ANALYSIS

THE speed with which the police reacted to this incident was incredibly impressive. Equally notable was the sheer bloodyminded bravery of passers-by.

On some footage, you can see an officer physically dragging a member of the public away from the suspect to clear the way for a shot.

Another man is moving away from the fray carrying a very large knife that they’ve dragged from his hands. There could be only one outcome here. It doesn’t matter how it looks.

If that had been a real suicide vest and it had gone off, the casualties would have been far higher.

You simply cannot risk an explosion in a crowded public space like this.

There’s no softly-softly approach here with a truncheon or a Taser.

Officers are trained, in some cases alongside special forces, to act quickly and neutralise the target.

The suspect has to go down and go down fast. Standard procedure is a double-tap to the head.

These tactics – known as Operation Kratos – were developed by the Metropolitan Police for dealing with suspected suicide bombers in the wake of the September 11 attacks on America. There’s a good reason for them. Once you have been shot in the head, it severs the spine meaning a suspect is incapable of operating any sort of button or trigger device that might detonate an explosion.

People may find that distasteful – but that’s the only thing you can guarantee to stop a detonation.

In this case, there were people watching from buses and offices in close proximity to the attacker and the potential blast radius.

Plus, the police on the ground and passers-by were clearly in harm’s way.

In the event of an explosion, I think we would have been looking at 20 to 30 people horrifically injured if not killed outright.

The fact is, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between a fake and a real suicide vest – especially under circumstances like this.

They look almost identical and are easy to fake.You simply can’t risk them being able to activate the device. Frankly, if you think you can subdue an attacker in a vest in a non-lethal manner, you’re gambling on your life and the lives of everyone around you.

This wasn’t a surveillance-led police operation, it was happening in real-time as the result of 999 calls as we can see from the footage.

That means officers had no idea if this was a real vest or a fake, and they are left making split-second decisions.

These guys were Armed Response Officers, part the Met’s specialist SO19 firearms command who train alongside the SAS.

They’re well-trained and deploy all over the country in fast-response vehicles so they can react to exactly these kind of calls.

These officers did an outstanding job under the circumstances.

We hear stories of people suing the police and officers being charged for murder or manslaughter after discharging their weapons in the line of duty.

The officer who shot the suspect had to decide under extreme pressure what action to take. I am very confident he did the right thing.

These guys were extremely brave, as were the members of the public who subdued the suspect.

They should be put up for awards.