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I must admit that I agree with his cousin who said
We find it unbelievable that our innocent cousin could be shot seven times in the head by the Metropolitan Police when he had done nothing wrong, and yet the police have not had to account for their actions
Patricia da Silva Armani, Jean Charles de Menezes's cousin
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35927775
It's a difficult one. Very hard to disagree with what she says, but very hard to see how they could successfully prosecute any individual because of the way the law is written, and very hard to see how they could change that legislation without jeapordising any effective capability to respond to incidents where lives are at risk. I've mulled this one over a fair bit since it happened and since the inquest, and still don't know what the answer is.
It is tricky. TBH for one thing there should be a way to hold the state responsible without necessarily blaming individuals- it was a catalogue of failures, it's not reasonable to blame it all on the person pulling the trigger, they were just the pointy end. And often you can't get to the big problem- the rules of engagement and control of the situation- while individuals are scared of prosecution.
The whole thing stank, to me, start to finish. I'm just not sure charging an officer is the solution. But serious questions over their fitness to do the job, certainly, TBH the "self defence" argument only worked if the officers had collectively lost their ****ing minds. But that's perfectly plausible.
The double irony was always that if de menezes had been a terrorist, he'd have succeeded, the "chase" took him through several ideal target areas- so it was a failure in pretty much every way. People tried to justify it as part of protecting the public from a potential attack but that never made any sense.
People tried to justify it as part of protecting the public from a potential attack but that never made any sense.
But whilst running full pelt through a tube station full of people, with a gun, a few days after several people blew themselves up, believing that the guy your chasing could blow you up at any second?
Making sense is relative, at that second it probably made absolute sense to pull the trigger.
and yet the police have not had to account for their actions
They have had to account for their actions. Convicted under H&S and paid civil damages claim.
following a thorough investigation, a prosecutor considered all the facts of the case and concluded that there was insufficient evidence against any individual officer to meet the threshold evidential test in respect of any criminal offence."
If you want a different lower standard of proof for cops I don't think many will volunteer to be AFOs.
thisisnotaspoon - MemberBut whilst running full pelt through a tube station full of people, with a gun, a few days after several people blew themselves up, believing that the guy your chasing could blow you up at any second?
Making sense is relative, at that second it probably made absolute sense to pull the trigger.
No, what I mean is that they'd already totally failed to control that situation- the dude was commuting, yet somehow the police operation became a panic. He took a wee trip on a bus, stopped to get a paper ffs. It was only police errors that ever led to the final confrontation happening as it did in the first place- it doesn't justify anything, it just shows how badly they'd screwed up.
As I recall the key issues were around the chaos in the ops room, the lack of control/competence of the officer in charge and the out and out lies spread by the Met after the shooting.
As always it's the lies and attempts to misdirect that cause the real damage
They *** up really badly. They were also racist "Mongolian looks" I heard mentioned. So they went after him because of his skin colour. The whole think stinks, I'm almost embarrassed for the Police. Someone should get the sack. So the cops can assassinate someone and no-one his held responsible? What a *** joke.
Mongolian eyes, was the line. Because obviously the great khan and his numberless hordes remain a major threat.
The serial incompetence that caused the original incident stinks. The cover up they attempted stinks. The failure to deal with this properly stinks.
Ah yes, Mongolian eyes.
Surely the Mongolian eyes thing was to help identify the suspect? Or did someone say shoot him *because* he has Mongolian eyes?
I feel for their family but it really was an unfortunate chain of events.
I also feel for that person(s) who made the judgement call and held a honest held belief and shot an innocent man.
Hugely disrespectful how most of the newsreaders seem incapable of the piffling degree of research required in order that they correctly pronounce the victims name. A niggling detail, maybe? But the very least respect is at least some.
As I understand it, the Firearms Officers are all volunteers. I guess that if they drop one or more in the mire over a coms failure at Gold or Silver level then they would all un-volunteer.
