2010 Northumbria Police manhunt

Moat was released from Durham Prison on 1 July, and allegedly arrived in the early hours of 3 July 2010 at a house in Birtley where Stobbart and her new partner, 29-year-old karate instructor Chris Brown, were visiting. Brown had moved to the area from Windsor, Berkshire around six months previously.[13] According to Moat, he crouched under the open window of the living room for an hour and a half, listening to Stobbart and Brown mocking him.[5] At 2:40 am,[12] Brown left the house to confront Moat but was shot at close range with a shotgun, and killed.[6] Moat then fired through the living room window while Stobbart's mother was on the phone to the police.[6] Stobbart was hit in the arm and abdomen, and was taken to hospital to undergo a liver operation and put under armed guard.[6]

At 12:45 am on 4 July, Police Constable David Rathband was shot while sitting in a police vehicle on the roundabout of the A1 and A69 roads near East Denton. Rathband was taken to Newcastle General Hospital in a critical condition with injuries to his head and upper body.[10] The Guardian reported that Moat had called police 12 minutes before shooting PC Rathband to taunt them and tell them what he was about to do. He did so again some 50 minutes after the shooting, during which he showed little remorse and complained the police are "not taking me seriously enough".[10][14] Police responded by saying they were taking him seriously and that Brown had no connection to the police. They urged him to hand himself in for the sake of his three children.[14][15]

Almost 18 months after the shooting, David Rathband, who had struggled to come to terms with his blindness, was found hanged at his Blyth home on 29 February 2012. His funeral service at Stafford Crematorium was attended by family and fellow police officers on 16 March 2012.[16] In June, he had been due to carry the Olympic torch as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay. His daughter, Mia, who replaced him, chose to run blindfolded in tribute to her father.[17]

Rathband had spearheaded the Blue Lamp Foundation, which was started by him and his identical twin Darren whilst he was recovering from his injuries. The charity assists emergency staff injured in the line of duty.

The manhunt would become one of the largest in the UK. A total of 160 armed officers were deployed to find Moat, which represented approximately 10% of those available in England and Wales at any one time. (Of the 6,780 authorised firearms officers in England and Wales, a quarter are available for duty at any one time due to shift patterns.)[18]

The 100 armed officers of Northumbria Police were reinforced by 40 from London's Metropolitan Police, and another 20 from West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Humberside, Cleveland, Strathclyde, Greater Manchester and Cumbria combined. Under mutual aid arrangements, Northumbria Police is able to call on reinforcements from other forces by paying the donor force for the assistance given.[18]

The Metropolitan Police also sent eight of its armed response vehicles to the region, as well as sniper teams. On 7 July, at least ten armoured anti-terrorist 4x4 vehicles were transported by ferry from Northern Ireland to assist in the operation.[18] The Ministry of Defence confirmed a Royal Air Force Tornado GR4, fitted with a RAPTOR reconnaissance pod, was deployed to do night-time sweeps with an infrared camera around the Rothbury area.[19]

On 5 July, fearful of more shootings by Moat, police mounted a raid with armed officers, dogs and a helicopter on a house in North Kenton, and also detained a man from Sunderland, although neither action found Moat.[10]

Northumbria Police confirmed they had received a 49-page letter, originally given by Moat to a friend late on 3 July, warning that they were "gonna pay for what they've done". The letter also stated that "The public need not fear me but the police should as I won't stop till I'm dead". In the letter, he stated that his children, freedom, house, then his ex-partner and their daughter, had all been taken from him. He admitted that he had issues and was running out of options, he said he was never violent towards his children.[5][10]

The police relayed a message to Moat from Stobbart through the media which urged him not to continue if he still loved her and their child. Stobbart then admitted she had lied to him about seeing a police officer, because she was frightened.[10][20] Sam Stobbart's half-sister, Kelly Stobbart, 27, reported that he had updated his Facebook status with a "hitlist" which included her and other family members. "He's said he will take out any police that get in his way".[10][14][21]

At a press conference on the evening of 5 July, police revealed that they believed Moat had kidnapped two men at the time of the shootings. They also requested this information be subject to a media blackout.[1] Around 10:50 pm, a fish and chip shop at Seaton Delaval was the scene of an armed robbery by a man resembling Moat.[22] In a press conference on the morning of 6 July, the police said they believed they had been dealing with a "complex, fast-moving hostage situation".[23][24]

On the morning of 6 July, a house in Wrekenton was raided by police and a man was detained.[25]

Following an appeal for sightings of a black Lexus believed to have been used by Moat, the car was found near Rothbury. A 5 miles (8.0 km), 5,000-foot air exclusion zone and a 2 miles (3.2 km) ground exclusion zone was set up by police, and two men were found walking along a road and were initially thought to be the hostages, but were later arrested.[26][27]

