In one of those where were you JFK moments I remember almost every word that was spoken and how a room of 20 hard-nosed blokes and lassies, habitually not backward in coming forward, was stunned into silence. Before us stood a broken man - tears running down his face, head bowed, defeated, as the moment his life changed forever was relayed to the assembled audience.

The G8 summit was coming to Scotland in a few months’ time and amongst the various policing machinations the Scottish Police Federation was considering the whats and wherefores of the biggest gathering of firearms officers in the UK, and crucially how to respond in the event a trigger was pulled.

As it happened, events on July 7, 2005, when Islamist terrorists targeted commuters on London's public transport killing 52 people, shifted attention from Gleneagles to London and the most significant incident in Perthshire was the collision between a certain George W Bush on his bike and a uniformed constable, injuring both. The latter considerably more so than the former and which in typical police management jargon was recorded as being “hit by a moving / falling object.” I’m sure poor George had been called worse.

Back in that hotel meeting room however we listened not only to an officer who had shot and killed a man, but also to a husband, father, and son, whose life, and those of those around him had been devastated simply for doing his job. He had been named, faced no fewer than five separate legal processes which had him pigeon-holed as a murder suspect before ultimate vindication some five-plus years later.

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During that time he had to move home. His children had to move school not once but twice – such is the merciless cruelty of children who relentlessly tormented their innocent classmate as MURDERER simply because the father had been named. There was no parental option to shield the children from the trauma that dad had endured.

Anyone watching our briefing would have been struck by the sheer professionalism of the presentation. Details were clear, precise; not a word was wasted. If you could design your own firearms officer he would be a mirror of the man stood before us. His commitment and dedication to a role few are willing to perform, let alone understand, was unsurpassed.

Then it came – the police radio transmissions from beginning to end of the incident which changed his and the lives of those around him forever, were played in real-time to the room.

Police radios are not the crisp clear audio devices you find in the movies or on tele. Dozens of cops are at any one time vying for transmission space and the combination of wind and traffic noise, beeps and sirens, static, and all too often – chaos – do not make for an easy listen. But for all that, and to the trained ear who knew what we were listening to – it was all there. Numerous reports of an armed man, the location, the urgency in seeking someone to respond.

Other than the audio, and momentary contextual comment from his fellow officer, the room was pin drop quiet. The message of arrival at scene was broadcast and shortly afterwards an animated voice of the officer himself calling for an ambulance indicated that the suspect had been shot. The audio recording was then stopped.

At that precise moment I saw the man who had been the epitome of professionalism and commitment become a shell of himself. He was instantly catapulted back in time and five years of torture and torment were released as the tears flowed down his face. What a burden we ask others to carry on our behalf.

The exoneration of Sgt Martyn Blake in the Chris Kaba fatal shooting last week had me once again thinking about the officer from 2005. The decision to name Sgt Blake as a murder suspect was as incompressible to all logic, as details of subsequent gang bounty on his head proved it to be.

We know he has already had to move home and I’m certain the unbearable stresses faced by his former colleague all those years ago will have been mirrored 25 years later. The reputation of a gun-toting gangster was thought of greater importance than the safety of the sergeant.

Chris Kaba, a known gangster, was shot dead by a police officerChris Kaba, a known gangster, was shot dead by a police officer (Image: free)The useful idiots chanting No Justice – No Peace following the ultimate test of justice demonstrate nothing more than a desire for retribution; relentlessly hounding an innocent man in a score settling exercise with the institution of the police. The veneration of a man who has caused more harm to his own community than the police ever could does nothing to ease community tension or suggest police anxiety over firearms prevalence is misplaced.

It is easy to use words which suggest we understand the ask we make of police officers who carry guns. The simple truth is we don’t – for their lives can and do change in a thousandth of a second. Normality ceases to exist and scorn, suspicion, and a drive for vengeance instantly take its place. Incomparable comparisons are made with the US where high-profile cases make the sense of grievance easy to latch on to.

But the UK is not the USA.

UK police officers draw firearms about 17,000 times and average 2.5 fatal shootings every year. In the US, a police officer is killed every two and a half days.

The UK may not have the same firearms prevalence as the US but it does have the same criminal willingness to use firearms as Chris Kaba and his armed crime gang so frequently demonstrated.

Let us be genuinely grateful that we have police officers prepared to carry and use guns, but let us never forget that in asking them to do so we owe them a duty of care that extends far beyond that afforded to the ordinary citizen. If they are found to have acted unlawfully their names will be made public any way. Unless that happens they should not have to live their lives looking over their shoulder.

Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and general secretary of the International Council of Police Representative Associations