Then Teresa Shoes could get G4S to do the work, and she'd see how well that pans out.
The serial incompetence that caused the original incident stinks.
No it doesn't, it's down to resources, training and organisational culture and leadership.
The only way to find out whether you have it right is in the real world so you sometimes learn by a mixture of luck, error and exception. Expecting operational teams to make no errors is unreasonable, the Mets post incident response however was criminal and shames the organisation
I fear that they have got justice. Just not the result they were hoping for.
We expect armed officers to put their lives on the line to protect us from truly terrible events. We expect them to make instant decisions in the heat of the moment that could kill one innocent person, or lead to a guilty person killing dozens of innocent people.
You can train and test till you are blue in the face, but terrible tragic mistakes will be made. For every case that they get so terribly wrong, there are lots where they get it right.
I can understand the anger and frustration of the victims family. I also understand that taking away the armed officers legal protection will mean that they would all hand in their weapons. There is no way to square that circle. Either we accept that unless they are really reckless, they have greater protection, or we accept that the most the Police can do to protect us is to shout "Stop!" a bit louder.
Flawed as it is, I'm happy to live with the system we currently have.
Edit - yes, I agree their actions in the aftermath should have seen some people dismissed for gross misconduct, appalling behaviour.
The judge in his summing up of the original inquiry admitted the firearms officers colluded to lie about the circumstances of the shooting afterwards.
It just seems a catalogue of incompetence followed by a concerted effort to hide the truth afterwards
Wtf does ' Mongolian eyes' even mean ?
The judge in his summing up of the original inquiry admitted the firearms officers colluded to lie about the circumstances of the shooting afterwards.
I would say he pointed out the collusion rather than "admitted", the sad bit was the lack of action subsequently as it was probably institutional and led from the top.
Was it alleged that they colluded to lie about this incident, or was it that questions and concerns were raised about the established and long standing practice of them debriefing and writing up their notes together rather than doing so in isolation?
Because while I agree that practice creates doubt in people's minds it is, for whatever reason, the accepted and normal practice, so it is not correct to conclude that just because they did so then they must have been colluding to make stuff up.
If there was something in particular about this one that lead a judge or whoever to conclude they had got together and made stuff up then fair enough, and I'd be interested to see it, but I thought it was just concern in general about the practice and a strong suggestion that it should be reviewed if people are to have more confidence in the police.
Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?
I don't find it hard to choose who to prosecute. It goes through chain of command down to the shooter.
Blooming easy to do. But then the chap ain't white and comes from a poor country...
No doubt it was a dark period for the security forces, the actions after the shooting where in many ways more serious than the shooting itself. However as @More_Dash says people will make mistakes, its easy to forget the level of stress in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, the police where following a live lead who lived in the same building. They made a bad error in shooting Menezes, they also made an error in allowing into the tube station - he should have been confronted before when perhaps the fear of him conducting a suicide bombing on the tube would not have been so elevated. However also as @Dash says they have had justice, they have followed the legal process to the very end and it has delivered its verdict.
don't find it hard to choose who to prosecute. It goes through chain of command down to the shooter.
Blooming
@MrsFry the familiy is very well represented legally, money has not been a factor. The police officer acted in good faith, he made a mistake.
The post incident careers are interesting as well
https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/cressida-dick-uk-foreign-office-secret/
jambalaya - MemberHowever also as @Dash says they have had justice, they have followed the legal process to the very end and it has delivered its verdict.
TBF, legal history has many cases where people followed the legal process to the very end, but received no justice.
@big_n_daft nor should they disclose details of people working in security related positions
@Northwind yes I take your point
Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?
People might not like the concept, but its not unusual:
Now - imagine that played out in a police/court/inquest scenario - where half a dozen witnesses are saying that there was a bloody great big gorilla, and you're being accused of lying/murder because you never saw it. Did you fire five rounds or six? did the suspect have a hat on or not? was the car blue or grey? - repeat ad nauseam.
