A statement from the Metropolitan Police

"We’ve got big guns, and we like to shoot people. It was rubbish when the government made peace with the IRA, because afterwards we got into trouble if we shot suspicious-looking chaps.

"But thanks to Tony Blair and his War on Terror, we can now shoot suspicious-looking chaps all over again. We just have to bear in mind that ‘suspicious’ now means Muslim-looking rather than Irish-looking."

The BBC has this quote on the same incident: "One of [the policemen] was carrying a black handgun – it looked like an automatic – they pushed [the suspect] to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him". If true, that doesn’t sound entirely like reasonable force.

Oh, and obviously the police ought to shoot people if they reasonably believe that the alternative is that they’ll blow themselves up. I hope that when the facts of this case become clearer, they’ll show that this is what happened.

Update: sadly, no.

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106 thoughts on “A statement from the Metropolitan Police

  1. Shooting a suspect who is known to be dangerous and is running away = fine. Shooting suspect 5 times = overkill.

    Shooting a suspected suicide bomber who is presumably explosived up = dangerously insane, given we know the explosive being used is highly volatile.

    Shooting a suspect five times after you’ve already got him on the floor = murder, in my book.

    I hope the reports are wrong, frankly.

  2. This is a tough one. The Israelis (who admittedly take a rather more "strictly no nonsense" approach to civil rights than I would regard as approriate for Stockwell) tended to find that the only way to deal with a suicide bomber is to shoot him quickly, in the head, before he can reach his detonator. In principle, this could be the right thing to do even if you’ve got the bomber in a full-nelson.

    On the other hand, this was a policy developed for Palestinian suicide bombers using belts and loaded up with Semtex. It’s not obviously something that would translate to a case of rucksack bombs, which are obviously much easier to separate from the bomber. I think that Matt is also right that it’s a bloody dangerous thing to do if the suspect is loaded up with acetone peroxide.

    There really ought to be some serious public debate on this; it is just not good enough for a shoot-to-kill-on-suspicion policy to be introduced by a simple executive order.

  3. More, it’s stupid. Clearly the ‘intelligence’ services haven’t the faintest clue about any of this, so you’d think it woud be best to interrogate those who might rather than shoot them.

  4. It may be silly but put yourself in the bobbies’ position: they’re in the armed section for years, and they almost never have a chance to shoot anyone. Can you imagine how frustrating that is? They feel like they’re all hat and no cattle! So obviously when an opportunity to waste someone comes along, they’re going to make the best of it.

  5. I think any comments are premature regarding this. There is no way to tell whats happened or the circumstances. The only story is from a man who, from reading the story here, appears to be slightly hysterical. I believe he should have accepted the counselling he has been offered.

    And 5 times wouldnt be excessive if the man can still press the "boom" button after the 4th time.

  6. Actually, rugbytackle-then-shoot is a silly idea no matter what you’re trying to achieve. The guy could trigger his detonator when you tackled him. If you’re going to shoot to kill on suspicion then surely you should do so from a distance without giving the bomber any indication that you’re on to him. Unless there is some sensible reason of police technique that I am overlooking, which is quite likely.

    I get the strong impression that the shoot-to-kill order has just been handed out without any real thought going into it on the grounds that someone read on a website that that’s what the Israelis do. If the Met are going to adopt this tactic then they ought to be going through the same training as the Israeli cops to make sure they do it properly.

  7. But as I say.. its only one hysterical bloke claiming that is what happened.

    "I saw them (police) offload five shots into the person on the floor," eyewitness Mark Whitby at the station told BBC television. "I saw them kill a man."

    "I was just basically saying I’ve just seen a man shot dead. I’ve seen a man shot dead. I was distraught, totally distraught. It was no less than five yards away from where I was sitting. I actually saw it with my own eyes."

    Doesnt want to get too dramatic does he? Lets wait for some details before flying off eh?

  8. Well, eye-witnesses do tend to be able to tell the difference between someone running and being shot, and someone on the floor and being shot. But, yes, we shouldn’t rush to conclusions.

    It’s Band’s site though, and he started it!

  9. It’s a bit hard to make any useful comment until we get some more information (if we ever do). That said, shooting people who have rucksacks full of TATP looks less-than-smart to me. I’m still slightly astonished that these wankers made a whole bathtub of the stuff without blowing themselves up — either lucky, or slightly more clueful than your average terrorist.

  10. when I read the witness statement quoted above I get a mental image of Jack from Will and Grace saying it

  11. If they don’t find any explosives on the guy the shit really will hit the fan, that’s for sure.

  12. If he was shot in the head then only one bullet is needed, surely?

    Taxpayers money is wasted on the other four.

  13. I’m listening to Radio 4 (balanced or hysterical, depending on your PoV). It seems the police (SAS?) shot the suspect 5 or 6 times in the body, possibly with an automatic weapon.

