Another victim of terrorism
As it turns out, the man shot by British police was not connected with the bombings in London. I was furious when I heard this — the police are supposed to stop innocent people being killed, not shoot them in the head five times for getting on a train. Wearing dark skin and a big coat doesn’t make you a terrorist.
But because the eyewitness accounts were so confused (some people saw machine-guns, others pistols; some people saw him with a backpack that he didn’t have), I thought it would be prudent to use Google News to find the most coherent version of events. The Daily Mail provides this background:
Mr Menezes emerged from a house in Tulse Hill, south London, on Friday morning that was under surveillance because of a suspected link to the attempted bomb attacks. His clothing and behaviour added to the officers’ suspicions, police said.
He caught a bus to Stockwell Tube where he was challenged by officers, who told him to stop. The man then bolted down an escalator, according to witnesses.
He apparently tried to get on a train before he was apparently shot five times in the head by an officer with an automatic pistol.
On that basis, it’s hard to fault what the police did. He wasn’t picked out of the crowd because he was wearing a big coat, he had been followed from a house that was under surveillance as part of the anti-terrorist investigations. There was no way they could have let him get on that train, and there was no way they could have given him a chance to detonate the bomb he might have had.
Jean Charles de Menezes is, sadly, another victim of the terrorists.
Update: Hmm. Now I’m wondering why they let him catch the bus.
Update: It seems he wasn’t seen leaving a house, but a block of flats, which, combined with his bus journey, makes the police defence sound very shaky indeed. I’m not sure what to make of it any more.
And why didn’t the police use a stun gun to subdue him ??
Looks like the UK Police have taken a leaf out of the Victoria Police in regards to shoot first, ask questions later.
And I wonder if this policy will involve shooting ANYBODY who is not white, middle class and looks respectable ?
Oh, come off it, Frank. There’s a very good reason not to use a stun gun on such a suspect: if they are wearing a bomb vest, the electric current might set it off. That’s the same reason why they shoot for the head and not the torso.
Rob, your final reasoning stinks. It stinks and your conclusion that Mister Menezes is “another victim of the terrorists” also stinks.
You first get angry at a scenario where an innocent man gets “picked out of a crowd for wearing a big coat”, then proceed to accept a scenario where an innocent man also gets tailed and shot for wearing a big coat, the only difference being that he came out of an block of flats (not a house – see these articles from the NYT and the Times) that was under surveillance.
There’s an elephant in the room here – the police are monitoring a block of flats containing a number of households, one or more (but certainly not all) of which contains their suspected terrorist/s. Why Menezes? Did they identify him amongst the rest of the flats’ inhabitants soley on the basis of his clothing and “suspicious behaviour” (a phrase which hasn’t been clarified by the police statements)? Has the official explanation really given us reason to believe that his death was an unfortunate inevitability? To be brutally honest with you Rob, I think you’ve been too easily satisfied by this explanation. In any case, the Brazilian government certainly aren’t too impressed with it.
You say Menezes was a victim of the terrorists and the kind of security climate they’ve created. I say that this security climate should never be passively accepted by citizens because the price of incompetence from the authorities is the death or deprivation of rights of innocents. As far as I’m concerned it was the police that targeted and shot Menezes five times in head and they are the ones accountable for the circumstances surrounding his death.
As for the shoot-to-kill policy itself, despite former Met Commissioner Lord Stevens’ faith inthe policy, consider the scenario where a would-be suicide bomber holds a dead man’s switch . In this case, there is no guarantee that shooting for the head will prevent a detonation of a bomb, if the target is indeed in the possession of one.
You’re right. it was a block of flats, not a house. That certainly changes things — and as my afterthought pointed out, it doesn’t make sense that they would let him on the bus if they thought he had a bomb. Something stinks.
As for the shoot-to-kill policy… well, this case suggests that the threshold is too low.
I’m not sure that the risk of a dead man’s switch is significant, though. If they let the bomber go, he’ll blow things up according to his plan. If they try to capture him, he’ll still blow things up. If they shoot him, there’s a good chance that there is no such switch, and disaster will be averted.
In short, I have no idea what to make of the situation.