The F-kups with lots of different versions of what happened (some coming form eye witnesses, then being repeated as fact) were inexcusable - but at the same time we all know that had the police said "no comment till we have taken statements and worked out what happened" then the same people would be criticising them for that too. Dick (and the cover up of her inadequacies in planning, lack of clarity and poor decision making) should have been prosecuted for misconduct - but that has nothing to do with the officers 'on the ground' and the instant split second decisions that they had to make.
The biggest error is in a system that seeks to lay blame, and prosecute police officers for murder over making a genuine mistake, rather than analyse and identify systemic and institutional error - look at what the airlines have done to tackle that over the years.
mudmonster - MemberJust heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?
In fairness, some of the eyewitness reports were pure fabrication. Mark Whitby invented the famous winter coat, and Anthony Larkin went a bit further and hallucinated a bomb vest with wires sticking out. These 2 seem to have been malicious, tbh if it was up to me they'd have received a new arse for this. Start with wasting police time, maybe a bit of libel...
(I had to give evidence for an assault the other week; I called it exactly how I remembered it, and drew attention to bits I wasn't sure of- but I can almost guarantee some of it's wrong. Your brain fills in gaps. But these dudes actually made stuff up. Who knows what other witness bullshit there was.
OTOH, the "jumping the ticket barrier" was repeated by police long after they knew it wasn't true- it seems to have started as an innocent mistake but was intentionally used to create doubt and take pressure off police.
For just about the first time ever I agree with Ninfan- I think blaming the firearms officers on the scene, who were called in right near the end of the chain of events, is like blaming the guns. But Cressida Dick and Ian Blair should have been held responsible.
mudmonster - Member
Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?
As others have pointed out, witnesses are not always particularly accurate. A former colleague of mine is in charge of monitoring all the traffic signals in our town, along with all the traffic cameras attached to them. When a pedestrian was struck by a car and killed at a signal-controlled crossing, the police contacted him for the CCTV footage. Two eye-witnesses, completely independently, gave police the same version of events: the pedestrian had been waiting at the crossing, got the green man, started crossing, got hit by the car which had run the red light.
The video showed that the pedestrian had approached the crossing, pressed the button, immediately started crossing (against the red man and without waiting), the car (on a green light) then hit him when he stepped in front of it.
Two independent witnesses, two entirely wrong versions of what happened.
The mess up here was from the top down, the control room messed up in a high stress situation.
I feel sorry for the officer who killed him. This officer ran towards a man who the control room had led him to believe was a terrorist with a bomb. I can't even imagine the level of commitment needed to your job to run towards a (believed to be) suicide bomber knowing that you are the only person who can stop him. In that situation I am not surprised he fired. Prosecuting the poor sod with the gun sounded wrong to me.
The mess up was why did they even let him get on the tube and it's obvious that the MET handled the aftermath wrongly/dishonestly/ineptly.
Jambalaya
In good faith!? Wth. They followed and killed the wrong person because of the belief that everyone who isn't white looks the same. Good faith my backside. Massive chicken up more like.
They followed and killed the wrong person because of the belief that everyone who isn't white looks the same.
That's some leap. We've all said the mistakes were appalling, but the firearms officer was left with no choice due to others mistakes.
I just wonder how many hours the poor guys at the sharp end had worked in the last week or so.
This is the statistic I found most worrying from yesterdays reporting;
[i]1990-2015: 995 deaths in police custody or following police contact and 55 fatal shootings by police officers in UK. Not one conviction.[/i]
Now I can accept that the police generally do a good job (one of my sisters is a DCS) but I can't believe that every death in custody and death involved no act by a police officer that fell the wrong side of the law.
ninfan makes a good point. without top down institutional change you end up with the the guys at the pointy end having the perverse incentive of colluding to protect themselves as they can be damned sure no-one will stick up for them. The police that use weapons should be the very first to be able to say "I made a mistake" but they won't because they know full well that the weight of shit that will pile down on them, and miss the likes of Dick and Blair...
the whole episode makes recent boasts regarding the shortcomings of European anti terrorist services ring hollow.
