National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen says that police guidelines and training are not to blame for the deaths of two people in separate shootings by police this year. Last month a man suspected of involvement in a stabbing was shot and killed in Tuusula, while on Saturday an apparently suicidal man in Central Finland was shot after an hours-long stand-off on a secluded forest road.
Before this year only four people had been shot by police since 2000. Kolehmainen says that the two cases this year are not evidence of a change in the posture of Finnish police.
"Police officers’ trigger fingers have not become itchier," said Kolehmainen. "Guidelines haven’t changed and neither has the training. Sometimes situations just end up like this. The goal of police operations is never that people die, you always want to be able to handle the situation with more moderate methods. A firearm is the weapon of last resort, if nothing else can be done."
The latest case will be investigated by the prosecutor’s office, and Kolehmainen says police guidelines and training will be examined in the light of the incident.
"The second tragic case within a month is in my opinion a coincidence," said Kolehmainen. "Sometimes there are years where nothing similar happens and sometimes there is one similar case. Traditionally police very rarely use their weapons in Finland."
Six people have died by police bullets since 2000. Before this year’s two cases, there were shootings in Merikarvia in 2000, in Humppila in 2009, Pudasjärvi in 2010 and Oulu in 2015.
