'Suicide Bomber' shooting - the verdict

[IdolDroog]

Ahh,...the main reason I dislike this forum. A collective bunch of middle aged men complaining about authorities, politicians etc when none of them could probably do much better. Everyone seems to overlook the difficulties faced by people when dealing with these situations. Dont forget they would have had anbout another 100 issues on the go at the same time, too easy to blame the person in charge.

[DavidS]

Eric, as usual you are exactly right. If the firearms officer had been charged with manslaughter, it would have been extremely difficult to have recruited anyone to perform this vital function in the future. The mistake was, apparently, made by the surveillance team, and unless I have missed something, it is not clear whether this was made up of police or others from the security services. Those who bang on about 'a bunch of cowboys' would do well to reflect that shootings by police are fairly low in this country compared with certain others, with Brazil possibly the worst.

[Flat_Eric]

IdolDroog wrote:

>>>


And yet you're a regular visitor and prolific poster yourself (1416 and counting).

[Flat_Eric]

IdolDroog wrote:


>>

That I agree with.

[Pervert]

Good point: I couldn't do their job, and am glad that someone can. But at what point does kill become overkill?

Anyway, my main gripe is with those giving the orders and then covering their own arses afterwards. Someone screwed up badly, and an innocent man died.

One question: if they had that building under surveillance because there was a suspected bomber there, and killed de Menezes as a result of that belief, what happened to the original target? And why has no one else asked that question?

[steve56]

excuses if you ask me.Caractacus wrote:

> Good point: I couldn't do their job, and am glad that someone
> can. But at what point does kill become overkill?
>
> Anyway, my main gripe is with those giving the orders and then
> covering their own arses afterwards. Someone screwed up badly,
> and an innocent man died.
>
> One question: if they had that building under surveillance
> because there was a suspected bomber there, and killed de
> Menezes as a result of that belief, what happened to the
> original target? And why has no one else asked that question?

[DavidS]

You make a good point about what happened to the original suspect. What is far from clear is who exactly had the building under survelliance. This is not a minor matter because it seems that the shooting occurred because of misunderstandings between the survelliance team, Cressida Dick and the firearms officers. If it was a joint operation between police and security services then questions need to be asked. There is little doubt that following the collapse of the Soviet Union the security services muscled in on areas which used to be the sole responsibility of police and that that led to resentments. I don't know if that was a factor in this tragic case but it is possible if the survelliance team was not a police one. It is easy to say Sir Ian Blair was lying but it appears initially someone misled him.

[IdolDroog]

1416 over quite a long period of time though.....don't post that often...twice a week maybe. rarely start threads. but point taken

[algarve addick]

I stand by my original assertion that the police force in this country are incompetent.
If Mr De Menezes was thought to be such a danger, why did they wait for him to get into a packed Underground train before letting him 'have it?' Wouldn't it be plain common sense to apprehend or even shoot him(!) at his home address or at least in a less dangerous place than a crowded tube station? The end result of this unbelievable folly could have been even more catastrophic if this poor man really had been concealing a bomb.
As for the brothers in Forest Gate, again the 'Intelligence Services'(Ha!)/ Police Force hardly covered themselves in glory - shooting and assaulting two perfectly innocent civilians.Now, if this incident alone doesn't constitute a gung-ho, cowboy attitude to law and order in this country, I don't know what does.Sure, it's a tough job being an armed copper, but if you don't have the mental stability to do it, GET OUT! I reckon if there had been a death in this incident, we could have seen serious civil unrest in the East end of London, and possibly beyond. Thank God that never happened.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]I reckon if there had been a death in this incident, we could have seen serious civil unrest in the East end of London, and possibly beyond. Thank God that never happened.[/quote]

It was a scew up..........so what? Shit happens. There's a scew up everytime someone gets run over by a car.........people still drive. Life is full of 'accidents' & 'screw ups'. Even the SAS don't have a 100% success rate at counter terrorism, and they're known as the most well trained soldiers in the world.

What gets me about the 'muslim communities' unrest, is that they were quick to gather around the local police station when a few locals are roughly -& wrongly- arrested, but they didn't bother gathering around the same police station 'enraged' at over 50 deaths by bombers on 7th July last year.

Like I said......times have changed. We're not dealing with IRA bombers whole quite happily take prison when cornered. These latest threats will kill themselves and everyone else around them, in the blink of an eye.

Call me cruel, heartless or whatever you want but my girlfriend use's the London tubes on a regular basis. I'd happily take the police shooting another 50 innocents dead, if it stops just 1 terrorist attack.

I'd rather be killed by a police fuckup, than a scummy terrorist anyday.