It is tricky. TBH for one thing there should be a way to hold the state responsible without necessarily blaming individuals- it was a catalogue of failures, it's not reasonable to blame it all on the person pulling the trigger, they were just the pointy end. And often you can't get to the big problem- the rules of engagement and control of the situation- while individuals are scared of prosecution.
The whole thing stank, to me, start to finish. I'm just not sure charging an officer is the solution. But serious questions over their fitness to do the job, certainly, TBH the "self defence" argument only worked if the officers had collectively lost their ****ing minds. But that's perfectly plausible.
The double irony was always that if de menezes had been a terrorist, he'd have succeeded, the "chase" took him through several ideal target areas- so it was a failure in pretty much every way. People tried to justify it as part of protecting the public from a potential attack but that never made any sense.
i think this pretty much sums it up for me...if the officer involved cannot be individually held to account for his death then the police force should have been held to account for its failings in the operation
the fact that the officers seemed to have colluded and changed their version of events and that it was contradicted by those of the eye witnesses was alarming.
Making sense is relative, at that second it probably made absolute sense to pull the trigger.
but to shoot him 7 times in the head and once in the shoulder?? 1 shot to head should have put him down...these officers are supposed to be highly trained in using firearms...even they should have realised that after that first head shot that he had been stopped...if not because they had slightly missed then a second could possibly be justified....but seven?!
if you run through it as if you were holding the gun i find it hard to justify pulling the trigger 7 times at someones head especially when eye witness statements seemed to suggest he had been pinned down first before being shot...thats an over zealous finger on the trigger.
if this was a criminal investigation 7 shots to the head would have suggested that the shooter had maliciously continued as if fuelled by some sort of rage and hatred but seeing as it was a police officer holding the gun there couldnt have been any malice in that could there(?)
Two officers fired a total of eleven shots according to the number of empty shell casings found on the floor of the train afterwards. Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at close range, and died at the scene. An eyewitness later said that the eleven shots were fired over a thirty-second period, at three second intervals. A separate witness reported hearing five shots, followed at an interval by several more shots.
11 shots fired....what happened to the other 3 bullets? how can a trained SO19 officer miss at point blank range?? also they were using hollow point bullets
Would you be taking chances if you thought the suspect had a bomb?
Also 11 shots at three second intervals? Sounds bollocks to me, thats a bloody long gap.
gonzy - MemberA separate witness reported hearing five shots, followed at an interval by several more shots.
Could be wrong but I think this witness would be the surveillance officer that grappled de menezes before he was killed- can't recall the numbers but he reported hearing several shots, then as he was being dragged out of the train car, hearing further firing.
This is probably not all that important, really, because any one of the shots would most probably have been fatal; excess shots could suggest a loss of control but they didn't affect the outcome. We're not talking about, say, wounding a suspect then finishing them off.
Would you be taking chances if you thought the suspect had a bomb?
they had been watching the address he lived at, they were on the look out for three men who they believed may have been Somali, Eritrean, or Ethiopian.
one of the officers compared his face to a CCTV image and thought he was a suspect but was unable to film him straight away cos he was taking a piss. so he wasnt able to send the image of him back to the control centre to confirm him as a suspect but from that point onwards 3 officers tailed him
based in the officers suspicions of him the orders were given that de Menezes was to be prevented from entering the Tube system.
the 3 officers followed him onto a bus then off the bus to another closed station before he boarded another bus to Stockwell station...he even made a phone call before boarding the second bus...there was ample time and opportunity to stop and apprehend him but they failed to do so
they f***** it up and then tried to cover it up....and now they've got away with it.