AT least they could use bullets loaded with a sedative like they use for animals etc, then they can disarm the suspect and then question hime etc
The terrorists in all their vile, murderous fury may burn, cut, imprison, torture, shoot and burn us. They can do all this and more to the flesh that surrounds our being. But there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot take away a single one of our freedoms – we can only do that ourselves.
The terrorists are winning.
A number of people online have stressed that “he ran from the police” – as if this indicates guilt.
Just think of it like this – you’re in Brazil, and leave your flat to head to town. While in a train station, you notice some men in street clothes who seem to be following you. As you start to walk faster, the men quicken their pace also, start yelling at you in Portugese, and draw guns.
If I was in this situation, I’d run like buggery too.
Well im not going to pass judgement untill all the facts have come out I susspect that most of Robs readers are willing to blame the police regardless.
The issue of plain clothes/undercover policeman has always been an issue for me.
On the way home from Freo one night (2 am) I was being followed quite closely by a new dark Commodore which I suspected was a cop car but didn’t know for sure. About half way home the driver proceded to flash the headlights at me and put a blue flashing light on the roof.
I didn’t stop because I wasn’t sure that they were police in the car. They shot past me on the outside and cut me off and stopped. I went around and continued on my way. At this point I had dialled the police on my mobile phone and reported a Commodore was harassing me.
The Commodore then caught me back up and pulled up beside me showing a police ID badge. I then decided to stop. These guys were supremely pissed off that I didn’t stop. They were yelling at me “Why didn’t you stop? We had our flashing light on.”. I replied that I didn’t know who they were and without identification I wasn’t going to stop. They continued to have a go at me for 10 minutes, then gave me a RBT and left.
I complained to the freo police station that these guys were driving like idiots. I was assured that they were going to be repimanded.
I can see how this Brazilian fellow decided to run when a few plain clothes policeman decided to tell him to stop and drew their guns.
Ok
Just a juxtaposition here.
A terrorist blows up a train. According to our Illustrious Leaders, responsibility lies solely with the bombers. You cannot blame any of the preceding events (Iraq war, etc etc) for any of the actions of any of the bombers. They and they alone are responsible for their actions.
Some of us suggest that these people had reasons for their actions. Not justifiable reasons, possibly not even rational reasons. But they had reasons. We, however, are shouted down as a pack of appeasing lefties, who are Soft On Terror. PM Tony tells us, “The people responsible for terror are the terrorists”.
Now, a group of policemen shoot an unarmed man. The reasons for it seem to be that he looked foreign and was wearing a backpack, and then when some folks pulled a gun on him he ran away. Now he is dead.
Apparently though, this is also the fault of the terrorists. We are allowed to ascribe reasons to the actions of the police. We are allowed to say, oh, they had a rationale for their actions. It may be weak, it may be entirely specious, but they have a rationale. It was not their fault.
So -
Bomber pulls the pin. All his responsibility.
Copper pulls the trigger. Not his responsibility.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Here’s the approach as I see it. Bombers who take innocent life do so for what they believe is a rational reason. It is not, in my judgement – taking life, especially innocent life, is never justified. And I abhor and condemn the bombings. But if we are to effectivell halt this sort of thing, we need to understand what the bombers were so angry about, so disconnected, that they blew themselves and others up. And maybe it is our own actions that have in part contributed to that.
And policemen who shoot unarmed folk in the Underground – they are wrong too. But once again, I accept that there are circumstances surrounding the incident that do not allow us to make black and white judgements about their actions. Bombs have gone off in the last 3 weeks, killing people. They’re on edge, and they acted in good fatih (I hope).
We need to understand the backstory to both occurences.
Why is everyone ignoring the bloody obvious?
The block of flats contained terrorists. He leaves the block of flats. As the flats contain terrorists he is followed by plain clothes police because they dont want him to know he is being followed, for obvious reasons.
His clothing and the fact that he is at the train station lead the police who are following to believe there is a possibility he may have a bomb and be planning an attack, so they move to sudue him. He then refuses to stop and instead runs dicrectly for the train. The police now have no choice but to not risk that he is indeed a bomber and about to destroy the train he just ran into, and many people.