    These are my thoughts at the moment. Given the Bourgass thing, taking suspects alive may be very dangerous for officers (and civilians in the station), so shooting to kill may be justified. They may have shot in the body to preserve the head as he seems to have been ID’d by CCTV. Save him for questioning? Perhaps not. If he’s a suicide bomber what does he need to know exactly? Where to get explosives, ricin, whatever. But that could be from the boot of a car in a given location. He doesn’t need to know the real identities of his controllers. He’s expendable.

    I should say that I have a friend who is an ex armed-policeman-on-duty-in-London, and I’m prepared to give them more benefit of the doubt because of that.

  14. So am I – eyewitness accounts make it very clear that this guy was behaving very oddly: dressed far too heavily for the weather, leaping over the barrier while wearing a large rucksack, etc.

    In the present circumstances, you’d have to be absolutely insane to behave like that – so by far the most likely explanation on current information is that the police took him very seriously indeed as a suspect.

    It’s also well worth pointing out that cases like Stephen Waldorf and Harry Stanley are so incredibly rare that they get a completely disproportionate amount of publicity, thus creating the impression that the police regularly shoot innocent people. This categorically isn’t the case – at least not in this country.

  15. I’m definitely with the wait and see crowd, but can I suggest a point of principle: if the police had reason to think he was actually carrying a bomb, then their number one priority should be to stop that bomb going off. If that means pinning him to the ground and unloading a gun into his head then so be it.

    However, if the explosive is highly volatile, then having pinned him down the right thing to do could be to make sure that no gun is shot anywhere near it, in which case this would be wreckless incompetence.

    And if they did not have good reason to think that he was carrying a bomb, then they’ve got some serious anwering to do.

  16. Yep. If they had a reasonable suspicion the chap had a bomb, there’s no question that they ought to have shot him dead. Indeed, so far as I understand the law on self-defence, they would have been entitled to even if they’d been ordinary citizens rather than police officers. It’s sad if the bloke got shot — doubly so if he didn’t actually have a bomb — but there we go.

    The question of leaping on / knocking over a bloke with a rucksack full of very sensitive explosives seems a bit more questionable to me, but plainly they were lucky.

  17. I have to say that I would personally set the bar for "reasonable suspicion of having a bomb" a bit higher than being dressed in a funny manner and behaving oddly. All manner of things might come out with the full facts, but on general good government grounds I think there ought to be a public statement of what the policy is.

    On a rather macabre note I would not think it possible to shoot someone five times in the head (as once a head has taken more than two or three point-blank bullet wounds, there wouldn’t really be much of a head left would there?) so if the number of shots are correct (they might not be) he was shot in the body.

  18. I find it strange there aren’t many press stories about an incident at Vauxhall. My colleague was on the tube and a rucksack had smoke coming out of it and the station was evacuated, with according to him people fighting each other to get out first. It’s on the BBC’s ‘have your say’ feature, but not mentioned anywhere else, except the Sydney Morning Herald, bizarrely.

  19. I think he must have realised they were onto him and bolted. He apparently jumped the barrier which implies to me that he was on the run.

  20. That makes sense, but surely letting a man who they thought was wearing a bomb go anywhere was irresponsible in the extreme*. What if he’d just exploded it at the station entrance?

    * With the major caveat that there’s probably a lot more to the story than what we know.

  21. There’s not much I can add. Except that – if there was no bomb – the nearest parallel is the Death on the Rock shootings, where the SAS shot dead people reaching for a "bomb remote control". And the law has changes since then.

    Chris Lightfoot’s right (as he always is) about the right to use lethal force in self defence. But can I point out that the guy that pulled the trigget may be in the clear, but the police/government have a host of other obligations under various laws and may not be.

  22. I have to say that I would personally set the bar for "reasonable suspicion of having a bomb" a bit higher than being dressed in a funny manner and behaving oddly.

    Agreed – as it stands these criteria would put most American tourists at risk.

  23. It does strike me that we might be missing the most important thing here. Five shots to the head (or three shots to the head and two shots to the stump) is, I think we’re agreed, a sensible way to deal with a bomber wearing a Palestinian-style suicide vest. But it doesn’t seem such a good way of dealing with a bomber carrying his bomb in a rucksack. Does this mean that the UK Al-Quaeda have got themselves some vests? This would be a big and quite worrying development if true.

  24. There I was, an Asian male, wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, running away from the Police into a crowded tube train the day after the bombings…reasonable suspicion wtf

  25. "That makes sense, but surely letting a man who they thought was wearing a bomb go anywhere was irresponsible in the extreme*. What if he’d just exploded it at the station entrance?"

    Matthew, while you’re largely right, I think firing shots at a moving target in a busy London street is nearly unthinkable. They did the next best thing; they chased him, and shot him at close range, endangering no one else. The fact that several guys were running after him made others move away, lessening the number of potential casaulties of a bomb blast.

