fuck

[piranha]

remember jean charles de menezes, the brasilian electrician who was shot in london on july 22nd, because he was mistaken for a terrorist? i wasn't terribly comfortable with the idea of cops going around shooting suspects, but some of the arguments i read were pretty persuasive (especially those by karentraviss), and i thought that yeah, in the heat of the moment, when you have just a few seconds time to decide, and if you don't shoot, many people might die in another explosion, that it was a justifiable mistake. still, my personal opinion remained that i am deeply uncomfortable with "shoot to kill" policies; i would really rather get blown up by a terrorist than have cops shoot innocent people -- to my mind the responsibility here doesn't get blurred at all; the terrorist is at fault, not the cops. i don't like the climate such a policy creates, but i realise that lots of people disagree with me about rather wanting to be blown up than see other innocents killed, and that they'd happily blame the cops if they didn't shoot an actual terrorist. i empathise with those who have to make the decisions in the field.

i'm curious what karen has to say now. as it turns out, not a whole lot was true about what we were told at the time. mr menezes was not
- identified as one of the bombers by somebody on his surveillance team
- running from the police after being told to stop
- jumping over a turnstile to escape from the cops into the subway
- dressed in a suspiciously thick, padded (inappropriate for the weather) jacket
- dangling wires from underneath said jacket

documents from the investigation have been leaked to ITV. mr menezes wasn't running away from the police. he did in fact not know that he had been followed. he entered the station properly, through the ticket barrier. he picked up a newspaper. he broke out in a run after that, yes, but not in response to police orders, no, to catch the incoming train. and he was quietly seated on that train when the cops yelled at him. he wasn't alone; members of the surveillance team were on that train with him. and what's more, he was immediately restrained by a member of his surveillance team when the cops burst on the scene. then the 8 shots were fired.

that's ... no. that's no longer justifiable at all. i don't want the police to protect me in this manner.

Comments

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

I am so pissed off about this story. What doubly pisses me off in the report is "Police declined to comment on the case while the investigation is continuing." Hey, fuckheads, you didn't mind talking about it a few weeks ago when you lied to me about what a sinister figure he is. Don't get all ethical about the sanctity of the investigation only when it shields you from explaining your lies. (This is, of course, an already sore spot from Karl Rove et al.)

I owe an apology to the spirit of Mr. de Menezes for faulting him for escaping the police no matter how scared you are of them. Because, you know, they're on our side. *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

[djm4]

Yes. That. Exactly.

I'm awaiting the full report before passing final judgement, but it would take a plot twist in the Fight Club league to make the police come out of this looking good at this stage.

Tipf for not getting shot by the London police the day after a terrorist incident:

1) Pause for a few minutes when you leave the house. This will give the police surveillance team time to stop pissing about (literally) and video you. There's then a fighting chance that 'it might be one of them' won't become 'we've got a positive ID; it's Osman Hussain' by the time you've got to the tube. Don't count on it, though.
2) When you get to the tube, don't pick up a copy of The Metro, as the action of stopping and picking up a free newspaper can look remarkably like the action of vaulting over the ticket barriers, when viewed from a certain angle. Apparently.
3) Don't run for the tube. No one ever does that, so you're just marking yourself out as a suspect. (Actually, this is the one piece of advice I'd give seriously; running for the tube isn't usually a good idea; there will always be another one along soon, and it increases the chance that you'll trip and put yourself or other people in danger.)
4) If someone shouts 'Police!' at you, on no account stand up and start to walk over to them. This is very threatening behaviour, and scares them. It's far better to run off in the other direction - that's what most of the eye witnesses will claim you were doing anyway.
5) Go naked. That way they won't assume you've got a bomb under whatever light summer clothes you're wearing.

I still, for the record, think that by and large the London police did and continue to do a great job after the attacks. This, however, was not an example of it.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

I also would rather get blown up by a terrorist than have cops shoot innocent people, and am uncomfortable with "shoot to kill" policies. However I can understand how, under the circumstances originally reported, it would be a difficult decision requiring immediate action and mistakes do happen, and that some people would rather have an occasional mistake than have other innocents blown up because of police hesitating and failing to stop what they genuinely believe is a terrorist in action.

