30 MAKARATZIS v. GREECE JUDGMENT the State and its law-enforcement personnel in the performance of their duty, perhaps to the detriment of their lives and those of others (see McCann and Others, cited above, pp. 58-59, § 200). 67. However, although the recourse as such to some potentially lethal force in the present case can be said to have been compatible with Article 2 of the Convention, the Court is struck by the chaotic way in which the firearms were actually used by the police in the circumstances. It may be recalled that an unspecified number of police officers fired a hail of shots at the applicant’s car with revolvers, pistols and submachine guns. No less than sixteen gunshot impacts were found on the car, some of them attesting to a horizontal or even upward trajectory, and not a downward one as one would expect if the tyres, and only the tyres, of the vehicle were being shot at by the pursuing police. Three holes and a mark had damaged the car’s windscreen and the rear window glass was broken and had fallen in (see paragraph 14 above). In sum, it appears from the evidence produced before the Court that large numbers of police officers took part in a largely uncontrolled chase. 68. Serious questions therefore arise as to the conduct and the organisation of the operation. Admittedly, some directions were given by the control centre to some police officers who had been expressly contacted, but others went of their own accord to their colleagues’ assistance, without receiving any instructions. The absence of a clear chain of command is a factor which by its very nature must have increased the risk of some police officers shooting erratically. 69. The Court does not of course overlook the fact that the applicant was injured during an unplanned operation which gave rise to developments to which the police were called upon to react without prior preparation (see, a contrario, Rehbock v. Slovenia, no. 29462/95, §§ 71-72, ECHR 2000-XII). Bearing in mind the difficulties in policing modern societies, the unpredictability of human conduct and the operational choices which must be made in terms of priorities and resources, the positive obligation must be interpreted in a way which does not impose an impossible burden on the authorities (see, mutatis mutandis, Mahmut Kaya v. Turkey, no. 22535/93, § 86, ECHR 2000-III). 70. Nonetheless, while accepting that the police officers who were involved in the incident did not have sufficient time to evaluate all the parameters of the situation and carefully organise their operation, the Court considers that the degeneration of the situation, which some of the police witnesses themselves described as chaotic (see, for example, Mr Manoliadis’s statement – paragraph 17 above), was largely due to the fact that at that time neither the individual police officers nor the chase, seen as a collective police operation, had the benefit of the appropriate structure which should have been provided by the domestic law and practice. In fact, the Court points out that in 1995, when the event took place, a law