Police also said that officers from six forces had been called into the area, a large number of armed response officers were in their ranks. Armed officers and dogs stormed buildings on a disused farm called Pike House after a tip off from the landowners, who said that one of the boards on the windows of the derelict building had been removed, but no suspect was found.[1][24][28] The police repeated an appeal to Moat to give himself up, and urged him not to leave his children with distressing memories of their father.[25]

Armed officers were deployed to schools across the area and pupils were kept under temporary lockdown for fear that Moat might be close by; children were eventually allowed home. The cordon around Rothbury was lifted at approximately 9 pm while armed patrols continued throughout the village, and vehicles were subjected to road checks whilst entering and leaving.[29]

In another press conference on the morning of 7 July,[30] the police said they believed that Moat was still at large mostly likely hiding in the surrounding countryside in the Rothbury area. Within a tent thought to have been used by Moat at a secluded spot in Cartington, an eight-page letter to Sam Stobbart from Moat was found. In it, Moat continued to assert that Brown was connected to the police, again denied by Detective Chief Superintendent Adamson. The police called in TV survival expert Ray Mears to help track Moat's movements.

At the later press conferences the police confirmed the 5 July chip shop robbery was a positive sighting of Moat. Northumbria Police offered a £10,000 reward for information that would lead to Moat's arrest.[8] During the day, Paul Stobbart, the father of Samantha, released a video appealing to Moat to turn himself in.[31]

The police announced on 8 July that two more men were arrested in Rothbury the previous day.[32] Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Adamson of Northumbria Police said they considered Moat a wider threat to the public than previously thought, but would not comment further.[32] It had been previously reported that Moat was targeting only the police, and not the public, after his initial note stating that he would not stop killing police until he was dead.[32] Following Moat's death, it was revealed that police asked the media to dampen the reporting on aspects of Moat's private life, as he had threatened to kill a member of the public every time there was an inaccurate report.[33]

In the afternoon, police arrested a man and a woman in the Blyth area, revealed by police on 9 July.[34][35]

On 9 July, a cordon was set up around the National Trust's Cragside estate in the parish of Cartington.[35] Northumbria Police reported they had recovered three mobile phones used by Moat in recent days.[35]

In the early evening of 9 July, residents of Rothbury were told to stay indoors because a major security operation was taking place.[36] News agencies reported that an individual resembling Moat had been surrounded by police, and was holding a gun to his head.[37] With a 110 yards (100 m) cordon established on the north bank of the River Coquet, close to a rainwater culvert which runs under the village, police negotiated with the suspect, who was holding a sawn-off shotgun to his neck.[38] Food and water were reportedly brought to Moat during the confrontation, and his best friend Tony Laidler was escorted to the scene by authorities in an attempt to persuade him to surrender.[21]

At one stage former England footballer Paul Gascoigne arrived at the crime scene wearing a dressing-gown, claiming to know Moat and offering to bring him "chicken and lager" in an attempt to convince him to surrender; Gascoigne was denied access to the fugitive.[39]

At approximately 1:15 am on 10 July, news agencies reported that at least one shot had been fired in the vicinity of the stand-off.[40] At 1:34 am, a police spokesman stated that "a shot or shots" had been fired and the suspect had a gunshot wound. It was reported by multiple sources that police jumped on the suspect, and that police and an ambulance were seen moving toward the site.[41] A statement from Northumbria Police said that no shots were fired by police officers and that the suspect had shot himself; no officers were injured in the stand-off.[40][41] Moat was transferred to an ambulance and taken to Newcastle General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:20 am, shortly after arrival.[42][43]

Karl Ness, 26, was given three concurrent life sentences totalling a minimum tariff of 40 years for the murder of Christopher Brown, conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of PC David Rathband. His friend Qhuram Awan got two concurrent life sentences for conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of PC David Rathband and will serve at least 20 years in jail. Both men were also sentenced to seven years for robbery and Ness was given five years for a firearms offence. Ness, from Dudley in North Tyneside, was with Moat on the night he shot his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart and killed her new boyfriend Chris Brown whom Ness had believed at the time was a policeman.[55]

Moat may have been inspired by the events in the Cumbria shootings which occurred one month before his rampage, when taxi driver Derrick Bird killed 12 people and injured 11 others in a day long shooting spree. The "saturation-level news coverage" of the Cumbria shootings may have triggered Moat given the timing of his killings. Research by American forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz has demonstrated that, in a country the size of the United States, such coverage "causes, on average, one more mass murder in the next two weeks".[56] News organisations were accused of being more concerned with revenue than the harm their headlines might cause.[56] The theory that mass-media coverage prompted copycat offences because it gave killer's infamy was also supported by Kate Painter, a criminology expert at the University of Cambridge.[57]

