Whitewash - de Menezes shooting?

HelterSkelter

The report is just out and no police officers will be charged with his murder...

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13533173,00.html

I think it is a disgrace that nobody should be brought to justice for the killing of an innocent man. They shot him 11 times. And what about the lies they told just after the killing, that he ran from police officers, he jumped a barrier into the underground station, all shown to be lies from CCTV footage. I suppose we should be used to this king of cover up with our history of the Birmingham 6/Gilford 4.

tallus

It was a scary episode indeed. I totally disagree with that kind of shoot to kill policy and It IS a disgrace that nobody has been brought to justice. The blame should lie with whoever was in control of the whole operation.

mike65

Agree with Tallus, the officers who actualy shot the guy were sent to do a job which they did, its the operations director who should be bought to book, along with whoever decided that house was a terror hide-out in the first instance

Mike.

banaman

I find this worrying for two reasons:-
1) this was a cold blooded "hit". The guy was in a headlock when he was shot 7 times. So it was intentional murder, by the police who are now effectively above the law.
2) why was he targettted? Apparently because he looked "middle-eastern"!!!!
Therefore its ok to kill those who look "middle-eastern" ie ALL "middle-eastern" people are terrorists.So what message does this send to British Muslims, who as a community are probably more law-abiding than the "native" Brits?
This was an appalling act and those who perpetrated it are guilty of murder and should be prosecuted.:cool:

hmmm

The officers by all accounts acted within their operational and training instructions. To combat suicide bombers, UK police are now allowed shoot to kill. I think it obviously was terrible for the guy involved, and there will probably be more incidents like it. I would not envy being a British policeman tasked with "arresting" a potential suicide vest equipped terrorist as you have no idea how he is capable of detonating his explosives, and us sitting around safely typing away have probably no experience of what goes through a police officers mind when he is trying to restrain a potential terrorist who will kill him if he makes a mistake.

lostexpectation

he wasn't a potential terrorist, he lived in the same apartment complex of a potential terrorist, the police man took a piss as he was leaving and didn't ID him prorperly, he was shot 20-30 mins later, this seconds to decide stuff is nonsense:mad:

hmmm

lostexpectation wrote:

he wasn't a potential terrorist, he lived in the same apartment complex of a potential terrorist, the police man took a piss as he was leaving and didn't ID him prorperly, he was shot 20-30 mins later, this seconds to decide stuff is nonsense:mad:

What are you saying then - the police decided to shoot someone at random?

HelterSkelter

hmmm wrote:

What are you saying then - the police decided to shoot someone at random?

What he is saying is quite clear, they had not positively ID'd him as a terrorist as the officer supposed to be watching the flat where the supposed terrorists lived was taking a piss at the time de Menezes left. They followed him to the tube station (he took a bus on the way). They could have stopped him at any point before he got to the tube station. Why did they wait until he was on board a tube to shoot him, no questions asked?

अधिनायक

So much for eye-witness reports:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4706913.stm

Manic Moran

They shot him 11 times

Absolutely a disgrace. Waste of taxpayer's money. Just two or three would have done the job just as well...*

The overall result might look like a whitewash to someone braying for heads, but the CPS spokesman was very clear as to why no individuals were charged, and why only the Metropolitan Police as a body is going to be brought to task, which seems reasonable enough. It was a fault of policy and procedure, but not one of the individual policemen, and certainly not of the one who pulled the trigger. Can you prove that the constable in question did not honestly believe he was dealing with a suicide bomber, and with the information available to him at the time such would be a reasonable belief? If not, don't try him.

NTM

*What has the number of rounds used got to do with anything? They shot an innocent man. Period, end of story.

oscarBravo

banaman wrote:

1) this was a cold blooded "hit". The guy was in a headlock when he was shot 7 times. So it was intentional murder, by the police who are now effectively above the law.

I take issue with this idea, if for no other reason than it devalues the concept of murder.

This situation was a gigantic clusterf*ck. It was a tragedy. It was a horrible example of a bad reaction by authorities to a high-pressure situation. All possible steps should be taken to prevent a recurrence. The Met should (and will) face sanction for the huge lapses that allowed it to happen.

