PLASTIC BULLETS 2006

 JANUARY 2006

INTRODUCTION

British Irish Rights Watch is an independent non-governmental organisation that has been monitoring the human rights dimension of the conflict and the peace process, in Northern Ireland since 1990.  Our services are available, free of charge, to anyone whose human rights have been violated because of the conflict, regardless of religious, political or community affiliations.  We take no position on the eventual constitutional outcome of the conflict.

We are opposed to the deployment of plastic bullets because we regard them as lethal weapons that should have no place in the policing of a democratic society in the twenty-first century.

Between September 2002 and July 2005, no plastic bullets were fired by the police or the army in Northern Ireland.  Indeed, plastic bullets have not been used in the city of Derry, despite some serious incidents involving public disorder, since 1998[1].  On 1^st December 2004, the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) told the Policing Board:

“Our intention is not to use them [plastic bullets] but we retain the right to hold them and the right to deploy them if the only alternative would be to use lethal force in the form of live rounds, which would be deeply unsatisfactory and extremely bad policing.  In the light of the current situation we would be able to reduce the daily number we keep, the number of officers we train, and the number of guns we need.”[2]

Although 33 plastic bullets were fired by the PSNI on two occasions in July and August 2005, BIRW was still hopeful that they were becoming a thing of the past.  However, ominously, the Chief Constable of the PSNI told the Policing Board that he had ordered a review of the guidelines for firing following these events[3].  Then over the weekend of 10^th and 11^th September 2005 very serious rioting by loyalists broke out which involved violent attacks on the police, including the firing of live ammunition.  The security forces responded by firing 389 AEPs (the latest form of plastic bullet), and our hopes were dashed.

In this report we examine the history of the deployment of plastic bullets, the deaths and injuries they have caused, the incidence of their use, domestic and international law and concern about plastic bullets, the recommendations of the Patten Commission, and the mechanisms for scrutinising their use that have been introduced relatively recently.  Of particular concern is that the firing of plastic bullets by the army currently comes under no proper independent scrutiny.

PLASTIC BULLETS – A LETHAL WEAPON

The onset of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland in 1969 was accompanied by serious civil unrest.  Crowd control techniques such as the use of water cannon and CS gas were not felt by the security forces to be adequate, and in the 1970s first rubber and then plastic bullets were introduced.  They were seen by the government as an alternative to the use of live ammunition to combat stone-throwers and petrol bombers[4] and by the security forces as a weapon that allowed them to control rioters without coming into physical contact with them[5].

Rubber bullets were introduced in Northern Ireland in 1970.  They were 5.75 inches in length, 1.5 inches wide, and weighed 5.25 ounces.  They caused an unacceptable level of casualties[6], they ricocheted unpredictably, and they tumbled in flight.  They continued to be used until 1975.

Plastic bullets were introduced in 1973.  The version in use until June 2005, the L21A1, was 4 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and weighed 5 ounces.  Plastic bullets were made of a much harder substance than rubber bullets.

A plastic bullet fired at a range of 50 yards from its target has an impact energy of 110ft/lb, the equivalent of a 2lb weight being dropped from a height of 55ft.  An impact energy in excess of 90ft/lb has been found to cause death or significant damage.[7]  The shorter the distance from which a plastic bullet is fired, the greater its impact energy.  Most plastic bullets are fired at much closer range than 50 yards, sometimes at point blank range.  The guidelines for their use recommended a minimum distance of only 20 yards.

Problems have occurred with the manufacture and use of plastic bullets.  In 1997 a batch of the bullets had to be withdrawn after Ministry of Defence tests found that a significant proportion of the batch had muzzle velocities in excess of the recommended upper limit[8].  A second batch were subsequently found to be heavier than the permitted limit[9].  The Committee on the Administration of Justice has suggested that many, if not all, of the plastic bullets fired in 1996 may have been defective[10].  Independent observers monitoring the situation during the summer marching season in Northern Ireland in recent years have observed the guns used to fire plastic bullets jamming and overheating when used repeatedly[11].

Although intended as a non-lethal weapon, seventeen people have died as a result of the use of rubber and plastic bullets.  Between 1970 and 2005, 55,834 rubber bullets and 69,837 plastic bullets were fired, 125,671 in all[12].  Rubber bullets resulted in three deaths, giving a ratio of one death for every 18,611 bullets fired.  The 14 fatalities caused by plastic bullets result in a ratio of 1:4,988.  Thus plastic bullets have been nearly four times as deadly as rubber bullets, despite the fact that they were intended to be safer.

