'Suicide Bomber' shooting - the verdict

[mart]

So yet again I ask the same couple of questions.
The police had an address, they were observing, why didn't they go in?
Why did they think he was the suspect, there must have been other people leaving/entering the building.
Plus, of course, the obvious one. Why let him get on a bus, get off, get on again...etc. Seems like the last act of this tragedy was a complete panic fuck-up. "Oh Dear! We've let him get on an Underground train".

Mart

[DavidS]

The point you are making Mart is a good one. We do not know who was doing the survelliance, Was it Special Branch or another branch of the Metropolitan Police? Or was it another part of the security services altogether? If it was the latter, I don't think the facts will ever come out. If the IPCC coming knocking at the door of MI5/6 they will be told to 'fuck off'.

[Robches]

>They were incompetent alright.....just not murderers (in 'my' view).

I don't think they were murderers either. Manslaughter should have been the charge in my opinion.

They were told to stop someone, not kill him. If Menezes had been fiddling with a rucksack or trying to light his shoe, then their actions would have made sense. But he was not. They did not know anything about him, all they knew was that the Gold Commander wanted him stopped before he got into Stockwell Station. She did not order him to be killed, and under the Kratos ROE's that was her call. Kratos is a death sentence without trial, an awesome power which can only be initiated by a very senior officer. If she did not give that order, they just had no right to second guess her. I think, based on what we know, that they panicked because they got the order to stop him entering Stockwell too late, but that is no justification.

>We do not know who was doing the survelliance, Was it Special Branch or another branch of the Metropolitan Police? Or was it another part of the security services altogether?

The man doing the surveillance outside Menezes's flat, who was famously taking a leak when he left, was from the Special Reconnaisance Regiment.

Menezes was then followed by, I believe, an unarmed Met police surveillance team, who thought he might be a suspect (of course it is hard to be sure, since their logs were altered after the fact). They met up with the armed team at Stockwell.

As I said, the armed team knew nothing about Menezes apart from the fact that their Gold Commander ordered him to be stopped from entering the station. In shooting him they were acting without orders, and to use the cliche beloved of the police, "took the law into their own hands." Strange that that little comment only seems to apply to us, never to them. Still, all equal under the law eh? !bobby!

[eroticartist]

Keith,
Police officers have to obey orders and there is no time to think!
Mike Freeman

[algarve addick]

So, Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot 'accidentally', as was De Menezes.
Which begs the question - What COULD these innocent men have done differently to avoid being shot at?
The answer - FUCK ALL.
And everyone responsible carries on in their safe little worlds, full pensions intact etc etc., still running amok in the name of 'law and order'.
What an absolute disgrace.

[Sam Slater]

[DavidS]

A pension, police or otherwise, is something you pay in for. It is not an award for good conduct.

[DavidS]

The Soham case was, as you rightly say, the decision of the CPS. If you are suggesting that the case should have gone to court then I agree with you. I don't think it was corruption, just another CPS cock up.

[Sam Slater]

A sensible, and correct answer DavidS.