To save these people and themselves, they shoot him in the head to make sure there is no chance that he will detonate his device in his last seconds of life (and dont start on dead man switches, you know the chances of them being used are so low, youre just clutching at straws).
It is not the fault of the police, they did what they had to do. On this occasion they happened to be wrong, but what if they werent? They cannot take chances and think through all the points people have raised about whether hes a bomber or not – they have the number one priority of stopping a terrorist attack. One mans life is less important than the many that would have been killed on that train if he had been a bomber and they hadnt taken that chance.
The only question that really needs answering is why did they let him get on a bus. Its possible they didnt consider the bus a target given that most of the attacks have taken place in the train system, but thats just me speculating.
And all the whinging about civil liberties is very short-sighted. A few civil liberties taken away from particular people at particular times are necessary to prevent people dying. Somehow I think people dying rates a bit more highly than the odd person being detained without doing anything. Mistakes like this one happen, but in the end it prevents attacks.
His death is regrettable, but completely justifiable.
“taking life, especially innocent life, is never justified”
That is also wrong. Nothing “never justified”.
I have to agree with Robert. Why let him on the bus if he was perceived as being such a threat? Couldn’t he have detonated the (non-existant) bomb on the bus?
I’m not castigating the police, either, Nic. I just think this sort of incident is regretable, as do you, and that steps should be taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Merely suggesting that some review of what happened is necessary to avoid it happening again is not a bad thing. Limiting civilian deaths is key to the ‘war on terror’.
Alright then Nic, let me rephrase.
“Taking innocent life is never justified”
or
“Making ad hoc decisions on the run about a person’s guilt or innocence, then shooting them in the head, is not justifiable”
So what, do we shoot people on the off chance that they might be terrorists? Give it a rest….”One mans life is less important than the many that would have been killed on that train if he had been a bomber and they hadnt taken that chance.” Oh great, now we’re using expediency to justify things, That’s a really slippery slope there, old son.
“…dont start on dead man switches, you know the chances of them being used are so low, youre just clutching at straws…” And what do you think the chance sof him being a bomber are? Significantly higher?
I’m not having a go at the cops involved. I’m saying that this is a bad event, which instead of shrugging our shoulders about and saying, oh well, sometimes you have to destroy the village to save it, we can do better.
Plus I was contrasting the attitude of a heap of people on this incident with the attitudes on the bombings.
Nic,
I multiple plain clothed people pointed guns at you and spoke in a harsh tone without presenting evidence that they are law enforcement officers, wouldn’t you do the Harold as well?
If you answer no, I think there are jobs in Iraq for people like you.
Craig, Id say they would have shown ID and not pulld their guns until he started running, thats standard procedure. Why do we assume they didnt do that?
“And what do you think the chances of him being a bomber are? Significantly higher?”
Yes.
Another item of information has come to light. The Brazilian fellow was attacked 2 weeks ago by some poms, so it may go someway to explain why he bolted from the plain clothed coppers.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the cops should let suspects get away but wouldn’t it have been better to use uniformed officers to stop him. If someone says they are a police officer, why should you believe them without proof?
And the outright dismissal of dead man switches is not valid anymore as if I was a suicide bomber, knowing that I would be shot in the head no questions asked if caught, I would make sure I had a dead man switch.
There is something extremely wrong about this situation. If the man left his home carrying a jacket that may be concealing a bomb, then they should have grabbed him well before he was considered a danger in a public area. People new to a country face a great challenge to adopt to the culture and language. The situation was avoidable. Anyone darker than pale white could be rightly worried about that this event.
So… more importantly… what steps are going to be taken to ensure that this sort of mistake is not made in the future?
Anyone darker than pale white could be rightly worried about that this event.
Well none of us have anything to worry about then.
One mans life is less important than the many that would have been killed on that train if he had been a bomber and they hadnt taken that chance.
And all the whinging about civil liberties is very short-sighted.
Mistakes like this one happen, but in the end it prevents attacks.
His death is regrettable, but completely justifiable.
Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made by other people so that the more worthy may live. It’s just the way things are. Well said Nic. Utilitarians unite!!!
As with corporal punishment, the chance you might kill an innocent outwieghs the chance you might let a guilty person go free. That seems to have been lost in the war on terror.