FATALITIES CAUSED BY PLASTIC AND RUBBER BULLETS

Five aspects of these shootings are immediately striking:

·         First, all but one of the victims were Catholics. 

·         Secondly, nine of the seventeen victims were aged 18 or under, the youngest being 10 years old.  Only five of the victims were aged over 21. 

·         Thirdly, many of the victims were not involved in rioting.

·         Fourthly, many of the victims were shot at much too close a range and were struck in the head or upper body, in contravention of the guidelines then in force.

·         Fifthly, six of the victims did not die immediately but lingered for between one and fifteen days.

On 17^th August 2004, Dominic Marron died of a heart attack at the age of 37.  He had been shot in the head with a plastic bullet by an RUC officer on 9^th May 1981, when he was only 14 years old.  He had to be treated in the intensive care unit and suffered brain damage and paralysis.  His family are convinced that his premature death was directly related to the traumatic injuries caused by being shot with a plastic bullet.[13]

INJURIES CAUSED BY PLASTIC BULLETS

In 1971, Emma Groves was blinded when a rubber bullet fired into her home destroyed both her eyes.  In August 1995, a year after the first ceasefire, Tommy Turner was hit in the face by a plastic bullet.  His facial bones were fractured in seven places and he required 64 stitches, the insertion of two steel plates, and plastic surgery.[14]  According to the Report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland 615 people had been injured by plastic bullets between 1981 and 1999[15].  The report does not give the origin of this figure, but it is almost certainly an underestimate (please see below). 

The fact that the last fatality caused by a plastic bullet happened in 1989 does not indicate that plastic bullets are used less often, nor does it appear that they have become any safer.

A solicitor in Northern Ireland, Eamann McMenamin of the firm Madden & Finucane in Belfast, put in a submission to the Patten Commission concerning his professional experience of dealing with cases of injury caused by plastic bullets during the disturbances surrounding the marching season in the summers of 1996 and 1997.  He received instructions in 24 such cases, five of them involving women and two of them involving children aged 13 and 15, both of whom sustained head injuries.  By June 1998 he had settled 17 of the cases, none of which went to court, and had obtained the sum of £428,204 in damages for his clients.  The settlements he achieved can be summarised as follows:

 In April 1999 a group of five senior doctors who had treated people injured by plastic bullets during the period 8^th to 14^th July 1996 in six different hospitals published their findings[16].  During that week, 8,165 plastic bullets were fired throughout Northern Ireland.  They treated 155 patients who had been injured by plastic bullets.  It is this figure that suggests that the figure of 615 injuries between 1981 and 1999 is likely to be an underestimate.  No fewer than 29,695 plastic bullets were fired in 1981, the year of the hunger strikes.  Seven of the 17 fatalities occurred in that year.  If the rate of injury was equivalent to that in the week surveyed by the doctors in 1996, 564 injuries would have been expected in 1981 alone.  The doctors’ figures also allow for a direct comparison.  The government asked Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary to study the RUC’s use of plastic bullets during 1996.  In their report, they gave a figure, which presumably came from the RUC themselves, of just 20 injuries for the period 1^st January to 25^th August 1996[17], although the doctors recorded 155 persons injured during just one week of that period, nearly eight times as many.

The 155 patients had sustained 172 injuries.  19% of these injuries were to the head, face or neck; 20% were to the chest or abdomen; and 61% were to limbs.  42 patients had to be admitted to hospital, three of them to intensive care.   The age of the patients ranged from 14 to 54 years.  28 of those injured were aged 20 or under; 66 were aged between 21 and 30; 24 were aged between 31 and 40; and 12 were aged 41 or over[18]. 16 of the victims were women.

Their findings show that at least 39% of injuries were sustained to the upper body, in contravention of the guidelines[19].  They also show that young men were overwhelmingly likely to be the targets of plastic bullets, with 19% of victims aged 20 or under and 44% aged between 21 and 30.  After reviewing other medical studies of the effects of plastic bullets, the doctors concluded that, whereas the previous standard for deeming such injuries to be life-threatening had been injury to the diaphragm or above, a more appropriate measure would be injuries to the abdomen or above.  By that measure, 39% of all the cases they treated involved life-threatening injuries.

Another firm of solicitors, Kevin R Winters & Co, have supplied details of more recent injuries suffered by some of their clients.