Could be wrong but I think this witness would be the surveillance officer that grappled de menezes before he was killed- can't recall the numbers but he reported hearing several shots, then as he was being dragged out of the train car, hearing further firing.This is probably not all that important, really, because any one of the shots would most probably have been fatal; excess shots could suggest a loss of control but they didn't affect the outcome. We're not talking about, say, wounding a suspect then finishing them off.
from what i read it seemed to suggest that Hotel 3 (the officer) has grabbed him on the train and then pushed him back into his seat before the others came to grab him...he them heard one shot close to his ear and then fell to the floor and shouted "Police" before being dragged out of the train by an armed officer...it was at this time he heard the other shots being fired
that suggests that they never identified themselves to de Menezes as police until after the initial shot was fired
that first shot should have finished him off...these officers are supposed to be trained so they should not have missed...if they believed him to be a terrorist threat then that first shot should have been a kill shot that totally incapacitates the suspect...then there would not have been a reason to fire 10 more shots...seven of which went into his head and body....that to me says that the shooting had a very sinister undertone
that to me says that the shooting had a very sinister undertone
I don't think it matters which hand his gun was in
The police officer acted in good faith, he made a mistake.
That's okay then. Nothing to see here. No case to answer.
This would be the security services that are the best of the best, according to those politicians who want the UK out of the EU....?
that to me says that the shooting had a very sinister undertone
And what's that?
I think Hanlon's Razor probably applies here.
Awful thing to happen but I'm not really sure what 'justice' would look like here.
As thegreatape mentioned..
[i]Was it alleged that they colluded to lie about this incident, or was it that questions and concerns were raised about the established and long standing practice of them debriefing and writing up their notes together rather than doing so in isolation? [/i]
I seem to understand that it helps with post-incident de-stressing for the chaps at the sharp end. Or would you rather they go out on a subsequent job pre-stressed?
that first shot should have finished him off...these officers are supposed to be trained so they should not have missed...if they believed him to be a terrorist threat then that first shot should have been a kill shot that totally incapacitates the suspect...then there would not have been a reason to fire 10 more shots...seven of which went into his head and body....that to me says that the shooting had a very sinister undertone
And you say that as an experienced Armed Response officer do you? If they believe the suspect has not been incapacitated then they have every reason to continue firing. For reference incapacitation does not necessarily come with death, muscle spasms could lead to post mortem, detonation from what I understand so any bomb suspect will be treated with such caution. If he was twitching and I was standing there you can be bloody sure I'd be making sure.
Regardless of any other failures that day it still comes down to what is done in the moment you believe the suspect is about to act. The armed response were only going with the info they had, they were set up to fail IMO.
even they should have realised that after that first head shot that he had been stopped...
There are plenty cases of people surviving head shots. Once the decision is made to fire there isn't much point just firing once.
Gunshot wound head trauma is fatal about 90 percent of the time,
I think 'through the brain stem' applies, to stop any chance of a last-grasp detonation.
I think 'through the brain stem' applies, to stop any chance of a last-grasp detonation.
not much use if it's a "dead mans handle" detonator. Or are they clairvoyant too ?
[i]not much use if it's a "dead mans handle" detonator[/i]
I always wondered that - surely having the detontaion occur when a trigger is released would be the 'preferred' method?
I don't really see that the number of bullets used makes any material difference. They intended to kill him as they had been led to believe he was a suicide bomber. They carried out their intention.
What difference does it make whether they used 1, 3 or 100 bullets?
Except the Association of Chief Police Officers guidelines for armed officers which states they should reassess the situation after each shot.Once the decision is made to fire there isn't much point just firing once.
Maybe stop for a cuppa and fill in an H&S form between each shot as well?
The 'reassess' is clearly a continuous process, you would expect anyone to shoot until the (perceived) threat was no longer a threat, that would also be entirely within the law on the use of force in self defence.
Correct. Plenty of examples of armed police shooting only once.The 'reassess' is clearly a continuous process, you would expect anyone to shoot until the (perceived) threat was no longer a threat
Redefine the question 'What would justice look like?'