  26. These eyewitness accounts are just worse than useless – they’re all over the place. I remember the BBC’s coverage of the Old Compton Street nailbomb and trying to get sense out of traumatised victims was a complete washout then too … I’m giving up on this one until Newsnight. I think that this citizen journalism thing is running up against its limitations.

  27. Police tailed hom from his house, confronted him when they saw he was going into the tube station, he leapt over the barriers, ran down the platform, and onto the tube. Going by eyewitness accounts, shot him 5 times in the body. This was a split second decision, after they had confronted him non-violently, and they were obviously worried he was carrying a bomb. What the hell did u expect them to do? Pin him down for a half hour while the bomb squad got there? People have got to realise that there are a lot of nasty people out there intent on blowing up our friends, brothers/sisters, spouses, parents and children, as well as killing our police officers and tube/bus drivers. Im not advocating a mass shoot first ask question later policy, but if the police have any belief, even if only 20-30% that somebody may be about to set off a bomb, then they have my 100% backing to shoot and deal with these terrorists however they see fit.

  28. I agree d2 – I’ve already done this rant today over at Tim Worstall’s place, but I’ll say it again here: The News People seem to be obsessed with getting the ‘human angle’ on all these events, to the extent that it’s crowding out the reporting of the actual event.

    Call me callous, but I just want to know what happened, not how an eyewitness feels about it – as though "man sees violent event, is now in state of shock" is some kind of incredible insight.

  29. Dave – I agree, but it’s not the subsequent decisions I find odd but the original one to tail him rather than shoot him as he left his house. There must be more to it, perhaps they really were unsure if he was a bomber and only when he made a dash for the tube did the suspicions become enough certain.

  30. Or maybe they wanted to see if he was meeting up with any of his other bomber crew or support/control guys etc? Seems like a sensible idea, use him to lead police to the others.

  31. That would seem the most straightforward answer. But I still think if he had walked to the tube entrance and blown himself up, killing loads of people, we’d be taking a rathre dim view of the strategy.

    If a terorrist walked out of his house carrying a sub-machine gun the police wouldn’t tail him, surely?

  32. "That would seem the most straightforward answer. But I still think if he had walked to the tube entrance and blown himself up, killing loads of people, we’d be taking a rathre dim view of the strategy."

    Which implies in turn that the police gambled on him not being on a suicide mission when he left his house, but changed their minds when he bolted after being challenged and shot him on the assumption that they couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t, or just in the frenzy of the moment.

    This tends to support d-squared’s point that it’s a bad idea to assume lethal force powers casually without thinking through the scenarios where you might have to use them.

  33. I think that this citizen journalism thing is running up against its limitations.

    When I did jury service, the massively conflicting accounts really rammed home how unreliable eyewitness evidence can be – it was only thanks to the fact that there were more than a dozen versions that we were able to piece together a reasonably consistent narrative (with the considerable help of supporting evidence).

    Also, I remember reading about a law professor who was mugged during one of his lectures. After his assailants had fled, he calmly got up, revealed that he’d staged the event deliberately, and asked his class to write down a witness statement. Needless to say, they were also all over the place – they couldn’t even agree whether he was attacked by two or three people.

  34. Suppose they figured it was a justified risk, in that they might be able to capture the whole cell if they let him go on his way.

  35. Actually in the Troubles that’s exactly what the police did, they also infiltrated arms caches and embbedded remote transmitters within the firearms to assist in gathering intelligence. The old adage is you can always get more guns, but there are usually only a finite number of people…..

  36. What’s all this about a bomb ? Surely the point is that the guy jumped the ticket barrier – depriving Transport For London of valuable revenue.

    The Chinese call it ‘economic sabotage’ and it carries the death penalty there, too.

    Almost certainly the plain-clothes guys will turn out not to be SAS but some of Ken’s mates from South Armagh.

  37. Call me naive, but why were there not more cries of HYPOCRITICAL SODS when the US decided that Muslim terrorists are the wrong sort of terrorist, whereas Irish ones were OK? Tell me, further, do Yanks still sing that jolly song in praise of a terrorist "John Brown’s body…"? If a pro-American like me thinks these naughty thoughts, what are the anti-Americans thinking? And lastly, "Shoot away" you say below: ooh, how insensitive!

  38. One of the disadvantages of the instantaneous media coverage of events such as the shooting of this suspect is the vastly increased scope for armchair generalship in almost real time. We see those who have never been in life-or-death situations where instantaneous decisions must be made with imperfect information, and discuss the nuances of how the police ought to have acted. It’s like a bunch of duffers watching a football match absolutely convinced they know better than the coach and players on their side how the game ought to be played.

    An individual whom the police on the scene believed a threat was rendered harmless. Unless you believe the British police and security services are acting in bad faith, which I do not, that ought to be the end of the enquiry.

  39. It’s quite simple – if the police thought that there was a threat of a suicide bombing there and then, they had to shoot him. If you’re going to do a runner from armed police, behaving oddly in the first place, then you’re asking for it. I know this sounds terribly harsh, but the last time I checked, pretending or intending to blow yourself up on a Tube train wasn’t one of the crucial liberties we want to defend.

