The reputation of the UK’s legendary police force is in tatters following the disclosure that 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes had his arms pinned forcibly to his side by one police officer as two other policemen pumped eight bullets into him at point blank range.
That is disgusting.
"There is a big difference between breaking the law and having a law designed to break you. We will not be broken." -- Jinny Simms
"On the street everything is legal! I don't believe in an eye for an eye, I believe in 2 eyes for an eye." -- Bas Rutten
and what is really f'ed up is i said "kick ass" when i thought he had bombs strapped to his chest. here you find out they are no better than the terrorists they were "stopping"....
Fry their asses...
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Certainly someone in the police put a PR spin on events. Basically, there was a building under constant surveillance and police were videoing anyone going in or out while other police are nearby. They are both doing surveillance and looking for the specific guys who did the bungled suicide bomb runs the day before. So the threat is very fresh in everyone's minds. So this guy comes out at the exact moment one of the surveillance guy is taking a pee. So he's not sure if this is one of the men they think are suicide bombers, but having no choice but to be safe he says he could be one of them.
So now, more police basically jump on this guy (figuratively) SAS guys acting as cops and tailing him to see where he goes. To see if he's going around the corner for some crisps or meet with the other wanna be bombers or their leader/ However, he's not doing that. He's walking closer and closer to the underground.. then he either jumps the turnstiles or walks through them and by this time, the tail squad (and the higher ups) are in a near panic thinking they are actually following a guy about to detonate himself and take 40 or more people with him.
So now they have a guy who their surveillance guy has categorized as very possibly being one of the failed bombers who's is heading towards the subway train.
A few seconds after he actually gets on the train he's shot multiple times. A tragedy. Mistakes compounded by bad luck and uncertainty.
When assigning blame for this you have to ask, did the SAS/police act in a professional manner, and did they reasonably believe they had a real threat to other people. I think the answer to the first question is "Mostly" Bad luck that the man chose that moment to leave. A failure on the Police to plan for needing two officers on the surveillance camera to make sure you always had "eyes on" the house.
I think the answer to the second questions is "without doubt". I believe that if I were to put myself in that police/SAS mans shoes, I would have pulled the trigger. I would have believed that I was moments away from dying or watching a lot of other people get killed because of my inaction, and such failure to act would unconscionable. "Police had chance to stop suicide bomber but did nothing". "Police watched suicide bomber board death train". And so on.
I would've made a mistake to pull the trigger, but I would have reached a fair conclusion that I had no choice but to do so.
There is one point I am not clear on, and that is the claim that an officer was pinning his arms when he was shot. I find this a bit odd, because there would likely be extreme danger to anyone standing behind him as the shots were fired. Think about what happens to bullets fired into someone directly in front of you. They are likely to go through him and possibly into you. The scenario doesn't make a lot of sense.
To compound their series of errors, police sources claimed de Menezes jumped over a ticket barrier at Stockwell underground station to escape police running after him. They said de Menezes ran down the platform at Stockwell, adding to suspicions that he had something to hide. Actually, he walked to his carriage, paused to pick up a newspaper and only then sat down in his seat where he was shot by police who did not identify themselves, or ask de Menezes to surrender.
I'm not so sure if he did indeed jump the ticket barrier as the police in question are stating. They've lied/mislead about a lot of the info already and personally I think this may just be another lie to help cover their own arses.
If it were possible I'd want to see how many witnesses remembered seeing him jump the style. I'd wager there aren't very many, but I could be wrong.
No doubt the police and SAS were under a lot of stress, and now are under even more, but if this was a murder based on blood for blood then they do not deserve to wear a badge.
"There is a big difference between breaking the law and having a law designed to break you. We will not be broken." -- Jinny Simms
"On the street everything is legal! I don't believe in an eye for an eye, I believe in 2 eyes for an eye." -- Bas Rutten
Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by police who tailed him to the station the day after four bombs were carried onto London's transit system but failed to detonate fully.
This one reports one less bullet.
But a leaked report made public by Britain's ITV television on Tuesday into Menezes' death said Menezes was trailed by officers for more than half-an-hour before the shooting, and no attempts were made to stop him.
The Brazilian calmly entered Stockwell tube station, picked up a free newspaper and used his travel card to pass through the barriers, the closed circuit footage showed.
This is definitly going to be a big mess.
"There is a big difference between breaking the law and having a law designed to break you. We will not be broken." -- Jinny Simms
"On the street everything is legal! I don't believe in an eye for an eye, I believe in 2 eyes for an eye." -- Bas Rutten
Well the police in this country dont just go around shooting people in the head, infact the law in the UK is to shoot in the upper torso, but in the case of a suicide bomber the police are trained to do head shots only, and told to do so.
Im not 100% sure but the guns used would have been of .22 cal this would explain the amount of head shots.
Menezes death was a bad mistake but the police at the time were dealing with what they thought to be a suicide bomber, and took him out before he could pull the cord and blow them and anyone else on that train to bits, Menezes was not just picked out as someone to kill for the hell of it, he as i said in the mind of the police was a walking bomb that only had to pull the cord and boom end off for anyone around him and the police themselves.
Try to understand we have not in this country been attacked in this way before (bombs strapped to humans) and the job our police and others face is no easy task, and i for one agree with hard policing.
It is quite clear that the UK police have been told to shoot to kill, it's not a case of, Armed police freeze put your hands up and don't move, its more a case of grab and head shot kill the target.
The blame is not with the police that killed Menezes the blame is somewhere in the intelligence chain of command.
This was a royal ****-up that should never have happened in the first place. We're hearing more each day about this story. It's believed that he never jumped the ticket barriers, in fact, he casually strolled into the station, picked up a free newspaper, walked through the turnstyles, stood on the escalator down to the tubes and then ran for the tube and sat down. The police claimed that the CCTV systems weren't working on that day, but we now have 2 tube sources claiming that they were fully working on the day (say wha?!)... There's a lot to this story and I'm not going to start throwing accusations about who should be charged just yet. Somehow he went from "worth checking out" to "definate suicide bomber". He wasn't wearing a padded jacket, a thin denim coat in fact and did absolutely nothing to arouse suspicion. Someone is responsible for this innocent mans death and I hope the IPCC complete their investigation soon.