But to call it "murder" implies a premeditated decision to unlawfully kill. For all that went horribly wrong in this case, to call it murder is simply inaccurate, and simply compounds the wrongs and errors of that tragic day.

Zebra3

Is anyone surprised that British police officers get away scot-free after murdering a foreigner (from an 'unimportant' country)?

Manic Moran

Zebra3 wrote:

Is anyone surprised that British police officers get away scot-free after murdering a foreigner (from an 'unimportant' country)?

Do you think an individual should be punished for an honest mistake?

I seem to recall that the Irish legal system doesn't think so. Wasn't there that whole Constitutionality thing a month or two back..something about any law which doesn't admit to the concept of an honest mistake being unConstitutional?

NTM

sovtek

Manic Moran wrote:

Do you think an individual should be punished for an honest mistake?

I seem to recall that the Irish legal system doesn't think so. Wasn't there that whole Constitutionality thing a month or two back..something about any law which doesn't admit to the concept of an honest mistake being unConstitutional?

NTM

An honest mistake where severely bad judgement and incompetance resulted in the death of a civilian...I thought that was the definition of manslaughter.

Endymion

sovtek wrote:

An honest mistake where severely bad judgement and incompetance resulted in the death of a civilian...I thought that was the definition of manslaughter.

But the people that shot him, didn't make the mistakes and acted in best judgement with the information they had. You're saying someone should be done for manslaughter, but who?

HelterSkelter

Manic Moran wrote:

Do you think an individual should be punished for an honest mistake?

I seem to recall that the Irish legal system doesn't think so. Wasn't there that whole Constitutionality thing a month or two back..something about any law which doesn't admit to the concept of an honest mistake being unConstitutional?

NTM

The bus driver who ran the people down outside the Clarence Hotel is being charged for his honest mistake. It is the norm to charge someone if someone else dies as a result of their mistake.

HelterSkelter

Carnivore wrote:

But the people that shot him, didn't make the mistakes and acted in best judgement with the information they had. You're saying someone should be done for manslaughter, but who?

The only information they had was that he had dark skin and came out of the same block of flats as the suspects they were supposed to be watching. They should have stopped him before he got to the tube station if they were so sure he was a suicide bomber. Whoever made the decision to let him get on the tube and then shoot him should be charged.

Endymion

HelterSkelter wrote:

The only information they had was that he had dark skin and came out of the same block of flats as the suspects they were supposed to be watching. They should have stopped him before he got to the tube station if they were so sure he was a suicide bomber. Whoever made the decision to let him get on the tube and then shoot him should be charged.

You persuming thats one person. You're persuming that the people tracking him where in a position to make decisions and not just follow orders. What are you saying that they should have taken upon themselves to try and arrest the guy before he got to the tube station? The ones that gave the orders and made the decisions are not the ones that pulled the triger.

HelterSkelter

Carnivore wrote:

You persuming thats one person. You're persuming that the people tracking him where in a position to make decisions and not just follow orders. What are you saying that they should have taken upon themselves to try and arrest the guy before he got to the tube station? The ones that gave the orders and made the decisions are not the ones that pulled the triger.

That's why I said whoever made the decision should be charged. Don't think you read my post properly.

sovtek

Carnivore wrote:

But the people that shot him, didn't make the mistakes and acted in best judgement with the information they had. You're saying someone should be done for manslaughter, but who?

I think it's arguable that the people on the ground that shot a completely innocent, unarmed and presenting no immediate danger to the public nor the police didn't use bad judgement and could be deemed competant.
That's not to exonerate the highest levels of government that were ultimately responsible for instituting a wreckless policy in the first place. Blair included.

lostexpectation

I think it's arguable that the people on the ground that shot a completely innocent, unarmed and presenting no immediate danger to the public nor the police didn't use bad judgement and could be deemed competant.
That's not to exonerate the highest levels of government that were ultimately responsible for instituting a wreckless policy in the first place. Blair included.

well several of them couldn't distinguish between a particular muslim guy and a brazilian, and being experts in intelligence for an innocennt man to be shot is criminaly negligent.