Sure as hell to me doesn't mean the guy pulling the trigger gets banged up if they were acting on orders and provided intelligence. What justice should look like is the Police learning and taking steps to ensure that it never happens again.
On a related note I've just finished read Hack Attack about the Murdoch press and the phone hacking. Far far more disturbing than the actual hacking was the police to the very top actively blocking any proper investigation and deliberately ignoring evidence.
In this case it's the not standing up and saying we ****ed up that is totally unforgivable. Of course mistakes will happen and innocent people may die but I think most of us could probably accept that if there were honesty after the event. That honesty though probably requires that people are not prosecuted for mistakes in these situations unless their individual behaviour is reckless. I don't think personally that any form of punishment for the officers who fired those shots will match the punishment of living the rest of their lives with the knowledge of what they have done.
I hope that if it happened to a member of my family then the simple honest truth would be enough for me. In this case though that will never be enough for his family because they didn't get it straight away. It's too late for anyone to tell them we got this horribly wrong, they were lied too from the beginning and now nothing that anyone does or says will resolve this for them.
I don't even think jail sentences for all those involved would resolve it for them.
The greatest crime in this is for me is not his killing but that his life was not considered worth honesty afterwards.
To be sure to incapacitate someone completely (edit: suicide bombers are a special case for what should be obvious reasons) you have to destroy their cerebellum.
Even if you are some sort of ninja hollywood movie style shooting master (which I don't think _anyone_ could be when faced at arms length with someone you believe to be a suicide bomber) thats not easy, but you have to be sure.
So you keep shooting until you are.
To put it another way, if they'd shot him only once and then stood around waiting to see what happened; it would strongly imply that they knew he wasn't a suicide bomber at all.
I really feel for the guy who died and his family, but I also feel for the people on the ground who had to do that (in cold blood) to another human being.
And you say that as an experienced Armed Response officer do you?
no i'm not but i'm trying to apply some sort of logic into what i understand happened.
if he was an suicide bobmber then i assume he would have tried to detonate as soon ash the frist officer grabbed him and shoved him back in his seat...if he was unable to do so at that time then it would be justified to fire a shot at him to try and stop him.
i presume that the first shot fired was the one that hit his shoulder thus the further need to fire at his head.
using hollow point rounds which are intended to cause more soft tissue damage then its understandable that if after the first shot to the head he was moving around then a another shot to the head is warranted...but from close range of say a few feet or even closer the first shot to the head pretty much should have finished him off using the standard issue Glock 17 handgun from a trained firearms officer...how many shots to the head does it take at such close range to kill a man??
also if they weren't to know what type of detonation device the suspect could have been carrying...was it a wise move to shoot him first? if he did have a dead mans trigger then shooting him would have had the opposite effect of their objective of stopping him from detonating an explosive device
Gonzy, Maybe if you think about it this way:
The specific aim of the police was not to kill him, it was to incapacitate him.
The second implies the first, but is not the point of the exercise.
It also requires more bullets.
Sure as hell to me doesn't mean the guy pulling the trigger gets banged up if they were acting on orders and provided intelligence. What justice should look like is the Police learning and taking steps to ensure that it never happens again.
those two things are not mutually exclusive. To my (admittedly untrained and inexpert) eye 11 shots fired by two men holding down a third at close range would need careful and intense scrutiny, and very clear and detailed explanation. Either they are highly trained and recognise when some-one is no-longer a threat, or they continue firing "to make sure" in which case they are far from expert and should have no business being there.
this whole operation tends towards the "****ed up from the get go" which at the very least (to my mind) given that an innocent man has been brutally murdered, some goal time for some-one.
Nickc, oh yeah, of course.
The police should be able to tell from several feet away using "expert training" something that a doctor would be hard pushed to tell for sure.
If the police are ever as skilled as you apparently think they ought to be, the NHS would be able to ask for their assistance with faster tonsillectomies.
As I said above, I have every sympathy for the victim and his family. But whatever went wrong in this situation, the ugly bit at the end with the guns is not the bit that needs to be looked at with the most critical eye.