But...the new facts coming to light. That sickens me.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I would prefer to wait for the facts to come out rather than assuming every juicy "leaked document" report is 100% true. But if the new version of events is the correct one, I can't put into words how much of an outrage it is.

[liv]

Oh hell. My first reaction when I heard someone had been shot was: I bloody hope they were sure he was a suicide bomber. And I've been getting steadily more depressed about the whole thing since then. Not that this comment is particularly useful, not much more than thanks for this post and for expressing ideas I very much agree with.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'm reserving judgment on whether the true witness accounts are the ones reported at the time or the ones being leaked now. But yes, if the leaked ones are true, I'll be very unhappy. I do think the police have a duty to try to stop someone whom they have reasonable grounds to believe is about to kill others, including the use of lethal force in extreme circumstances, but that qualification "reasonable" is a very serious one.

Some legal-social comments from a lawyer and cop

[(Anonymous)]

If the new information is correct, I fail to see how this can be anything but a criminal act or acts by the English police. It's disgraceful. The wide variance in the facts reported is frightening - one side has to be more or less true, and the other more or less a complete falsehood.

I suspect that some of the seriousness of the flaws here is social. Some of this comes from the context of the development of British policing. It is historically too close to the military. American policing developed under a different model, driven in part by concerns related to the background of the American Revolution. The 4th Amendment and other restrictions, while not perfect, are much stronger in isolation, and far harder to change, then the few search and seizure protections remaining in England (use of force is a "seizure", and hence analyzed under a 4th Amendment framework).

Further, the English government has evolved into a much more repressive form than would be recognizable to someone 100-150 years ago. (Official Secrets Act, etc, compared to the Freedom of Information acts of the state and federal governments in the US, for example). Some of the evolutionary pressures should be warnings to us - terrorism in the streets there has led to some of this. We need to resist the temptation to follow that path - it is laden with mines.

Related to this, and to the military connection in English policing, is that most or all of the firearm training comes from military units along the lines of the SAS. SAS generally does not take prisoners during a conflict in a civil setting. I'd be amazed if that did not cross over into the training provided. Not good. There are major differences between psycho-motor skill training, which can be provided quite competently by such persons, and philosophical foundations underlying application of that training. There are times where such philosophy may be appropriate and necessary, such as SWAT operations. I do not want to be a hostage when a negotiation dedicated unit is responding. If I am held hostage, I want people who take action as though they mean it. (If one must chose between the safety of the offender and us poor hostages, screw him. Take the head shot and do it soon, please.) This is not often the situation for patrol and investigative work, under which label I would place the circumstances of this killing. (Not to say reticence in use of force is good - the most common fact pattern in US, and I think Canadian, officer involved shootings is an officer assisted suicide. As I recall, that was first seen in research from Canada. The next most common pattern is officers afraid to use force, and dying for it.)

Another issue is the lack of familiarity with firearms in Britain generally, and especially in policing. By their rareness, they become socially defined in a manner which makes them seem like a BFD, instead of just another tool. To me, and most of my colleagues, a pistol is part of daily wear, chosen for convenience, when one does not have reason to expect a conflict. One who has reason to expect a conflict that they cannot avoid and takes a pistol is a fool. That's what long guns are for. To the few British cops I have met, a firearm is only accessed when it is time to kill someone. Ick. What a perverse view.

I had the opportunity to attend a class with a former London Metro officer who was a dual citizen and came to the US. He started in policing in the US in Oakland, and of course had some culture shock. Part of it was of course the gun stuff, etc. (Which became even stronger in Washington, where we are, as it is quite easy for private citizens to lawfully be armed in public here, not at all like California.) Part of it was the different social interaction. American cops and citizens are often casually rude to each other, which was taboo to him. However, he found that the casual brutality of British policing was not accepted, and that force here is defined as something one needs to apply to control someone; there, it was payback and punishment.

Whatever the reason, and I may be flat out wrong, if this later revealed information is true, shame on all of them. They're a disgrace.