Manic Moran

lostexpectation wrote:

well several of them couldn't distinguish between a particular muslim guy and a brazilian, and being experts in intelligence for an innocennt man to be shot is criminaly negligent.

Forgive me, but is it not possible for a Brazillian to be a Muslim? Or a white guy? I could have sworn one of the London bombers was black... Or do you mean to suggest that shoot/no-shoot should be determined by skin colour?

NTM

tallus

Manic Moran wrote:

Forgive me, but is it not possible for a Brazillian to be a Muslim? Or a white guy? I could have sworn one of the London bombers was black... Or do you mean to suggest that shoot/no-shoot should be determined by skin colour?

NTM

I was under the impression that they followed the guy because he had a Middle eastern look about him, or so they thought.
I'd say the whole f*ck up was down to poor training and intelligence. Obviously the circumstances that had preceeded with the tubes and busses being blown up had a large impact on how the guys following him on the ground acted. Though if they did suspect him to be a suicide bomber why let him go all the way to the tube station, it defies logic.

lostexpectation

Manic Moran wrote:

Forgive me, but is it not possible for a Brazillian to be a Muslim? Or a white guy? I could have sworn one of the London bombers was black... Or do you mean to suggest that shoot/no-shoot should be determined by skin colour?

NTM

they were looking for a particular person who associated with the other potential terrorists they were not looking for a possible Brazilian convert. I expected intelligence experts to be able to ID a person when they have a photo of him.

Manic Moran

lostexpectation wrote:

they were looking for a particular person who associated with the other potential terrorists they were not looking for a possible Brazilian convert. I expected intelligence experts to be able to ID a person when they have a photo of him.

That's the problem: They didn't have a photo. If memory serves, they had just arrived onscene and had not been briefed beyond what information they got on the radio/by word of mouth. The issue was that the system, or something in the system was broken, not that the armed constables did anything wrong in particular.

From the CPS's senior lawyer:
The two officers who fired the fatal shots did so because they thought that Mr de Menezes had been identified to them as a suicide bomber and that if they did not shoot him, he would blow up the train, killing many people.

In order to prosecute those officers, we would have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that they did not honestly and genuinely hold those beliefs.

In fact, the evidence supports their claim that they genuinely believed that Mr de Menezes was a suicide bomber and therefore, as we cannot disprove that claim, we cannot prosecute them for murder or any other related offence

[snip]

I concluded that while a number of individuals had made errors in planning and communication, and the cumulative result was the tragic death of Mr de Menezes, no individual had been culpable to the degree necessary for a criminal offence.

[snip]

However I have concluded that the operational errors indicate that there had been a breach of the duties owed to non-employees under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, by the Office of Commissioner of Police and I have authorised a prosecution under that act.

I must stress that this is not a prosecution of Sir Ian Blair in his personal capacity, but will be a prosecution of the Office of Commissioner, as the deemed employer of the Metropolitan Police officers involved in the death of Mr de Menezes.


For a lawyer, he's speaking in plain and simple English.

The difference between this event and the manslaughter charges referred to earlier about the bus driver is that in the De Menezes case we're talking about a conscious decision correctly made on information that was bad due to a fault not of their own, vs an unconscious action made as a result of personal carelessness.

NTM

Hobbes

yea fuk it.. lets just shoot to kill and worry about later. I mean if he got shot he was clearly a terrorist.

The whole De Menezes case is a whitewash. The officiers changed thier stories after it was shown he didn't have any weapons on him (or that he was even a terrorist for that matter) and then you had Blair (The cop, not the politician) asking for an internal investigation run by the Met.