  40. The BBC have confirmed that official inquiries are automatic if anyone dies at police hands – regardless of the circumstances.

    To amplify Ken’s point, witness statements seem to agree that warnings were given and that the guy must have been in no doubt that his life was at stake if he didn’t co-operate.

    If he wasn’t a bomber, he must have been deeply, deeply stupid – even more so than those people who think it’s hilarious to joke about a bomb in their luggage in the airport and then look surprised when they get hauled off by burly security guards. There are certain lines that you just don’t cross in the current climate.

  41. What’s the best way to stop a suicide bomber who has a bomb with a "dead man’s handle" set-up going on? Just thinking aloud …

  42. As far as the police shooting him five times goes, do remember that he was a moving target, perhaps carrying an explosive device (this is assuming they didn’t shoot him when they had him down, like that semi-hysterical witness claims). Saying "shoot him in the head" is all fine and good, but it ain’t all THAT easy to do.

    For what it’s worth, I’ve been taught to aim for the big part of the target, not the smaller bits. Five shots to the torso of a running man seems much more feasable than any number to the head.

  43. I’ve no difficulty with an offical inquest, but it seems to me it should consist of establishing the facts of the individual’s behaviour, that the officers on the spot believed in good faith he constituted a threat, and that they rendered him harmless. And then the officers should be sent forth to do it again with the thanks of the Crown.

    Others have pointed out witnesses have said warnings were given and the suspect did not stop. Under the circumstances of the past fortnight, I should have thought the police remiss in their duty had they not shot him dead. Like it or not, we are at war with an enemy whose goal is the elimination of, among other things, the liberties of Englishmen. We were not nearly so squeamish in dealing with the Germans.

  44. The attacks have followed a pattern of multiple bombs each time. The original 4 bombers linked up before thier attacks so it seems like it would be a pretty solid decision to risk following a suspected bomber with the hope to stop a wave of attacks vs a single attack. When he started nearing the tube this would change the risk calculation.

  45. A message to all armchair second guessers: don’t criticise an eskimo until you’ve walked 200 miles in snowshoes

  46. Trust the usual suspects here to be squealing about possible police brutality before the facts are known. The handwringers club.

    And just as was I about to post this, I noticed that the button to press says "Shoot away" LOL

  47. To add to what Farnk Pulley says, let me point out what happens when overwhellming force ISN’T used. (in this case accidentally) http://www.thegunzone.com/11april86.html Note that the FBI managed to mortally wound both robbers immediately (one with a shot that almost hit the heart and the other to the face), yet both robbers were able to continue moving for ~4 minutes before bleeding out, and one was still capable of killing 2 and wounding 5 FBI agents in the minutes he had left. If either one had had a bomb it would have been simple for them to detonate it.

  48. what sort of weapons do the police use. pistols are not immediately lethal excepting the well placed shot. the 9mm for instance could easily take a whole magazine to stop a perpetrator in addition to having limited range and accuracy. for my own protection i prefer rifles and shotguns. if you must use a pistol nothing smaller than a 357 magnum will do, and it still comes down to where you put the bullet.

  49. I want to reiterate Tex’s point – talking to someone who served in the military, he pointed out a Pistol shot won’t necessarily kill someone instantly, even in the head. And so if you’re trying to stop someone detonating a bomb, then five shots may well be necessary.

  50. Fer crissake, what’s with all this idiocy criticising how many times the fleeing man was shot? Does anyone expect the police to shoot once, and WAIT to see if the guy dies immediately, or has a chance to trigger a bomb that he might be carrying and intending to use, given his attempts to escape pursuing police officers by fleeing into a crowded subway, scene of two terrorist attacks? Are you freakin’ crazy? Are you willing to rank the life of a person at the very least too stupid or reckless to surrender to the police under the circumstances of terrorist attacks HIGHER than the subway passengers near him? What a bunch of wankers! No, make that geldings!

  51. I am inspired by the bravery of those officers who raced to put their lives directly into what appeared to be extreme peril to save hundreds of people.

    Compare that with some of the tinhorn armchair scepticism here which will now replay the breathless turn of events in hyper-slow motion, forward and backwards, dozens of times, to find failings in this harrowing pursuit.

    I hope, for the safety of civilians everywhere, that this decisive and no-nonsense approach to a known Islamic militant collaborator who attempts to evade police at a known hot target will become emblematic in the minds of these inhuman brutes. This ignoble and failed fate should await them all as they underestimate a people who know how to fight prevail for a more noble cause then an angry perverted cult puppet will ever know.

  52. Is it naieve to think that maybe the fellow was just carrying drugs of some sort, and got spooked by police wanting to look in his knapsack? His mistake, apparently.

    I am slightly surprised that they would unload into a chap suspected to be wearing shock-sensitive explosives, but it’s likely still a safer bet than inaction. Better the devil you know….