The media was also accused of glamorising Moat with descriptions of him such as "having a hulking physique" and being "a notorious hard man", while providing less coverage about his victims.[56] During some coverage, Sky News had used police-issue body armour and Heckler & Koch semiautomatic carbines as studio props.[58] Belfast Telegraph observed that by 8 July the manhunt was continuing to receive "saturation coverage on radio and television".[59] The Guardian also wrote that, to the news media, Moat had become "a valuable commodity, his actions tracked by millions".[60]

Following Moat's death, his estranged older brother Angus described the media coverage as "the whipping up to what could be a public execution in modern Britain".[61]

In The Daily Telegraph, Theodore Dalrymple wrote:

The late Mr Moat was a brutal sentimentalist. He used the extremity of his behaviour to persuade himself that he felt something – supposedly love – very deeply, and that this was the motive and justification of his behaviour. Surely, if he was prepared to kill not only his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart, but also her new lover and anyone who looked like him, he must have loved her very much?

He also persuaded himself that he was the victim of this terrible episode. "They took it all from me", he said, "kids, freedom, house, then Sam and Chanel [his daughter]. Where could I go from there?" It was only natural that he, an innocent, or at least a man not seriously at fault ("I've never punched her but have slapped her"), should have taken a gun and killed one and injured two: any man treated in this way would have done the same.

What is alarming is that substantial numbers of people take this self-serving sentimental nonsense seriously, at least if the thousands of postings on the Moat Facebook tribute page, which was deleted on Thursday, were anything to go by. The logic seems to be as follows: Mr Moat called himself a victim; victims are heroes; therefore Mr Moat was a hero.[62]

The demand for coverage resulted in the news desk at AOL mistaking a satirical article about the manhunt's media coverage for a genuine news report. Posting:

As officers and dogs move in, citizens from around the isle are anticipating a swift and gruesome conclusion to the national drama. Some are even clamouring for it, calling it the best live entertainment they’ve seen in some time ... Families have been collecting children from schools and nurseries throughout the day so they could watch together, as expectations reached fever pitch that a violent firearms confrontation was imminent. Over 800 schools have closed across the country as a result.[63]

The original author of the spoof article, Robin Brown, commented: "Maybe it's just a sign that, in these information-saturated days, even the news is beyond satire?"[64]

On 8 July the police requested a news blackout, under the terms of a voluntary agreement between the Association of Chief Police Officers and the media, about Moat's personal life as they believed such coverage would provoke him to kill more people.[65] This followed the discovery of a dictaphone in Moat's tent near Wagtail Farm, which contained a four-hour-long message to the police. In it Moat revealed that he had been following the media coverage in newspapers and had been "upset" by some of the negative articles written about him.

Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Adamson told reporters: "We recovered a Dictaphone with four hours of ramblings from somebody. We don't think it is a decoy, but we're not absolutely sure. We are sure it has been made within one or two days of the shootings and the print coverage has really made him upset. There is talk of people who are being spoken to not being right and it's winding him up."[60] The police revealed that Moat had threatened to kill a member of the public for every piece of inaccurate information published about him, and journalists were thought to be among his targets.[65] Police also asked for articles already published about Moat's personal life to be removed from news websites, although this was said by The Guardian to be impossible due to the rolling nature and vast amount of coverage the manhunt had generated.[60]

In reference to the police request for a news blackout following the discovery of Moat's dictaphone recording, The Guardian wrote that the rolling coverage resembled "a real-life Truman Show with every development tracked around the world in blogs, on websites and mobile networking sites like Twitter".[60]

The Belfast Telegraph wrote on 8 July that "Outside interest in the case continued to grow...there are now more than 20 Facebook sites dedicated to the hunt and "Raoul Moat" was yesterday the No 1 trending topic on Twitter".[59] On 10 July The Guardian referred to Twitter to reflect on the mass media coverage of the manhunt, writing "As one poster on Twitter put it: "I see Raoul Moat has got his own TV show. The News".[60]

After Moat's death, responding to a question at Prime Minister's Question Time on 14 July regarding a particular Raoul Moat memorial page established on Facebook, which had attracted more than 36,500 members, Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the site. He told the House of Commons; "It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story. ... I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man. ... There should be sympathy for his victims and the havoc he wreaked in that community. ... There should be no sympathy for him".[52] Facebook later responded by saying that it would not remove the site because it encourages public debate about issues in the media. "Facebook is a place where people can express their views and discuss things in an open way as they can and do in many other places. And as such we sometimes find people discussing topics others may find distasteful, however, that is not a reason in itself to stop a debate from happening. We believe that enabling people to have these different opinions and debate about a topic can help bring together lots of different views for a healthy discussion".[66]

Cameron later said he would be making an official complaint to Facebook.[67] The page was deleted by its creator on 15 July.[53][68]