I just wonder how many innocent people have to die before its considered useless... I mean whats an acceptable loss to some people? Lets kill say 5 innocent people a year if it protects us from terrorists?

lostexpectation

Manic Moran wrote:

That's the problem: They didn't have a photo. If memory serves, they had just arrived onscene and had not been briefed beyond what information they got on the radio/by word of mouth. The issue was that the system, or something in the system was broken, not that the armed constables did anything wrong in particular.
NTM

I wasn't talking about the offices that shot him. This is what I said.

he wasn't a potential terrorist, he lived in the same apartment complex of a potential terrorist, the police man took a piss as he was leaving and didn't ID him prorperly, he was shot 20-30 mins later, this seconds to decide stuff is nonsense.

Im talking about the guy posted outside the apartment block who took a leak and the subsequent men who continued to misidentify him all along the bus route.

Later, on 4 August 2005, The Guardian reported that the newly-created Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Reconnaissance_Regiment , a special forces unit specialising in covert surveillance, were involved in the operation that led to the shooting. The anonymous Whitehall sources who provided the story stressed that the SRR were involved only in intelligence-gathering, and that Menezes was shot by armed police not by members of the SRR or other soldiers. Defence sources would not comment on speculation that SRR soldiers were among the plain-clothes officers who followed Menezes on to the No. 2 bus[53].

Quote:
On 22 July, the day Mr Menezes was killed, police and soldiers had been watching the block of flats where the electrician lived.

They believed a man suspected of the previous day's attempted attacks lived there.

A soldier saw Mr Menezes leave his flat and thought he resembled the suspect. He suggested it was "worth somebody else having a look".

The IPCC, which hand-delivered its report in two boxes to the CPS on Thursday, has focused on how this vague identification led to Mr Menezes being shot dead on the Tube

Quote:
Army and police war of words on last moments underground

POLICE marksmen and army surveillance teams following Jean Charles de Menezes onto a Tube train could not receive orders in the vital moments before he was shot dead because their radios did not work underground.

This communication failure has emerged as the likely reason why Scotland Yard commanders were not told that the 27-year-old Brazilian was not the suicide bomber that they were hunting.

The undercover officers sitting alongside Mr de Menezes are understood to have decided he was not a threat, but they could not get this message back to Gold Command at the Yard nor relay it to the marksmen.

As the firearms officers ran into the station they are believed to have been out of touch with everyone else involved in the operation. It has been disclosed that the two groups involved — one from Scotland Yard and the other from the Army — were using different radio networks as they trailed the innocent

They point the finger at a soldier who was already on attachment to the Yard. Codenamed Tango Ten, he was supposed to photograph any man emerging from the block of flats at Scotia Road in Tulse Hill, which intelligence agents believed was being used by two terror suspects, both of East African origin.

Leaked documents from the Independent Police Complaints Commission show that the soldier was relieving himself behind a tree, so could not film Mr de Menezes. He wrongly described the young Brazilian in police jargon as “an IC1” which means a white, north European man. A senior military source told The Times: “It is quite wrong to blame him for the identification mix-up.

“It’s the job of the whole surveillance team to make a positive identification. After the soldier’s warning that someone worth watching was on his way, other members of the team or an individual should have gone up close to check him out. All this should have been properly recorded back at headquarters, so that every move was properly followed.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1748176,00.html

Quote:
The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that the army provided “technical assistance” to the surveillance operation but insisted the soldiers concerned were “not directly involved” in the shooting.

The Det is made up of the army’s best urban surveillance operators using skills honed in Belfast against republican and loyalist terrorists. Its speciality has always been close target reconnaissance: undercover work among civilians, observing terrorists at close quarters

not directly involved yes he bloody was, he put a target on him wrongly, were the men who were second to try to ID him after Mr.Pee also SSR?

Its describes them sitting beside him? on the bus? he posed no threat.