  53. q)If the police stop me and I run, what will happen?
    a)They will beat you down and fill you full of lead.
    q)What should I do then, if they try to stop me?
    a)Well, don’t run.

    Nice going British cops! Saving the tax paying community the expense of a trial is a public service.

    ps: Don’t call ALL American’s Yankees. We all here in Texas hate the Yankees as much an everyone else does.

  54. Is it naieve to think that maybe the fellow was just carrying drugs of some sort, and got spooked by police wanting to look in his knapsack?

    Given that he’d been pursued by at least three armed officers (note to American readers: these are much thinner on the ground in London than in your neck of the woods, so they probably weren’t just passing by as a happy coincidence), this seems a tad unlikely.

  55. Dearieme,

    John Brown wasn’t a terrorist. He was a Freedom Fighter. Do try to keep up.

  56. Holy shit! What with the murders two weeks ago, and the cocked-up repeat attempts Thursday, it is fucking amazing that idiots want to rag on the police for being trigger-happy, bloodthirsty, racist goons, for shooting dead a fleeing suspect carrying a backpack, as opposed to not shooting to kill and risking him killing a few more Londoners.

    I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy take the chance that a man, fitting the profile of all the other splodeydopes, and running from the police, was not in fact an immediate threat to the lives of nearby members of the public, that’s infinitely preferable than facing the infantile jibes of knobjobs like John who like to accuse people who make these snap decisions of being racists. Exactly what do you think the sniping coming from the likes of you is going to achieve, John? What effect are you trying to have? If the police started going easy on suspected splodeydopes because of all the talk of them being racists, or bloodthirsty, or wanting to shoot people for kicks, would you call that a personal victory? If I ever need to point to definitive proof that lots and lots of people are absolutely stonking great morons, I’ll give them a link to this post.

    Seriously, JohnB, would you care to explain why you feel that a dead suspected bomber is so unacceptable, and give us a little insight into the psychology of a man who gets angrier over dead terrorists than dead innocents? I mean, everyone else puts it down to ‘self-loathing, West-hating, liberal twattism’, but I’m sure you feel that’s got nothing to do with your reasoning. So explain your reasoning. Why does shooting backpack-lugging fleeing suspects grate you more than bombers killing people going about their everyday business?

    What I really like about your post, JohnB, is that last paragraph, which lets us know that even you are aware of how worthless and stupid your little diatribe was. But since you have no self-control, you just have to let it be known how much you hate the police for doing things like this, even though you know it’s to protect the safety of people just like you. With you it’s ‘fly off the handle first, make lame CYA excuses later’,

  57. I think this is a pretty ill-considered post John, and I am sure you regret it now. It turns out the police are convinced – and rightly I think – that these bombers ran away only so they could strike again.
    They left ID, they knew they would be on CCTV – they didn’t care as they knew they would be dead soon, after striking again.
    In that light – and with the knowledge that this shot guy was very likely part of a cell, he was staying in a suspect house, he was wearing a weird winter coat, he ran on a Tube, he ran away when the police challenged him – they were more than justified in taking him out.
    I am sure the vast majority of Londoners agree, and are glad the police are acting decisively.
    In fact I reckon you probably agree – now you have had time to calm down and reflect, no?
    Kneejerk antipolice 80s lefty agitprop is not quite what we want right now….

  58. No, JohnB and others are right to question these things, even if they turn out to be wrong about their worries. If no one questions this sort of action, then it seems quite plausible that the police would become unnecessarily trigger-happy. Everybody should know by now that authorities can’t always be trusted to act in good faith, so that even when they’re entirely justified in their actions, they must be called to account, and all the odd aspects of their behaviour must be explained.

  59. John isn’t questioning anything. He’s flinging monkey shit. Of course, you might not think so, because you read his raving accusations of police racism and brutality up top and took them seriously. Why does the word ‘gullible’ spring to mind?

  60. You’re missing a fundamental point here: – that as soon as the police shoot one demonstrably innocent person (& if you remember the 1980s you’ll know its a matter of when not if) as a result of whatever guidelines they’re correctly following, then you can kiss goodbye to the support & goodwill of the moderate/reasonable part of the Muslim community for 20 years. The only people who’ll be delighted by this are the nutters jumping up & down demanding people take self-administered loyalty oaths (see various blogs, passim)

  61. And no doubt you will feel very vindicated if that happens. Conversely, no-one on ‘my side’ of the political divide is salivating over the thought of more terrorist bombs going off so their outlook will be justified.

    I also have little doubt that the ‘moderate’ Muslims would create such a stink over any incident that the police would become effectively reluctant (or else the Home Office would expect them to be ‘reluctant’) to use lethal force to stop a rightly suspected terrorist, which enables said terrorist to carry out another bombing, with many deaths and injuries caused…Is that something you’re looking forward to? Be careful what you wish for.

