Except they weren't in uniform when they chased him and there's no way of knowing if they ever shouted "stop, police" or anything. He just saw a bunch of guys draw guns on him. Also, they had him pinned down, if they thought he was a terrorist, wouldn't they want him alive for interrogation?
Exactly. Given that Britain has yet been able to get a definitive clue on the two bombings, the way they handled the alleged "suspect" in this particular incident only raises more doubts about their capabilities. Maybe they really need a modern-day Sherlock Holmes to help them out.
Less than a minute later, Mr de Menezes was pinned to the floor of the carriage by two men while a third fired five shots into the base of his skull. here call me crazy but unless i was visibly pasty i wouldn't be nearing the london underground unless i had to.
A couple of more thoughts on the validity and the effectiveness of this so called "shoot-to-kill", which is now sugar-coated as "shoot-to-kill-in-order-to-protect", policy. Israel has been practising "shoot-to-kill" in its battle against Palenstinian suicide bombers for ages. The reality is Israel does not need to know who the bomber is, where he/she is from, and what he/she is associated with, simply because that's a given, almost. The problem with Britain adopting this policy rigidly is that it needs more clues about the bombing - the more the better. So far at best the British have are just suspects. Think what a "gem" they have in their possession if they can catch a real bomber. The security cops already had the "suspect" under their total control, but the best they could do was shooting the guy in the head 5 times?!! Who were they really trying to protect, the public or themselves? I am not saying their lives are worth anything less than the rest of the Londoners, but they should know they are professionals, and the Britons deserves better than just a bunch of overzealous bodyguards. Even in a critical situation like this, the merits of capturing a "suspect suicide bomber" live far outweigh the low risk of setting off a bomb. How many more opportunities like this do they expect to get? Granted the "shoot-to-kill" policy in Israel has prevented potentially more casualties, but did it really stop suicide bombings? I won't be surprised the actual mastermind behind the recent London bombings is cheering right now at the shooting death of innocent people at the hands of Scotland Yard. If anything, this is part of what they hoped in the first place. Rather than merely adopting, the Scotland Yard should instead adapt this policy and apply it judiciously.
Oh yeah, and expecting professionals to act professionally is not calling these policemen "blood thirsty" killers. Obvioulsy, they are on edge because of terrorists, but pinning a guy face down and popping him 5 times in the base of the skull isn't excessive force, it's an execution.
the reason they didn't shoot him in the leg or something like that, as you would do with a normal criminal, is because they fear he is a suicide bomber. if he is a suicide bomber, shooting him in the foot is useless because he can pull the trigger on the bomb and then everybody around will die regardless. i'm not condoning what the cops did, but i'm just saying they THOUGHT they were chasing a terrorist and they THOUGHT they were doing what was right. now that they've made this horrible mistake, there is no taking it back, and there's nothing you can do about it. mistakes have been made and you can't change what happened i hope this doesn't snowball and lead to cops being too scared to pull the trigger if they spot a real terrorist....terrorists make me more angry than anything else in teh world. god, terrorists are the slime and the pigs of the earth. they're not human, and if i knew where one lived, i would go to his house and choke him with a used dildo.
Yeah it is. It's also pretty easy to just excuse the entire thing and make it sound like it was entirely the fault of Menezes for running away. Of course it's even easier to assume that because I criticize what they did, I have no sympathy for the position they are in or think they are blood thirsty killers. Oh and isn't the "safety of your keyboard" thing pretty old hat by now? I mean, you supported the war in Iraq right? Isn't it easy to say it was the right thing to do when you don't have to go?
The difference is that I am not second guessing the actions of the police as you are. Neither of us were there, yet you call it an "execution". That doesn't sound like sympathy to me, unless you are prone to be sympathetic to executioners. Perhaps you are.
Excuse me, but I am a bit perplexed. Did you actually mean "excecutionees" when you said "executioners"?
You're welcome. What the world needs now is more blues, and less other stuff that leads to threads like this one.
While I don't want to condemn the police for this and can see how that response might've seemed appropiate and even necessary at that moment I think its weak and a terrible sign for civilized society to shrug it off and "blame it on the scumbag terrorists." Police are often on edge and constantly dealing with dangerous uncertain situations but that doesn't give them free reign to be trigger happy. Police are trained to act with far far greater restraint than most of us largely for our safety. We won't have a very safe society if tolerate police with itchy trigger fingers just becauase they're on edge or cops who deflect reponsibility when they make a lethal mistake.