A Dub in Glasgo

Wrongly identified at the flat complex - reckless incompetence
Never confirmed the identity - reckless incompetence
Allowed a supposedly highly dangerous 'suicide bomber' on the bus for 20 odd minutes - reckless incompetence
Allowed a supposedly highly dangerous 'suicide bomber' into a tube station - reckless incompetence
Allowed a supposedly highly dangerous 'suicide bomber' onto a tube train - reckless incompetence
Pumped 7 bullets into an innocent man's head from 12-18 inches - reckless incompetence or god forbid murder
Total and utter dis-information from the police & government after the murder - reckless iincompetence

Honesty - No chance
Accountibility - no chance
Responsibility - no chance

The guy was slaughtered yet it is deemed legal, British justice works in strange ways

The irony of all this is that a lesser number of people were probably at risk when the incompetent police decided to paint the tube train walls with hint of human flesh, brain & blood.

biko

Here's hoping the family wins a law suit against the cops for unlawful killing.

tallus

biko wrote:

Here's hoping the family wins a law suit against the cops for unlawful killing.

amen to that biko

aidan24326

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Wrongly identified at the flat complex - reckless incompetence
Never confirmed the identity - reckless incompetence
Allowed a supposedly highly dangerous 'suicide bomber' on the bus for 20 odd minutes - reckless incompetence
Allowed a supposedly highly dangerous 'suicide bomber' into a tube station - reckless incompetence
Allowed a supposedly highly dangerous 'suicide bomber' onto a tube train - reckless incompetence
Pumped 7 bullets into an innocent man's head from 12-18 inches - reckless incompetence or god forbid murder
Total and utter dis-information from the police & government after the murder - reckless iincompetence

Honesty - No chance
Accountibility - no chance
Responsibility - no chance

The guy was slaughtered yet it is deemed legal, British justice works in strange ways

The irony of all this is that a lesser number of people were probably at risk when the incompetent police decided to paint the tube train walls with hint of human flesh, brain & blood.

Absolutely true. Whatever about this being manslaughter or anything like that, it was criminal negligence at the very least and a very serious intelligence failure. Then they lied and spread misinformation in the following days to try to cover up what had really happened. Effectively an admission that they had f***ed up really bad and were desperately trying to cover their tracks.

The 'eyewitness' accounts as told in that linked BBC article above are now known to be false for the most part. Is it possible some of these 'eyewitness accounts' were themselves faked in an effort to portray the story from the desirable angle? You bet. For example if you read those eyewitness accounts one guy talks about him (de Menezes) having 'wires coming out of him' and what looked like a bomb. This is known to be nonsense. Even allowing for people's tendencies to exaggerate that still sounds suspiciously way off the mark.

Anyone trying to defend what those cops did, just think is this the kind of world you want to live in? Where the cops can just shoot anybody they like in the head in the name of the 'war on terror' (which is a complete load of BS anyway). It happened in Miami aswell. Cops shot an innocent guy who ran off a plane. They said he claimed to have a bomb. Passengers on the plane contradicted that version of events. Turned out he was mildly mentally unwell and on medication, but was of no threat to anyone. They shot him anyway, in the head (why not shoot him in the leg and take him down?)

I also hope De Menezes' family win a civil case against the Met Police. I wouldn't bet on it though.

civdef

The 'eyewitness' accounts as told in that linked BBC article above are now known to be false for the most part.

Nothing new there. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously inconsistent and unreliable. Have a look at statements resulting from any traffic accident for examples of this. Stretching this into evidence of a grand conspiracy is a bit much.

Where the cops can just shoot anybody they like in the head in the name of the 'war on terror' (which is a complete load of BS anyway).

Whatever your views on the "WoT", you have to admit that a series of bombs killing around 50 people on the London public transport system shortly before this incident meant that the perceved threat was very real.


It should also be borne in mind that different people were conducting the surveillance and the "take down". This was not the result of any one police officer screwing up a surveillance, but still personally pulling the trigger.

Command and control of the incident clearly broke down, but the officers who fired the shots were acting in good faith, as it turned out based on faulty information, which resulted in the tragedy of an innocent man being killed.

It is clear that there were serious deficiencies in the surveillance and overall command of the operation, as evidenced by the decision to go ahead with a Health & Safety prosecution. I'd say there is little doubt the family of the dead man will win their civil case, and deservedly so, in my opinion.

Hobbes

biko wrote:

Here's hoping the family wins a law suit against the cops for unlawful killing.

If they did the UK government would probably charge them for the bullets. After all they made the Birminham 6 pay for thier stay in jail.