Does anyone have solid info on whether any of them had police gear on?
If they didn’t, if basically a young guy from Brazil was chased by a bunch of thug-looking types in hoodies etc who had weapons drawn, and he ran away, and they caught him, held him down and shot him 5 times, then I hope Thanky Novy Taube extract 2 million quid from the Met while Lula extracts a similar number of pounds of flesh from Blair’s cred on the world stage.
God, we’re letting them win, aren’t we??
Guernica, all the reports I have read say they were plain clothed at the time.
And don’t talk to God, you might start sounding like GW…
Why are we assuming they didnt calmly show him ID and ask him to stop?
I agree with you Nic that if one life must be sacrificed to save thousands and it is absolutely unavoidable (ie no other course of action would save those lives) then while regrettable, such actions are justifiable. However as i understand the facts to be, they raise question about 1)the professional competency of intelligence agencies and 2)the motives of those directly involved. On the first count, it is presumable police had some intelligence to indicate that a particular wanted terrorist was in that house (ie someone with the name of the faces off the CCTV footage they picked up was registered to be living at that house). Now the intelligence should havfe included photo identification and even if it didn’t, if it provided a name or other similar details, it wouldn’t have taken much to match that with photo identfication, so hence the police would have known not just that there was a terrorist living at the house, but exactly what it looked like. Therefore this really makes the police defence of mistaken identity (ie they thought he was the terrorist) fairly unlikely, and means that if in the unlikely event that it is the truth, the intelligence agencies were downright incompetent. Now all human beings are fallible, but i’d as a citizen want to hope that those who are my last line of defence are a little more comptent at doing their job.
Secondly(as others have said) if the police were as concerned for public safety as they say they were, then they would have shot him before he got on the bus, and certainly long before he got near a train (for goodness sake if he detonated the bomb while running towards the subway building the same chaos would have ensued). In fact if they knew terrorists were in the house (and hence one would hope they had surveillance on the house) they should have locked down the building to ensure he never left the building in the first place. Again, this either means the intelligence agencies are lying about their motives because they’re not prepared to be transparent and tell us all the truth, or they’re downright incompetent.
Very scary indeed.
Wombat
Yeah, the apparent level of intelligence, or lack thereof, is a worry. Hopefully theres stuff we arent being told that means the intelligence makes more sense.
My point is that from what the police knew at the time, and the way they saw it, their course of action was justified. If there was a fult in this, it lies with the crap intelligence they got (we dont know if it was bad or just incorrect, theres a difference)
Hey, why need intelligence when you can make it up as you go?
It is not as if they haven’t done it before. Dodgy intelligence claims another life…
Hello Nick.
“The block of flats contained terrorists.”
How can you be sure of that… And even if true, does that mean EVERYONE in that block is a suspected terrorist.
NO.
“He leaves the block of flats. As the flats contain terrorists he is followed by plain clothes police because they dont want him to know he is being followed, for obvious reasons.”
Fair enough.
“His clothing and the fact that he is at the train station lead the police who are following to believe there is a possibility he may have a bomb and be planning an attack, so they move to sudue him. ”
How. If they were in plain clothes and didn’t identify themselves, then there’s a problem.
“He then refuses to stop and instead runs dicrectly for the train. The police now have no choice but to not risk that he is indeed a bomber and about to destroy the train he just ran into, and many people.”
No doubt about it, an impossible situation for the police, I agree completely there.
“To save these people and themselves, they shoot him in the head to make sure there is no chance that he will detonate his device in his last seconds of life”
Assuming they were absolutelty sure he had a device, and that shooting him in the head was the only way to stop him detonating it.
“It is not the fault of the police, they did what they had to do. On this occasion they happened to be wrong, but what if they werent? They cannot take chances and think through all the points people have raised about whether hes a bomber or not”
But if EVERYONE suspicious is feared to be a BOMBER, then we have a serious problem.
“One mans life is less important than the many that would have been killed on that train if he had been a bomber and they hadnt taken that chance.”
NOT IF HE IS COMPLETELY INNOCENT OF *ANY* CRIME. Tell that to his friends and family. I bet you would not tolerate for ONE MICROSECOND if someone said that about your loved one.
