whats everybody's take on this chap then?

Someone to stay well away from! Simples!

I knew the cop he shot

Speaking as a Northumberland resident I'd like to think he's somebody who deserves to be called a hero for outwitting the police. The media has failed to show that he's unfairly victimised and gotten at, not showing that he had begun get his life together before the police myopically made him headline news.

I hope the matter is quickly resolved.

thats rough stan, sorry.

just seems bizarre to have so much anger towards police, i mean if you dont do anything wrong, you wont have any relationship with the police?!

clearly a very disturbed individual, sadly i think who was fascinated by the recent cumbria shootings, and now sees himself as some kind of copy cat/martyr type.

if you or your colleagues get the chance stan - right between the eyes

Yes, but the cops set him up they are all as bent a nine bob notes. They set him up, ruined his business and turned his girlfriend against him etc etc

He fought the law and .... well we will find out soon enough.

(Best to blame someone else for your failures eh)

Hopefully they will find him soon. How hard can it be to find a 6ft3 17 stone ginger strawberry blonde bloke?

I see the police said they will double the reward to 20 grand if he stays on the run till next week , they are calling it a raoulover

I've cracked the code! Don't tell anyone, but AndrewR is in trouble and needs us to contact the pol...

Ahh... Bugger!

Dear Raoul Moat,

I have it on very good authority that John terry has been s*****g your wife whilst you were in Prison .
yours sincerely

Wayne Bridge

I think The Automatic's advice is very bad.

No, let's not

I think this is going to be a story where we will never actually know the full truth.

Media are having a field day, Police.. well they got a tough job.. i dont think its going to end peacefully

If it wasn't a police officer in a T5 he shot, but an ordinary member of the public in a Volvo, do you think they'd be shipping in police from Ireland and the Met to catch him?

I thought they were only shipping in are armoured land rovers. And to answer your question...Yep I think they probably would be handling the situation exactly as they are.

Have to say though....that Temp Chief Constable woman...you think she's ever looked in a mirror...she looks more like Maggie Thatchers Spitting Image puppet than Maggie Thatchers spitting image puppet does

Lol I thought that too!

Raoul Moat....the only ginger that was ever wanted.

You must have missed the bit where he murdered one "ordinary member of the public" and attempted to murder another?

Seriously though all these armed police marching about with their machine guns. Helicopters. Cars flying round with their sirens and lights going! What's all that about. Does anyone think it's doing anything except waste money?


If we had proper police in each town going about their business, keeping an eye out for anything unusual and pulling in all the local hoods 'Heartbeat' stylee, surely that would be more effective

In my 8 year old brain what I see is this woman chasing this man

I'm not even raoulmoatly interested in this story anymore.

On a more serious note though, yes I think having lots of armed officers in the area is a good thing. He's surely going to think twice about murdering someone else when he knows that there's a trained marksmen with an assault rifle just around the corner.

However it was a bit odd that they originally announced he was targetting police officers and NOT the public. Then went on to say that police were patroling schools every morning to give the residents confidence.

I think if i was a resident after that original announcement i'd be asking why the 'targets' were wandering around schools where a stray shot could take out a kid.

(obviously now they're saying he's made threats to the public too though).

Good point.

Simples. The kids are protecting the Police. If he doesn't want to harm the public, hide the police among them. You can't aim a shotgun with any degree of accuracy.

Yep that was standard British army practice in N Ireland during the troubles...surround yourself with as many kids as possible...personally speaking I'd have been strapping the wee buggers to me

Operation Get Behind The Toddlers.

My problem was finding a 6'7" toddler

"Today dragons, I'm looking for a £200,000 investment in my product - Stackable Toddlers."

Man City have launched a 45 million pound bid for Raoul Moat. They've no idea who he is, but they've heard everyone's after him.

<Duncan Ballantyne on>

Aye, but see, there's a major flaw in yer plan......toddlers aren't bulletproof (don't ask me how I know that or ah'll sue for defamation!) so for that reason, I'm oot!

</Duncan Ballantyne off>

Northumbria Police have put a £10,000 price tag on Raoul Moat's head. If he doesnt get caught by next Tuesday, they're putting it up to £20,000! They're calling it a Raoul over.

i refer you to my post yesterday

Shucks, looks like it's a double raoul over then

corrected.

anybody else think this fella looks a bit like mcmikey?

it'll be the ginger hair

Northumbria Police should hang their heads in shame. In a country renowned for it's castles they cant even find one moat

Ahem, sir may want this, it contains Kevlar.....

Three reasons for this BJ:

1. Less likely for a shoot while the kids were around.

2. It looked good in the press/on TV.

3. So many of the little darlings couldn't wait to tell you where "Da' keeps his gun(s)".

Although what the bloke has done is wrong, its interesting to see him (or literally not see him as the case is) get around without being apprehended

Looks like I spoke too soon....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/10582418.stm

They have moat....

They need to stop talking and shoot the guy.