But whatever went wrong in this situation, the ugly bit at the end with the guns is not the bit that needs to be looked at with the most critical eye.
all of it needs to be looked at.
the operation was doomed from the start due to incompetence on the ground and at the control desk.
poor intel was fed back and then used to base an opinion that he was a suspect and needed to be stopped which led to his death.
the fact that they had 3 officers following him for some time and were presented with time and opportunity to stop him before he entered stockwell station needs to looked at.
did the officers identify themselves before or after they shot him. according to the officer who initally grabbed him no identification of police presence was made until after the first shot was fired
the fact that he was shot 7 times i the head at very close range whilst being "pinned" down should also be reviewed.
they didnt even know for sure that he was a terrorist because the officer who initially identified couldnt corroborate it because he was busy taking a piss.
even after that he was a suspect but not confirmed as a would be bomber...was enough done to ascertain the fact that he did in fact have explosives on his person?
i can accept the policy that headshots are the best way of stopping would be bombers from detonating devices...but in this instance the accounts of the first officer there (Hotel3), after he had pointed him out on the train, de manezes got up from his seat. the officer then went to grab him and pushed him pack into his seat. if de menezes was a bomber then he would have made a play for the detonator rather than standing up and even when he was grabbed would have still made an attempt to detonate. this never happened. the armed officers and the officer there should have assessed this as it should have been part of their training and thought to themselves that if he was a bomber then his actions dont come across as that...but instead they went in with guns blazing.
i can accept the policy that headshots are the best way of stopping would be bombers from detonating devices...but in this instance the accounts of the first officer there (Hotel3), after he had pointed him out on the train, de manezes got up from his seat. the officer then went to grab him and pushed him pack into his seat. if de menezes was a bomber then he would have made a play for the detonator rather than standing up and even when he was grabbed would have still made an attempt to detonate. this never happened. the armed officers and the officer there should have assessed this as it should have been part of their training and thought to themselves that if he was a bomber then his actions dont come across as that...but instead they went in with guns blazing.
Look up the difference between fast and slow thinking.
Fast thinking is you putting to together all the information you have available and drawing a conclusion and acting on it. Slow thinking is applying a second layer of scrutiny and logic to that.
He gets up (to run away?) - fast thinking - looks guilty, must be the bomber. Given time for slow thinking, hindsight and less adrenaline your hypothesis makes perfect sense, but that's not how you would have reacted in the situation.
Plenty of similar cock up happen, there was one where maintenance workers left the covers open on a passenger jet, they then went back at the end of the shift, checked the wrong plane, assumed someone else must have both fixed the problem they'd opened them to fix, closed them and wondered off. The Co-pilot on his checks assumed they were supposed to be like that as the maintenance record was signed off. Lo and behold the covers got ripped off shortly after takeoff an the plane had to land. That's fast thinking, see something, rationalize it, act on it as fact. It's how brains work, we like everything to make sense, and they had a whole shift (and the clue that the faults had disappeared and the covers locked shut)to realize their mistake.
Equally, he might not have armed the bomb yet? So even trying to apply hindsight to it it's difficult. You could even argue that if he had it hands visible it could be rationalized that he didn't have a deadmans switch.also if they weren't to know what type of detonation device the suspect could have been carrying...was it a wise move to shoot him first? if he did have a dead mans trigger then shooting him would have had the opposite effect of their objective of stopping him from detonating an explosive device
I'm probably a far too wishy washy yogurt weaving ,liberal but I don't think that everyone is a psychopath and I apply that same faith in people to the police officers.
There were clearly some systemic failures, and the situation spiraled out of control. But I agree with the conclusions of the investigation, no individual was at fault, there were procedural problems, and convenient 'facts' were repeated to support what people probably believed which later turned out to be wrong, but to hold individuals accountable would require an identified individual to have acted maliciously, not to have just followed a flawed procedure.
