Police defend shooting strategy - London

[DoYouEverWonder]

8 March 2006

There is no need to change the strategy police use to deal with suicide bombers despite the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, senior officers have said.

But the Association of Chief Police Officers, reviewing how the Brazilian was killed, accepted the public needed a clearer explanation of their tactics.

The Met Police Authority, a civilian body which oversees the Met Police, said Acpo's review was not good enough.

Mr Menezes was shot in London last July after police mistook him for a bomber.

He was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July, the day after several failed bomb attacks on London's transport network.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4784688.stm

So now killing innocent people in cold blood is acceptable? I suppose as long as you can claim your fighting terrorism anything goes.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. So who is going to step up here to defend this? nt.

[Taxloss]

2. Not me, that's for sure.

Today's Guardian makes it clear that there were horrific errors:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1725935,00.html

... but, however, no conspiracy. It was a tragic blunder.

[Postmanx]

5. I will

It is not wrong and it is not execution. It is self-defense.

Given, the police made a horrible mistake in the London subway, but taking the most effective means they have to deal with the treat of suicide bombers is suicidal itself.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Uh - gosh that is nonsense.

For example, de Menezes was tracked by a team of something like 30 detectives total, in addition to the hit squad of I believe it was five trained assassins. He was not confronted out in the open where a bomb would have done little damage, but instead was allowed to board a bus, debark the bus, walk from bus stop to train station, enter the train station and finally board a train. He could have been safely intercepted at any of several points where he was outside of an enclosed crowded space where, if he did have a bomb (which of course he didn't, but we will get to that) it would have done little damage.

Self defense did not play a role here. On the small scale of individuals, the claim of self defense, absent any actual, manifest, threat, is as bogus as it was on the scale of nations when we attacked and destroyed Iraq claiming 'self defense'. You need an actual manifest life threatening situation. There was none. de Menezes was not carrying anything that might resemble a bomb, was not dressed in bulky clothing that could conceal a bomb, and was not acting in a suspicious manner at all. He was assassinated, deliberately assassinated, either to 'send a message' or because British authorities panicked and put the hit squad on him despite the total lack of reasonable grounds for doing so.

He was killed, murdered, summarily executed, by a team trained to do exactly what it did and tasked to do exactly what they did. There was no grounds for self defense. From the moment the order was given to the Kratos team de Menezes was a dead man.

Later that same week two muslim women in burqhas were intercepted in a crowded London train station. They were not shot dead without warning. The police established a perimeter around them, isolating them from the rest of the people in the station, and from the safety of that perimeter established that they were not actually a threat at all. The two situations were very similar (although in the de Menezes case there simply was no way he was carrying a bomb) but this situation was dealt with not by a trained 'Kratos' hit team, but by London's very able and professional regular police force. As the regular police are trained to do police work rather than military operations, they did things the right way with the right results.

[AzDar]

3. Public execution of innocent people."o.k."..who're the goddamned

terrorists here???

[NYC]

4. If they don't think it was wrong, they'll use the same strategy again,

likely with the same result.

It makes sense to admit that if you killed an innocent man, something was wrong.