Let’s pretend it never happened
And before we castigate the British police over the death of Mr de Menezes, it is worth acknowledging the extraordinary efficiency with which the four second-wave London bombers have been apprehended, with no innocent bystanders hurt.
Yes, all the police need to do after executing an innocent person is to arrest four more people, and it’s all okay!
ps your IR coverage is fantastic. I haven’t been commenting - but I’m following it closely; brilliant work.
It’s easy to say the police shouldn’t have shot the Brazilian guy, but let’s put it into perspective…
2 seperate terrorist strikes involving multiple stikes at tube stations
the guy did something to draw attention to himself on a tube station
he didn’t follow directions
he ran
what would we be saying if they hadn’t shot and he was a bomber? Slack police cause another tragedy?
love them or hate them - their actions were justified even though they were tragically wrong.
here’s a really simple tip - if police with really big guns are screaming at you and you don’t understand - NO NOT RUN.
here’s a really simple tip - if police with really big guns are screaming at you and you don’t understand - NO NOT RUN.
If people in plain clothes waving guns start screaming at you? If, once you lie down on the ground, they’re going to shoot you seven times in the head?
And they didn’t find him at the station, looking suspicious. They followed him from his house, as he got on a bus etc. Surely if they thought he had a bomb, that was the time to stop him.
Bill, even if you accept that Menezes’s death was a tragic accident, it is undeniable that he was an innocent bystander and that he was about as hurt as you can get.
But we need to remember:
1. He was followed because he came out of a block of flats, one of which was under surveillance. There is no evidence that Menezes was in that flat.
2. He was wearing an ordinary denim jacket, not a “bulky coat”.
3. He caught a bus to get to the station. Given that previous terror attacks involved bombs detonated on buses, surely the police had an obligation to stop him getting on the bus?
4. He ran from a group of people who were not wearing uniforms, but who were waving guns and shouting at him. The train driver also ran, which shows that it was not an unreasonable response.
Like you, I thought the police were justified in their actions. But the more I read, and the more it became clear that the early statements made by the police were inaccurate, the less I can support what they did. They murdered an innocent man.
One for London. How’s the Iraqi front going?
The police involved in the shooting aren’t the only issue. After Menezes ran, they did exactly as they were trained to do.
My question: Exactly how did they first confront Menezes? Did one policeman walk up and ask if he had a moment or two while the rest stood back a respectful distance? Would that stop a true bomber? How much training do police get in how to confront a potential suspect in such a way as to stop non-bombing suspects from freaking out and doing a runner, yet at the same time preventing true bombers from bombing? That first contact is crucial.
Truly bizzare.
If the police thought that he was such a threat that he had to be shot, why didn’t they use the new powers they have and detain him for 14 days without legal representation to ascertain whether he was a terrorist. Inconvienient, but a lot better than being shot at short notice. It has never happened to me, but running away from people who clearly aren’t police and are waving guns at you when you are jittery about terrorists who have blown people up probably isn’t an irrational or unpredictable response. As you are no doubt aware there are more problems with that editorial, but not quite as bad as the one you have pointed out.
“To do so would be to fall into the habits of the Left intellectuals who, following every attack since 9/11, have sought to blame the victims rather than the perpetrators of terrorism” - I would argue that in this case the victims of terrorism have been Mr de Menezes, his friends and family and the British public and the perpetrators of terrorism were the police who shot him (not all British police). If terrorism is the cause of terror through a violent action for a political purpose, then the terror is the worry of many London commuters that they could be shot by their own, the violent action is the shooting of Mr De Menezes and the political purpose is up to others to decide. I think the political reason was that they didn’t want to live with having allowed a terrorist to kill people for the rest of their lives, while they didn’t take the iniative and shoot him dead.
Would he have been shot given the same circumstances, except that he was white and of ‘pure english stock’? I think not.
Fuck the idiot. If teh police say stop, it is against the law to keep running. The law is there to protect people, even those that are suspected of being guilty of something.
I agree, Watchdog. Fuck the idiot. Of course, I probably disagree with you about who is the idiot…
The hasty/efficient apprehension of ‘those involved in the bombings’, particularly after Scotland Yard’s incredibly inept attempt to disarm a would be terror suspect, who was actually just an electrician on his way to work[which they could have checked up on while they had him under surveillance], it gives me Guildford Four goosebumps.
The state is kind of crazy. It is like saying Stalin was a nice guy if you don’t count the gulags.