  62. Apparently also they were only keeping the entire block under surveillance, not him specifically. This is looking really like the sort of thing that would warrant some kind of official inquiry, and hopefully that public statement of what the shoot-to-kill policy actually is that I keep banging on about.

  63. god — how awful.

    To bring us back on topic (that is, back to ill-informed speculation), why have suicide bombers not invented the notion of a ‘dead man’s handle’? You’d have thought that the Hamas nutters would have done so, given Israeli tactics of, where possible, shooting them before they can set off their bombs.

  64. Actually, if what Dan says is right, it’s really terrible. If they’re saying that they had a block of flats under watch, and followed a person from it, then they’re really in trouble. Because there were 3 dangerous factors. 1. He was wearing a large coat. 2. he jumped the gates. and 3. He wasn’t white.

    3. is in tatters. 2. this is the Oval. and 1. this is in doubt. It appears (see ‘the sharperner’), that smelling smoke is not a safe eyewitness report. Well then neither is the ‘large coat’. More fundamentally, it was not a particularly warm day in London on Friday. The reports of it being 72 were based on the Met Office’s forecast max temp. Certainly at 9am it was much cooler.

    So basically nothing is certain, except they shot an innocent Brazilian.

  65. Yep, feeling kind of vindicated now – though still more horrified than anything. Fuck you, Rampaging wanker. I don’t need to follow John B – I was quite capable of thinking this incident smelled of shit on my own.

  66. Fuck you right back, along with your triumphalism, dear Sarah. One thing that’s goign to result from this incident is that the Met are going to be expected not to shoot-to-kill. And the real terrorists will be champing at the bit to take advantage of this by carrying out another successful suicide bombing. It really is an open question whether they will succeed or not. Think about that.

  67. There’s absolutely no scope for triumphalism whatsoever – the only way this could have been a more calamitous disaster than it already is would have been if Jean Charles de Menezes had been Muslim (I’m assuming he wasn’t, though I don’t know either way). And anyone who uses this as an excuse for anti-police gloating (there’s a repulsive thread over at Lenin’s Tomb doing precisely that) is scum, plain and simple: their already appallingly difficult job has just become harder by several orders of magnitude.

    We now need to have an urgent inquiry to establish exactly what events looked like from his point of view. If, as seems increasingly likely, he found himself pursued by armed men in plainclothes, and his English wasn’t good enough (or he didn’t trust them enough) to grasp that they were police officers, his behaviour starts to make a lot more sense.

    As for the press – and blogosphere – reaction, I can’t help but be reminded of the Waldorf Hotel bomb, where an IRA bomber blew himself up on a bus accidentally while seemingly on his way to plant it at the Royal Courts of Justice. Another Irish guy was on the bus, and needless to say the tabloids assumed that he was part of the same gang, and spent the next few days merrily putting the boot into him.

    Sadly, he died of his injuries – but not before receiving what was apparently a substantial number of massive libel payouts. All of which were out-of-court settlements, the papers’ lawyers presumably advising them that their chances of winning were nonexistent and they might as well cut their losses now.

  68. Happy Rampager, how do you get from "kind of vindicated now – though still more horrified than anything" to "triumphalism"? Please learn what the words mean. Also please consider that if people with your view had shown more politeness ("infantile jibes of knobjobs like John"?) and capacity for nuanced thought, there’d be no sense of "vindication".

  69. The problem with this particular debate is that both sides have fucked up – those who took the "the guy must have been a bomber, otherwise the police wouldn’t have shot him" line, and those who posted knee-jerk cynicism about the police before the full facts came out.

    Just because the suspicions of John, Sarah, Matthew et al have been proved largely correct doesn’t mean that it was appropriate to voice them in public before the evidence emerged. As a regular London commuter who works a few hundred yards from three of the last fortnight’s bombs, my instinct at present is to assume the police are working in our best interests until proven otherwise, which is why I sided with the first group. In this instance, I was wrong – but I suspect I’d have the same reaction again.

  70. Was the Michael who described the bomber as ‘deeply, deeply, stupid’ a different one!?

  71. Was the Michael who described the bomber as ‘deeply, deeply, stupid’ a different one!?

    Not at all – if you read my whole post before coming out with that cheap crack, you’d have seen that I freely admitted to jumping to over-hasty conclusions and said that I was wrong to do so.

    Mind you, I know this sort of behaviour is all but unheard of in the blogosphere, so I can quite see why it might have failed to register.

  72. I’ve been away (in London actually). I’m not sure what to think now: I had actually sort of assumed that the guy would be found to have terrorist connections (though I was trusting the eye-witness reports, and so didn’t think he would be found to have explosives on him). Now it turns out he was just some random Brazillian.