Sparks

civdef wrote:

Command and control of the incident clearly broke down, but the officers who fired the shots were acting in good faith, as it turned out based on faulty information, which resulted in the tragedy of an innocent man being killed.

It's this part that I'm flabbergasted at. Seven shots at close range into a restrained man's head? That's not training, that's panic and overreaction. One shot or two would be training - but seven?

HelterSkelter

Manic Moran wrote:

The difference between this event and the manslaughter charges referred to earlier about the bus driver is that in the De Menezes case we're talking about a conscious decision correctly made on information that was bad due to a fault not of their own, vs an unconscious action made as a result of personal carelessness.

NTM

So who exactly do YOU THINK is responsible for the 7 bulllets in Menezes's head then?

Diogenes

It happened in Miami aswell. Cops shot an innocent guy who ran off a plane. They said he claimed to have a bomb.

That man in question was later found out to have been drinking and have a history of serious mental problem. He was, as well, claiming he had bomb.

I'm not saying that his shooting was right, I'm just saying the police following and then shooting an innocent man minding his own business should not be equated to the incident in miami

Passengers on the plane contradicted that version of events. Turned out he was mildly mentally unwell and on medication, but was of no threat to anyone. They shot him anyway, in the head (why not shoot him in the leg and take him down?)

Because if he does have a bomb shooting him in the leg, mean he's probably capable of setting it off. Furthermore the bomb could be attached to the leg.

Look this has been hashed over, over pints, in forums across the country, in the end of the day if someone claims they have a bomb, then you must assume they are willing to set it off, furthermore the only apendage that you can assume its safe to hit is the head.

I'm not saying its right anymore than its right that most anti terrorist swat teams are trained to take out women terrorists first, its the world we live in.

The police used the correct tactics for the situation they thought they were in the questions and accusations should be made at the people who gave them the orders, and the failed intelligence that lead to them doing this dreadful thing.

I also hope De Menezes' family win a civil case against the Met Police. I wouldn't bet on it though.

You're kidding right? The Met as a force is incredibly guilty. And will be found so. The burden of proof is far easier to prove in civil case. However a civil case can't be taken aganist individual officers. Its a question of whether the family will be satisfied with a guilty verdict from a civil case and they are willing to put a price on their pain and loss.

Hobbes

Diogenes wrote:

That man in question was later found out to have been drinking and have a history of serious mental problem. He was, as well, claiming he had bomb.

Yea, you could argue that his wife screaming at the cops while this was going on that he wasn't all right in the head might of meant something, but he was given multiple warnings to give himself up.

Compare that with Menezes who got jumped on by cops on the tube and shot 7 times after being followed there for some time.

TBH, all a terrorist has to do now these days is ring some random strangers and then let the cops kill them.

HelterSkelter

This page makes interesting reading, it gives details of some "discrepancies" between what the police were saying originally and what they said in evidence:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4158832.stm

Diogenes

Hobbes wrote:

Yea, you could argue that his wife screaming at the cops while this was going on that he wasn't all right in the head might of meant something, but he was given multiple warnings to give himself up.

And did he? C'mon seriously, the cops arrive on the plan, everybody is screaming, how are they even supposed to hear the wife, never mind the question is, is she in on it? Is she trying to trick them?

Compare that with Menezes who got jumped on by cops on the tube and shot 7 times after being followed there for some time.

The seven time thing bothers me. To call it over zealous, is euphemistic at best. Now I don't try to pretend I have any knowledge of such a unit's training, but I suspect, there training seeing as it is shoot to kill, was to make absolute certain that a suspect is killed.

TBH, all a terrorist has to do now these days is ring some random strangers and then let the cops kill them.

What? How?

Manic Moran

HelterSkelter wrote:

So who exactly do YOU THINK is responsible for the 7 bulllets in Menezes's head then?

Exactly the same body that the CPS is currently charging: The Metropolitan Police Department. I'm not saying that nobody is at fault, just that it appears that no one individual screwed up to any culpable amount.

Seven shots at close range into a restrained man's head? That's not training, that's panic and overreaction. One shot or two would be training - but seven?