He has a shot gun to his head.... Let him kill his self...

Done!!

they have a taser on him and according to google map he can only be a few metres away,i spotted the manhole cover behind the police and found it on google .
The press have to retire to 10mile away! ye sure they will.....

Dave

Why don't they shoot the gun out of his hand?

Sundance could do it.

A taser!?

Shoot the guy.

Do him a favour, he's a lost cat that only wants to shoot people.

So just shoot him!! Simples!
You end the man hunt and it's one less person in prison!!

Hopefully his gun will go off, do considerable damage, but not kill him. Then he has to live the rest of his life in jail in continual pain, disfigured, unable to speak.

And there was me thinking they just wanted to cop off with their sisters

Before the police can shoot him I think they have to do a risk assessment and have a method statement signed off by the queen

Nope they have to turn their backs on him first and then say " 1 2 3 red lights" and then turn around again. If they catch him moving they can shoot.

Least that's how we played it here in the 70's

and paid for at great expense by the tax-payer = bad idea imo. persuade him to shoot himself properly, we can afford a funeral easier....

Oops

Four reasons for this, BJ..........

its odd, what can he possibly be trying to 'negotiate'?!

if he pulls the rigger, he's dead, everyone is happy.

if he moves the gun, the snipers will shoot him, he's dead, everyone is happy.

if he gives up, he might as well be dead as he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

im sure one of the snipers must be getting an itchy trigger finger by now

yeah, but who will they shoot

Gazza has turned up - lol wtf ?

.

well i'd like to think they are not chief wiggum esque and would hit the right target.

unless gordon brown was out for a stroll of course...

Is he dead yet??

.

Now is it me or do they just look like people playing paintbull rather than trained marksmen?!

Oh, it gets better...

There's another picture on the BBC website of a crunched dog unit car... apparently they were rushing in so quickly, 2 police vehicles collided together!

What, really?! With no offence meant to anyone working in the police force but is this the sort of people we have policing our streets keeping us 'safe'?

.

It's a taser.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. Start moving in on him, if he shoots himself feed him to the pigs, if he moves the gun toward anyone but himself it's a double-tap through the mouth and then feed him to the pigs

Simples.

It's all over. He's blew his head off!

Not actually confirmed yet Matt

Gunshot wound to Moat and receiving treatment.

Breaking news! he is receiving treatment for a gunshot wound - so could well be alive.

Go to Google maps and type in Raoul Moat

He's dead.

Theresa - shouldn't you be at work?

No, lol, only my work on here

Work is only until midnight, my real work begins after that, on here, bringing you the latest news

It took the BBC until 3.17am to report his death.

I'm watching Sky news, which always seems to be better than BBC for stuff like this.

Oh don't start him on the BBC

For a value of better = more willing to report gossip as news.

Interesting that last night, his mate went through the Police cordon, and came out saying he's got no bullets left.

I wonder if this was part of the ruse to be able to get in another shot at a copper before he departed?

Better off that he is dead rather than costing us, the taxpayer, £38k a year to keep him in prison.

Will probably cost us £200k now for public inquiries into whether he should have been released in the first place, whether Police should have responded to warnings that he was going to harm his ex, the speed of the Police response, and whether steroid/shotguns should be banned.

They won't ban Shotguns, to many liveliehoods depend on it. As for Steroids, they're already banned. As for the cost, must have ran into millions? They had a Tornado out there looking for him, helicopters, 14 different police forces and god knows what else

The issue you have is a multiple set of problems:

The number of prisoners leaving the system make threats, for obvious reasons (no-one is happy getting caught). The system is in place to try and filter the angry from the determined, and from experience it works "most of the time".

He was serving a short sentence, therefore didn't require supervision by the probation service (who are already over-stretched).

I know you're just suggesting headings for an inquiry and not having a go, and I'm sure there will be many inquiries now: hot debrief/cold debrief, IPCC possibly, internal inquiry, possibly led by an external chief constable or similar rank.

Lessons will be learned, but the question is, will we remember them in twenty or thirty years time *if and when* this type of incident happens again?

There are issues that concern me, but I'll keep those to myself, my pension is too precious to risk, but yes, I think some questions need to be asked and the true answers supplied......

His possession of the shotgun was illegal and therefore already banned .....[/debate]

I can well imagine you have plenty to say on this matter stan. But as you've said, best kept under your helmet.

I find it shocking that a man is capable of planning over time what he did and the fact a suspision of a cheating g/f could drive him to the lengths he went to...

Has history taught you nothing

do you think the guy with the taser is a little cheesed of with all the flash photography!? SMILE

Moat's claimed another victim, a little later than planned

Clicky

I am gutted, That guy was a hero. Just goes to show the power of love, His wife and him split, surely then leading to depression & then this.

That's pretty sad.

Why don't they say in the report how he died?

I assume it was suicide, but it might have been a genuine accident relating to his blindness, such as he electrocuted himself.