    One thing: Like John B, I’m not a huge fan of the police shooting anyone, but I do understand that it’s the best course of action in some circumstances (as I said, cynically, in my first post). But it seems that all the reports are now focusing on the actual conduct of the officers (it does, contray to reports in the press yesterday, seem that they were police and not some SAS hybrid). But what about questioning the orders these guys got? I would be very surprised if they hadn’t been told by someone high up to, essentially, kill on site. If that’s true, then as D^2 said way above, we really, really need to have a debate about it. Perhaps it is the best policy, but it’s one so serious that we shouldn’t just let it be taken without thinking. Similar policies were pretty counter-productive in Ireland…

  73. If that’s true, then as D^2 said way above, we really, really need to have a debate about it.

    I completely agree, but I think such a debate is pretty unavoidable now, so it’s going to happen regardless of whether it’s conducted formally or not. The crucial thing is to make sure that it doesn’t distract too much from operations on the ground. At the moment, there are rather higher priorities out there than debating this particular issue in depth, however sympathetic one might feel towards the family of de Menezes.

  74. Happy Rampager, how do you get from "kind of vindicated now – though still more horrified than anything" to "triumphalism"?

    From the ‘kind of vindicated’ part. Next stupid question.

    Also please consider that if people with your view had shown more politeness ("infantile jibes of knobjobs like John"?)

    Daniel Pipes. Seriously, fuck him.

    An open letter to dickheads who go on and on about the fucking Ummah

    Stephen Pollard is a cunt.

    Oh fuck off, you whiny little tosser.

    Somehow I don’t think John Band approves of good manners. Which makes you look somewhat two faced and foolish for suggesting people ‘of my view’ shouldn’t swear.

  75. "Which makes you look somewhat two faced and foolish for suggesting people ‘of my view’ shouldn’t swear"

    Not what she said.

    "Somehow I don’t think John Band approves of good manners"

    He’s usually astonishingly polite to posters on the blog. Less so to semi-public figures with larger audiences.
    Who are often stupider & nastier than his commenters.

  76. From the ‘kind of vindicated’ part. Next stupid question.

    Ah, so you don’t know what the words mean, and take them completely out of context.

    Which makes you look somewhat two faced and foolish for suggesting people ‘of my view’ shouldn’t swear.

    Swearing is an essential and beautiful part of the language and should be given the prominence it fucking deserves. Similarly, as Dave says, being impolite about random people is different from being impolite to people you’re actually talking to. It’s random irrelevant insults in the middle of actual debates with people that annoy me, and convince me that the person doing the insulting lacks any argument. (Comes of doing most of my arguing on a forum that bans people for crossing the line from ‘your argument is stupid’ to ‘you are stupid’, I guess.)

    Despite which: your reading comprehension’s crap.

  77. You should all stop your mudslingling and remember the effect this is going to have on the police involved. Shooting someone up close and personal is an incredibly distressing and messy event. The poor guys (who are all volunteers) are going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives… Firearms offiers are not trigger happy loons just waiting to bust a cap in every black/asian/other person. If anything they tend to be even more reluctant to pull the trigger as they are very aware of the ramifications of their actions….

  78. You should all stop your mudslingling and remember the effect this is going to have on the police involved. Shooting someone up close and personal is an incredibly distressing and messy event.

    Chris B – eh, you’re right. Sorry.

  79. Ah, so you don’t know what the words mean, and take them completely out of context.

    Think you can make it look as if you’ve shown me up, with this lazy stock retort? Sorry, I’m right. There is triumphalism in remarking on how ‘kind of vindicated’ one is, and wanting other people to know it. I know this because I can think. You can’t, but you can twist words around and act the clever-clogs. Emphasis on act.

    And as for your second paragraph, all it tells me is that you think there are different sets of rules for John B and myself. In every other respect there IS no difference between his use of profane insult and mine. Except that his cussing and abuse is usually directed at UNdeserving targets.

    Shooting someone up close and personal is an incredibly distressing and messy event. The poor guys (who are all volunteers) are going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives… Firearms offiers are not trigger happy loons just waiting to bust a cap in every black/asian/other person. If anything they tend to be even more reluctant to pull the trigger as they are very aware of the ramifications of their actions….

    I guarantee, I absolutely positively guarantee, that JohnB is going to completely ignore and do the exact opposite to this admonition when next he posts on this matter. After all, jeering at ‘racist pigs’ is fun, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let anyone deny him his fun.

  80. Meanwhile, Menezes doesn’t seem to be such an innocent:-

    Another witness said that [Menezes] boarded the Tube and attempted to take a hostage before he was shot.

    Dan Copeland, a Northern Line passenger, told BBC News: “The man burst in through the carriage door to my right and grabbed hold of the pole and a person by the glass partition near the door, diagonally opposite me.

    Times Online

    What the fuck was he thinking? Was he planning on holding that person between himself and the approaching armed officers? I sincerely hope not.

  81. The article you link to also says, "Police are describing him as an “intimate accomplice of the cell”. His name and address were thought to have been found among the possessions left by the would-be bombers on Thursday."

  82. The Times article is from Saturday (so it’s based on Friday night’s police line), and therefore is utter bullshit. There’s no credible evidence published after the police admitted they’d shot an innocent man that he’d taken a hostage – and even by right-wing standards, slandering the poor bastard after it’s clear he was innocent is low.