There were clearly some systemic failures, and the situation spiraled out of control. But I agree with the conclusions of the investigation, no individual was at fault, there were procedural problems, and convenient 'facts' were repeated to support what people probably believed which later turned out to be wrong, but to hold individuals accountable would require an identified individual to have acted maliciously, not to have just followed a flawed procedure.
fair point and i agree with this....it was a systematic cock up that put people in situations they didnt want to be in to make fatal decisions that would forever be scrutinised....which ultimately led to the death of an innocent man
Again people are forgetting the high stress environment post 7/7, as I understand it training was to shoot in the head multiple times to reduce risk of detonating a suicide bomb/vest. If you are a police office sat on top of what you think is a live bomb you are not going to take too many chances.
As I said it was a terrible mistake made worse by the collusion afterwards. People are not perfect and nothing including policing will be error free. The European court said the matter was at an end, we in the UK have no bearing on its judgements so an independent court has said the matter is at an end.
EDIT: again tomrepeat myself but @gonzy is totally correct there where a large number of errors even letting him get anywhere near the tube. He should have been stopped at gun point immediately upon leaving the flats and his id checked. However it takes a very brave police officer to confront a potentail bomber at the very close range required with a hand gun. If he is a bomber you are dead unkess you can surprise him
He should have been stopped at gun point immediately upon leaving the flats and his id checked. However it takes a very brave police officer to confront a potentail bomber at the very close range required with a hand gun. If he is a bomber you are dead unkess you can surprise him
IIRC the surveillance team weren't authorised to do this at the time because they weren't neccesarily trained to do this being surveillance operatives, they were only armed with handguns and the hard stop team were laid up to far away to respond quickly, again if IIRC the i.d upon him leaving the flat was tentative so any stop immediatley outside the flat would've compromised the operation possibly leading to a gretaer loss of life and as you say how do you surprise a suicide bomber at close range. Systematic failures, a new dynamic risk that through up situations and stresses (lack of resources, dealing with suicide bombers etc) that had not been encountered before and just plain old bad luck all played a part imho
As I recall, the officers on scene were only tasked initially with tailing him, though were armed for thier own protection (and bearing in mind that if it had been him, he could have led them to co-conspirators, so there was a judgement call to be made whether he was 'about to carry out an attack' or potentially 'leading us to the rats nest'
Thus when it became clear that he was headed for the tube, there was another judgement call to make whether to stop him with the less trained 'armed' officers or and wait for the specialist firearms team, who were inbound, and the decision was made since their arrival was imminent.
We can only imagine the uproar from the usual suspects if he had been shot, or indeed exploded, and it came to light that the officers who stopped him were not specialist firearm officers who had been trained in how to deal with suicide bombers, but were only armed for their own self defence.
This one still shocks me..
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/oct/05/nickdavies1 ]From Prison[/url]
A small bird whispered in my ear that the police shooters werent actually police firearms officers. Alledgedly there simply were not enough officers to cover the transport network so other men with guns were out and about that day.
Do not ask me how I know this and i cant prove it anyway
Justice was done. Just because the outcome doesn't suit someone doesn't mean it that things are not correct. If we went along that road there could never be justice as someone would always be unhappy.
And the above post is just s*** stirring.
Really I do not understand the attempts to blame the shooters in this . They followed what they were told was a human bomb underground from the second they entered the tube they believed if they messed up they and dozens of others were dead .
As I understand it the training for dealing with suicide bombers is pretty clear you kill them and you make sure they are dead as quickly and ruthlessly as possible destroying any ability to last gasp trigger the bomb. In that light for me the shooters are heros tragically wrong acting on flawed information but heros . The blame and fault is in the systems and decisions that sent them underground with the Intel that they had and for that a legal finding of culpability has been made.
A small bird whispered in my ear that the police shooters werent actually police firearms officers.
There was a lot of speculation it was the SRR, due to the tools that where used for the job, yes..