Armed officers who take fatal shots on the job will remain anonymous unless convicted of a crime, the Home Secretary announced on Wednesday.
Yvette Copper’s statement follows the acquittal this week of the policeman accused of the murder of Chris Kaba in south London.
Criminal gangs put a £10,000 bounty on the Met marksman’s head in revenge, it has been revealed.
Ms Cooper told the Commons: “When officers act in the most dangerous situations on behalf of the state, it is vital that those officers and their families are not put in further danger during any subsequent legal proceedings.
“So we will therefore introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a police shooting in the course of their professional duties up to the point of conviction.”
Mr Kaba, a rapper who performed under the names Madix or Mad Itch, was a member of the notorious 67 gang and was named as the gunman in a nightclub shooting days before he died.
Armed officers on the day of Mr Kaba’s death did not know who was in the Audi Q8 they had been called to stop and which police believed was linked to a firearms incident the night before.
The jury in the murder trial was not told about Mr Kaba’s criminal history.
Mr Kaba's death and the subsequent trial were held against "a backdrop of fallen community confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across the country", Ms Cooper said as she vowed to complete a probe into how firearms officers who take fatal shots in the line of duty are held to account.
"This case has happened against a backdrop of wider and long-standing concerns about accountability, standards and confidence,” Ms Cooper told the Commons.
“A backdrop in which police officers and forces have raised longstanding concerns about the way in which the accountability system currently operates, particularly in cases of specialist policing like firearms and driving, where we ask officers to do incredibly difficult and dangerous jobs to keep us safe.
"And a backdrop of fallen community confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across the country with, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner (Sir Mark Rowley) has said this week, lower confidence among black communities."
Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly said he "agreed with almost all" of the proposals put forward by the Government but argued that firearms officers should be able to use their training in the role as part of their defence in criminal proceedings.
He said: "I have seen first hand just how rigorous that firearms training regime is, not just in marksmanship, but also in the use of judgement, split-second life or death decisions have to be made, often in circumstances where the risk picture is incomplete, and often in circumstances where the cost of not acting is considerably more severe than the cost of acting.”
He added: "I am very much pleased to see the Government is continuing in our reforms to ensure that when police officers act in accordance with their training and in the line of duty, that the presumption is that they will not be held to a lower threshold for prosecutions than members of the general public.
"And I would ask (Ms Cooper) to seriously consider that training in these roles forms a legitimate part of the defence of officers, if and when criminal prosecutions are brought forward."