    Disagree with Chris B re these coppers. They volunteered because they wanted to play with big guns, and they knew perfectly well when they signed up that playing with big guns means having to shoot people. Feeling sorry from them is as daft as feeling sorry for soldiers for being shipped off to Iraq… that’s their *job*!

    And if they feel bad about this case, good: they bloody well should do, having gunned down some poor bastard who thought he was being pursued by the Mafia… they weren’t even in uniform, for Christ’s sake.

  83. John; they were in uniform. They weren’t wearing the famous tit helmet but they had "Police" on their baseball caps, which counts these days.

  84. According to the Metro (yes, I know), they only donned their "police" baseball caps halfway through the chase…

  85. Apparently it’s not at all uncommon for Brazilian police to gun down people in the street – to the tune of a three-figure number per year (four in the early 1990s). (Source: one of today’s papers, but I can’t be arsed to check which one)

    So even if de Menezes realised they were police, that might not have changed his overall view of his likely chances if he’d stayed put.

  86. He’s not in Brazil.
    The only times you’ll see guns being pointed at you in the UK is if you’re involved with drug dealing or the police want you for something.
    Anyone who points a gun at you and yells "stop police! get down!" obviously doesn’t want to shoot you or he would have done so already, running away is simply self selctionist darwinism…..
    The whole episode should be put down as a tragic accident and a campaign should be run to point out to the public (as if they should need telling) that not cooperating with armed officers will get you shot.

  87. "Anyone who points a gun at you and yells "stop police! get down!" obviously doesn’t want to shoot you or he would have done so already"

    a) it’s not clear that the police did the former here; b) what about if they’re robbers who want to (get your PIN/tell them where your valuables are/etc) -then- kill you?

  88. And more to the point, why would the mafia be after you if you’re an electrician?!?!?!? Think about it…. the guy was obviously guilty of something (not that justifies shooting him) and hence ran or he was a twat and ran for no good reason, either way his actions were stupid and he got killed, duh!

  89. "Apparently it’s not at all uncommon for Brazilian police to gun down people in the street – to the tune of a three-figure number per year"

    That does somewhat make the Brazilian Ambassador’s shock seem unreal.

  90. Think about it…. the guy was obviously guilty of something (not that justifies shooting him) and hence ran or he was a twat and ran for no good reason, either way his actions were stupid and he got killed, duh!

    I wasn’t aware that we were implementing “survival of the fittest" in London…

    BTW, anyone got links to the “table-leg" case that resurfaced in the news recently? Just because this shooting was a mistake rather than a deliberate killing, I don’t see why we should feel guilty about calling it a serious error.

    (That said, I can’t agree with John B’s glib assumption that you only join the police to throw your weight around…)

  91. "a) it’s not clear that the police did the former here; b) what about if they’re robbers who want to (get your PIN/tell them where your valuables are/etc) -then- kill you?"

    a) Don’t know. But if I wasn’t dealng smack and someone pointed a gun at me rather than just shooting me I’d be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and think they just might be police…
    b) If you run you will probably get shot, best to cooperate but stall for time for as long as possible until a sensible opportunity to escape safely…

  92. If the coppers thought he was a suicide bomber, why did they allow him on a bus, then follow him into the tube?
    This poor bastard probably thought he was being chased by 2 or 3 wound up glue sniffing football hooligans.

    They should have taken him in at the bus stop. Then at least if they had to cap him it would have been in the open and not on a crowded subway car…

  93. From the Guardian Wed. 17 Aug:

    "New claims emerge over Menezes death

    · Brazilian was held before being shot
    · Police failed to identify him
    · He made no attempt to run away

    Rosie Cowan, Duncan Campbell and Vikram Dodd
    Wednesday August 17, 2005
    The Guardian

    The young Brazilian shot dead by police on a London tube train in mistake for a suicide bomber had already been overpowered by a surveillance officer before he was killed, according to secret documents revealed last night.

    It also emerged in the leaked documents that early allegations that he was running away from police at the time of the shooting were untrue and that he appeared unaware that he was being followed.

    Relatives and the dead man’s legal team expressed shock and outrage at the revelations. Scotland Yard has continued to justify a shoot-to-kill policy.

    Jean Charles de Menezes died after being shot on a tube train at Stockwell station in south London on July 22, the morning after the failed bomb attacks in London.

    But the evidence given to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) by police officers and eyewitnesses and leaked to ITV News shows that far from leaping a ticket barrier and fleeing from police, as was initially reported, he was filmed on CCTV calmly entering the station and picking up a free newspaper before boarding the train.

    It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes:

    · was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;

    · was unaware he was being followed;

    · was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;

    · never ran from the police;

    · and did not jump the ticket barrier.

    But the revelation that will prove most uncomfortable for Scotland Yard was that the 27-year-old electrician had already been restrained by a surveillance officer before being shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder."

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