'Suicide Bomber' shooting - the verdict

[crofter]

Basically this De Menezes case has mirrored everything to do with why Britain is now at war in Iraq, misguided and misinformed seemingly "concrete" intellegance information that has been passed on and lives have been lost through duff information, but these guys who gunned down De Menezes were serving this country and only doing what they were trained to do so unless you want to call every soldier (who are bravely serving this country in foreign fields) murderers who always have their hand on the trigger you are stepping on dangerous ground.
Of course the blame should lie at someones door but surely some of you guys are pointing your pistols in the wrong direction??
And let's put this one to bed when dealing with a suspected suicide bomber, I would imagine every law of the land goes out the door as the self preservation society must surely kick in ... ie these guys were under no pretences that this was a "shoot to kill" job.

[c.j.jaxxon]

Everybody's made some good points about this subject. We here in the states (if you give a care about what's in the news) heard about that case too. The history of the police here in the US and especialy in the Chicagoland area has a history of shooting someone "by accident" and covering it up by having the TAX PAYERS foot the bill for the lawsuit of defending the officer in question and payout to the victim's family with the officer winding up back on the streets as usual. We've talked about a way to have the actual officer be sued instead of suing the city that way the cop responsible for the shooting has to pay instead of the TAX PAYERS paying. And the way these cops are trained disturbs me to no end. If a person is unarmed why would you aim for the heart or the head? Wouldn't you just try to disable'em by shooting'em in the arm or the leg or something. The first thing you here the news say about a cop shooting (almost ALWAYS a black person) is "he was running and he turned around and started shooting and I returned fire" or "it looked like he had a gun". Let's face it y'all, I don't know about the po po, one time, five-o or the law (as we call'em over here) over there, but these cops here in the city are trigger happy and the ones in the boring lily white suburbs are waiting for something to happen so they CAN shoot somebody. Recruiting more cops is NOT a problem here but I can tell you one thing, it seems good cops are in short supply because quite a few of them have been caught up in drug deals, some of them are GANG BANGERS, and the women cops ALL have attitude problems which makes them more dangerous. With all that said I'm a supporter of the police because I despise drugs, and gang banging, but if the cops, black or white are targeting anybody and everybody they think is a criminal or they take an hour to get to a 911 call OR they don't feel they should turn in the rogue cop partner or other cops breaking the laws THEY enforce, then they are derelict in there duties as an officer and should get the f*&k off the force!

[Sam Slater]

Hey c.j. a view from a different perspective is always welcome. I think that the UK cases are a little different to the Chicago cases though. You guys obviously have more gun crime so I'm guessing that dealing with armed criminals is the basis of police training from very early on. Also dealing with a guy with a gun -while you also have a gun- is a little different than dealing with a terrorist bomber.

The Brazilian guy that was killed was boarding an underground tube train full of people. We're dealing with bombers who will blow themselves up. There's no fear that police will kill them, as they're hoping to kill themselves anyway. So there's no 'talking them out of it'. Words & negotiation just means certain death. for them, for you, for colleague's, and for innocent by-standers who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Life is cheap for these people and they want to die. It's their sole mission in life. There's no 'textbook' that you can turn to, to deal with -and stop- someone who really, really 'wants to die'.

It's unfortunate, but it's life in London in 2006.

[c.j.jaxxon]

I agree! That's IF the guy they killed was a terrorist. But by all accounts it seems to be an "accident" although an unfortunate one, one I always nod my head at in shame.

[Sam Slater]

They made a split second decision.......it was wrong. What if they hadn't shot the guy and he blew up 200 innocent civilians, along with 50 police officers?

Would that just send the same 'incompetent' message for doing the exact opposite action? When police officers can 'mind read' or 'predict the future' than mistakes won't happen. Until then we're gonna have to live with mistakes every so often.

[Flat_Eric]

algarve addick wrote:

>>>


Perfectly innocent?? Maybe.

Or maybe not, even.

Just because nothing was found at the house, doesn't necessarily mean that it hadn't been there earlier.

Absence of proof doesn't necessarily mean absence of guilt.

If these guys were innocent then they're justified in feeling pissed off. But if they were involved in something, then no doubt they'll be feeling pretty smug about the whole thing.

It may have been an intelligence cock-up. But then again as the old saying goes - no smoke without fire.

[Flat_Eric]

Sam Slater wrote:

>>


I always ask myself the same question.

Another question I ask myself when these people take to the streets protesting about how "anti-Muslim" the British government / police / society etc. etc. is, is this:

If their lot in Britain is so bad, why don't they just fuck off and go live in some Muslim country like Pakistan or Malaysia or Indonesia or Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Egypt or wherever?

The counter-argument that "well a lot of them were born here" doesn't wash with me at all, because it seems to me that the "Muslim Community" wants to have its cake and eat it half the time: Muslims expect everyone else to bend over backwards to accommodate and be "sensitive towards" their religious beliefs / culture etc. Yet there's often little or no reciprocal tolerance on their part.

Because it also seems to me that many "British Muslims" want to be "British" when it suits them (e.g. harping on about their "rights as British citizens", claiming state benefits, bringing their relatives to the UK to live etc.). And yet they also want to be "Muslim" - again when it suits them (criticising supposed "anti-Muslim" behavior by the police, having their daughters circumcised and / or forced into arranged marriages, demanding that blasphemy laws be extended to include Islam, demanding local authority information leaflets be printed in Urdu as well as English ... etc. etc. etc.).

Compared to most Muslim countries, the UK is a bastion of tolerance and multiculturalism. At least in the UK - for all its faults - people (including Muslims) are free to protest, express their grievances in public and have their say.

[colin]

the police are in a no win situation, they are expected to serve and protect the community, they get slaughtered if they fail to do this and people are killed and injured in terrorist attacks, and they get slaughtered if they react to a situation and it turns out to be a mistake due to incorrect information or misidentification. as has been well stated in this thread, this is a country in the midst of a terrorist threat and mistakes will be made at times when people are under extreme pressure to keep the situation under control, or appear to keep it under control, it's human nature.
the crime here was the disgraceful attempt to "spin" this incident in favour of the police afterwards, for which the buck must stop with Ian Blair. if the error had been admitted once it became clear, then there would have been a more sympathetic view from the public and media alike, as well the criticism.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]the crime here was the disgraceful attempt to "spin" this incident in favour of the police afterwards, for which the buck must stop with Ian Blair.[/quote]

The sad thing is, in this age of media frenzy, mistakes aren't tolerated. I'm not excusing Ian Blair, I'm just saying that if the media & public were a little more tolerant then he may have decided to tell the truth from the start....