Police Response More Frightening Than the Killing http://www.antiwar.com/ips/suri.php?articleid=6758 July 27, 2005 by Sanjay Suri That an innocent Brazilian was shot dead on the London Underground is tragic; but the near-justification of that killing by the police is frightening. The police have now openly declared a shoot-to-kill policy, and declared that they can shoot to kill just on suspicion. And that suspicion arising not from reliable intelligence or anything like that, but from just how someone may behave somewhere. Until the other day everyone thought that a Brit licensed to kill was a character in a James Bond film. Now that is official British policy. London's police commissioner Sir Ian Blair expressed "regret" – and no more – over the death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes. That "regret" was accompanied by the remark that there could be more such killing of innocent people. Ian Blair said the police had a shoot-to-kill policy to stop suspected suicide bombers. "This is not a Metropolitan [police] policy, this is a national policy and I think we are quite comfortable that the policy is right, but of course these are fantastically difficult times … there are still officers having to make those calls as we speak. Somebody else could be shot." Not many police chiefs of cities around the world who carry the responsibility of protecting their citizens would say this. The chilling message is that right or wrong, if an armed policeman is suspicious of your movements, it is okay, in fact required by national policy, to instantly shoot to kill. His predecessor John Stevens spelled out in bloody detail in an article in The News of the World weekly what his police had learned from the Israeli police. "I sent teams to Israel and other countries hit by suicide bombers, where we learned a terrible truth. There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfill his mission – destroy his brain instantly, utterly. That means shooting him with devastating power in the head, killing him immediately." Charles was shot eight times, seven times in the head and once in the shoulder. Given the police environment these days, the policeman could be penalized for getting one of the eight shots wrong. But Stevens expressed more than just regret. "My heart goes out to the officer who killed the man in Stockwell Tube Station," he wrote. Some people thought at first they had read that wrong. But no, his heart was not going out to the man killed, nor to his family and friends; it went out to the policeman who killed him. The lies after lies that came thick and fast after that shooting uncover just how hollow the suspicions might be on the strength of which they have been given powers to shoot to kill. First, that he was being watched and shadowed as he left his block of flats to take a bus to the station. That he was then followed to the train and shot when he ran. But there is now no word from the police why they were shadowing a Brazilian electrician – if they were shadowing him at all, that is. They said they shadowed him 15 minutes on a bus, but not a word about why they did not intercept him earlier. Then came the announcement that he had been "directly connected" to inquiries over the attempts to plant bombs on trains a day earlier. Then the admission that this was not so at all, though the police were "comfortable" with the policy that made such a mistake possible. Followed the announcement that he was an illegal immigrant and that he therefore ran when he saw the police. It then turned out he was not illegal at all. And no word why he ran, or even whether it was the case that he was challenged by the police and was running from the police. And there was more, that he came from a suspect neighborhood, that his jacket was too heavy for that hot summer day. It was always frightening to know that you had to do all of nothing, just be somewhere some time, to get blown up by a terrorist. Now people know you could be doing almost nothing to get shot by the police. There needs to be as little sense to a policeman's suspicion as to a terrorist's madness. Save us from the terrorists; but please also someone save us from our saviors.
Five in the Noggin http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163420,00.html Friday, July 22, 2005 By John Gibson No way to talk about anything but the terror bombing investigation in Great Britain. My faith has been renewed in the Brits. Even though they talk a good politically correct game out in public, evidently, behind the scenes they are as ruthless as I would expect from a civilized country under attack by bloodthirsty barbarians who have been brainwashed. Let's start at the beginning. I love the way the Brits have 10 million cameras sticking up the nose of every citizen no matter where they are, except in the loo. I love the way they popped the pictures of those four bombers so quick. Those four bombers are now identified in public and they will be run down sometime very soon. I love the way they know where these guys live, and I love the fact that they seem to have been spying on these guys for a while already. All that is good. What is also good is the Brit police tactics that we saw at work in the subway Friday morning. The tackle and kill team is incredible, if for no other reason than their bravery. Can you imagine the job of those cops? Tackle the guy wearing a vest bomb and hope your colleague is right behind with the gun to put five bullets in the noggin before he sets off the bomb. Turns out he didn't have a bomb, and turns out he wasn't one of the four bombers Thursday. And if it turns out ultimately that he had nothing to do with anything, no doubt there will be hell to pay. But the police say he was linked to the terror probe, so let's wait and see. Meantime, got to admire the cojones of those Brit cops to go after him like that. All of this trumps any of my other complaints that the Brits weren't making the right noises about fighting terror. They like to go about things a bit more quietly than us. Not my style, but okay, fine — as long as they get the five in the noggin of the right bomber boy. They do that and I'm fine. So for the moment, alls well. Just catch the four bombers. Five in the noggin is fine. Don't complain that sounds barbaric. We're fighting barbaric. That's My Word.
