhile the police were intent on increasing the pressure on the friends of David Ewin and one of them found herself being dragged from her bed at 8am and taken to a police station near the Old Bailey, a considerable distance from her home. The police said that Hodgson’s girlfriend had identified her as the person who shouted out at the first trial. Hodgson’s girlfriend is a liar - she was not even in the public gallery when the incident took place and there is some dispute whether she was in the Old Bailey at all.
After six hours of intensive questioning and threats of being charged with contempt of court the arrested woman was released. Weeks later a letter from the police said that no further action was to be taken, hardly surprising as the video camera at the Old Bailey clearly shows it was not her.
A few days later another woman was arrested in similar circumstances. Her husband, who had gone to work, was accused of being involved. He went down to the police station and was questioned. Again no charges were preferred. We are now aware that the police have got the names of the two who shouted out at the first trial and it will be interesting to see if they arrest and charge them.
Meanwhile back in the trial Hodgson’s outward confidence began to disappear when he realised that some members of the Jury were willing to convict him. In the end the Jury announced that they couldn’t come to a decision.
A re-trial has been ordered, details of which we are awaiting. Clearly some members of the Jury were convinced that Hodgson murdered Ewin, so the trial will be very interesting and of major importance in the struggle for human rights in this country.
By the time of the third trial the Colin Roach Centre, an unfunded group based in Hackney has ceased to operate. Ex-members did attend the trial but no written report was made. Hodgson was found ‘not guilty’. The two people who disrupted the first trial were never charged.