Would one or two make him any less dead? No? In that case, no difference except media perception. The break-line is the shoot/no-shoot decision, not how many times.

Ultimately, one never knows how one is going to react in a lethal situation until one is in it. The natural inclination is usually to want to not kill, and training needs to 'break' that. On the other hand, there are cases where the stress is so high that after the 'line' has been crossed to kill, the shooter goes into a sort of trance. There are multiple incidents of people continuing to pull a trigger long after their pistol's slide is locked back on an empty magazine, and they don't realise it. A good read on the subject is 'On Killing' by a military psychologist named Grossman. Indeed, if you have any interest in the subject of intentionally shooting someone (for professional reasons, preferably!), it's pretty much mandatory reading. He has a sequel book, called 'On Combat' which I haven't read yet.

NTM

banaman

oscarBravo wrote:

I take issue with this idea, if for no other reason than it devalues the concept of murder.

This situation was a gigantic clusterf*ck. It was a tragedy. It was a horrible example of a bad reaction by authorities to a high-pressure situation. All possible steps should be taken to prevent a recurrence. The Met should (and will) face sanction for the huge lapses that allowed it to happen.

But to call it "murder" implies a premeditated decision to unlawfully kill. For all that went horribly wrong in this case, to call it murder is simply inaccurate, and simply compounds the wrongs and errors of that tragic day.

I enclose these two definitions of murder from Dictionary.com
# To kill (another human) unlawfully.
# To kill brutally or inhumanly.
He was held immobile in a headlock if this act was carried out on the Luas by three guys in hoodies(one to hold him, two to shoot him in the head) there would be outrage(and rightly so).
He was shot because he looked "middle-eastern" substitute "looked Irish", "looked Jewish" etc and you see the true racism involved. The Met< like other British police forces is deeply racist and to effectively condone this racism by not prosecuting anyone, or even having a public inquiry only ensures that this will not be the last such event.

civdef

It's this part that I'm flabbergasted at. Seven shots at close range into a restrained man's head? That's not training, that's panic and overreaction. One shot or two would be training - but seven?

Sparks, like me you're a shooting enthusiast, but I'm fairly certain neither of us have had any training on how to deal with suicide bombers. From what I have read of such tactics, though, I understand the objective the overriding concern is to make sure the suspect can't trigger a detonator after being shot, which means overwhelming force to destroy the central nervous system is needed. I understand multiple shots are indeed SOP for such events.

civdef

I enclose these two definitions of murder from Dictionary.com

I think you'll find the common law definition of murder in English law (or here for that matter) is a little more complicated than just looking up dictionary.com.

biko

Hobbes wrote:

If they did the UK government would probably charge them for the bullets.

Didn't the chinese do this?

Sparks

civdef wrote:

Sparks, like me you're a shooting enthusiast, but I'm fairly certain neither of us have had any training on how to deal with suicide bombers. From what I have read of such tactics, though, I understand the objective the overriding concern is to make sure the suspect can't trigger a detonator after being shot, which means overwhelming force to destroy the central nervous system is needed. I understand multiple shots are indeed SOP for such events.

From the SAS who trained the police involved:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1785932,00.html

TWO senior SAS soldiers who trained many of the firearms teams now serving in Britain’s police forces have warned of their concerns about the officers’ skills and psychological suitability for the job.

The two SAS officers, who have left active service, claim the police they trained had not been subjected to adequate psychological and physical tests to establish whether or not they were suitable to use firearms. The police officers were often “gung ho” and unfit.

One of the soldiers said: “When the tension starts to rise and the adrenaline is flowing, the ‘red mist’ seems to descend on armed police officers who become very trigger-happy. This has been shown time and again in training exercises.”

The second soldier said: “We thought that police firearms officers were far more concerned with their personal image, dressing in body armour and looking ‘gung ho’, rather than their professional capabilities. I’m not surprised at the number of mistakes over the years.

“There is no assessment of physical fitness, no psychological profiling, nothing. It’s a major problem.”