“The only question that really needs answering is why did they let him get on a bus. ”
yes they do need to answer that.
“Its possible they didnt consider the bus a target given that most of the attacks have taken place in the train system, but thats just me speculating.”
Yes you are just speculating, especially given you’re ignoring the fact that a BUS WAS BLOWN UP IN THE *** ACTUAL *** ATTACKS.
“And all the whinging about civil liberties is very short-sighted.”
Like fuck it is. This is EXACTLY what the terrorists want to see happen. If you assume the line that they “hate our freedoms”, then their actions are causing our governments to take our freedoms away from us, and that includes our right NOT TO BE SUMMARILY EXECUTED BY THE COPS”. If the “war on terror” is all about preserving out freedoms, then any move to take them away because of the “war on terror” would be to lose the war. SIMPLE LOGIC.
“A few civil liberties taken away from particular people at particular times are necessary to prevent people dying. ”
Are they??
“Somehow I think people dying rates a bit more highly than the odd person being detained without doing anything. ”
He wasn’t detained. HE HAD HIS FUCKING BRAINS BLOWN OUT ALL OVER HIS FELLOW COMMUNTERS.
“His death is regrettable, but completely justifiable.”
Again, you would not be saying this about a love one of yours.
Please think more carefully about this.
eddie
Eddie, Ive addressed your points already.
And Im a pragmatist, it doesnt matter who it is. I would not have a different position no matter who the person was, including if it was myself. I have said this before yet people keep wasting their time using it.
Here’s a thick coat, a fake beard and a turban Nic. There’s a bunch of jittery London cops on the tube. Make us proud old son.
Alah Auakbar!
Moron.
I presume Rob’s comment is coz u didn’t spell it rite. Try salem sahabi, it works btr
Whats that in English?
Well my friend who speaks Arabic taught me-so from her i know it’s peace friend. P.S. i only know like 7 words in arabic so far so i can’t tell you much else.
Wombat
i heard a news report today that the train driver also panicked, ran and was chased by police, but wasn’t shot.
did anyone else hear this?
found a link to the story
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050722/344/fnze5.html
[Comment deleted --- spam is not welcome on this site. --RC.]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1537457,00.html#followup
De Menezes was not wearing a thick jacket.
He did not jump the ticket barrier.
What am I supposed to think now people?
Well if I rocked back and forth reciting religious notation all day everyday, this would provide a perfect environment for mind control and suggestion.
The funding of many of the Mosques around the world come from Saudi Arabia. In Australia not all the mosques contain moderate Muslims as interviewed on our news and current affair programs.
When I speak to Afghan women they point towards Pakistan
Pakistan has territory that not even its own Government will enter under some agreement and they are too frightened to. The Pakistani army men will not go in there.
Pakistan has already had the world finger pointed at it with its institutions that enlist young boys and the routined praying schedules for food and a roof over their heads.
Could we find Osama there? Mr Bush needs to go investigate.
this is what happens when arseholes collaborate with politicians and turn great productive countrys into 3rd world scum with never ending mass immigration from the muslim 3rd world
This is a warning to the recent arrivals being directed to this site by WA’s One Nation representative, Sue Bateman — racism will not be tolerated, and neither will spam. Either engage constructively, or I will not hesitate to ban you.
This is your only warning.
My parents are from Sicily. My partner and I intend to travel in Europe at the end of the year. My mother warned me the last time I visited my folks to “have a shave before you go overseas or you’ll end up like that poor Brazilian bastard.”
That’s not an argument, just an anecdote.
I’m a little troubled by the claim made earlier that the shooting of said chap was “completely justifiable”. I dont think it’s remotely justifiable, but that’s just me. However, I can understand someone saying his shooting was understandable – wrong but still identifiable as a symtom of a terrible situation/environment/atmosphere. But to claim it’s “completely justifiable” to shoot an innocent man, in the head, SEVERAL TIMES – may very well by the symptom of some kind of hysteria.
Hah! I wanted my father (Maltese origin) to grow a beard as a social experiment, but he wants to leave the sideburn and beard experimentation back in the 70’s, where it belongs.