The statement also describes a police training exercise run by the SAS in which an armed terrorist group was threatening to kill a hostage. The police team were to rescue the hostage using minimum force.

“I was playing the leader of the armed group and instructed the other members of my group to surrender peacefully once the final assault was initiated. Therefore there was no need for the police to open fire.

“But as the police assault group entered the room they began firing at everything. No one had moved; we were all stood with our hands on our heads.

“The response would have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of all the make- believe terrorists and the hostage alike. So much for the rule of minimum force.”

Also, don't forget - he was shot 7 times, but 11 rounds were fired. At point-blank range on a restrained target. Where did those rounds go? Was there any concern at hitting innocent bystanders? To me, someone firing off all 11 rounds in such a situation is indicative of someone who's paniced - missing with 4 rounds at a range of less than six feet? That's not well-trained. It's not even competent.

MrPudding

Sparks wrote:

It's this part that I'm flabbergasted at. Seven shots at close range into a restrained man's head? That's not training, that's panic and overreaction. One shot or two would be training - but seven?

I don't know but I presume they were attempting to hit the medulla oblongata. A bullet here and the person drops and will not even twitch, this is what you really want if you think they have a bomb. It is kind of small, if it was me doing the shooting I would put a few extra in as well, just to make sure.

Personally I don't think the armed police should face any punishment. From my understanding of it they acted in good faith. You may not like the fact that they killed a man but at the end of the day that is their job. That said, i think there should be charges brought against someone. Who? I don't know.

MrP

aidan24326

civdef wrote:

Nothing new there. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously inconsistent and unreliable. Have a look at statements resulting from any traffic accident for examples of this. Stretching this into evidence of a grand conspiracy is a bit much.

Whatever your views on the "WoT", you have to admit that a series of bombs killing around 50 people on the London public transport system shortly before this incident meant that the perceved threat was very real.

It should also be borne in mind that different people were conducting the surveillance and the "take down". This was not the result of any one police officer screwing up a surveillance, but still personally pulling the trigger.

Command and control of the incident clearly broke down, but the officers who fired the shots were acting in good faith, as it turned out based on faulty information, which resulted in the tragedy of an innocent man being killed.

I agree that eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, and I alluded to as much in my previous post. And while I wasn't trying to stretch that out into some grand conspiracy, it is known that police and other officials did lie about the events of that day in the aftermath, and so it hardly requires that much of a leap into the wild to suggest that maybe, just maybe they might have conjured up an 'eyewitness' account or two to help their side of their story. Not saying they did, just that it's by no means outside the scope of what they would/might do in such circumstances.

I take your point about the gravity of the situation given that bombs had just killed 50-odd people on buses and trains. But there are still elements of this whole of chain of events that just don't add up. To say that it was incompetence is an understatement.

I mean if you're potentially dealing with a bomb-wielding terrorist who might be intent on slaughtering a whole lot of people on a bus/train or otherwise, then first off you'd better make bloody sure you've got the right guy. Now ok, let's just say that when they began tailing De Menezes they actually were following a real bomber. They let him get on a bus! And then allowed him all the way into the tube station. Had he been a real suicide bomber he would have had ample time to detonate his bomb before they got near him, considering that to trigger a bomb like that usually only requires a split second.

All I'd say is, this guy was ultimately just an ordinary Joe Soap who was no more a terorrist than I am. So if it could happen to him it could happen to anyone.

sovtek

MrPudding wrote:

You may not like the fact that they killed a man but at the end of the day that is their job.

Killing people is their job?

HelterSkelter

aidan24326 wrote:

All I'd say is, this guy was ultimately just an ordinary Joe Soap who was no more a terorrist than I am. So if it could happen to him it could happen to anyone.

He was a Joe Soap with dark skin, that was his only crime.

civdef

These days when former SAS personnel talk to the press, you have to suspect they're more worried about potential future book deals. I'm not sure the ones quoted are talking about suicide bomber tactics in general - which as stated, I understand involve an SOP of multiple shots to the head.

HelterSkelter

Two police firearms officers involved in the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes are to resume "full operational duties", Scotland Yard has said...

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1229139,00.html