Yeah! Let us shoot all the terrorists!

[pianohopper]

At least it was a quick, (relatively) painless death compared to what else he might have gone through under other circumstances.  senseless beating and incrediblely painful, drawn-out passing would have been worse.  he might not even have had time to realize he was dead.  don't get me wrong, i do not condone this and am just as disgusted as is everybody else. 

but in an issue like this it's hard to know who to support and believe and pity, because although the media will refuse to portray the killers as three-dimensional, real people who might feel loads of guilt, remorse, and horror at what they thought was the right thing to do at the moment (which circles back to the media's stereotype of terrorists as dark-skinned, middle-eastern people), this may be the case.  not all cops have hearts of stone.  the knowledge of having killed someone may be more difficult to bear than anything else -- look into their eyes and see the fear and pain before breaking it and pulling the trigger, see if you can live with yourself.  i expect they have a conscience that is sorely hurting now.

[dave santino]

I'm sorry, but to anyone living in the UK at the moment, like me, they would rather have that happen a hundred times than a suicide bomber get through. He understood English perfectly well, having lived here for 5 years, and when the SAS shout "stop", whilst pointing a gun at you, that is what you do. You don't vault a ticket barrier and run towards a train full of people.

[thalbergmad]

I'm sorry, but to anyone living in the UK at the moment, like me, they would rather have that happen a hundred times than a suicide bomber get through. He understood English perfectly well, having lived here for 5 years, and when the SAS shout "stop", whilst pointing a gun at you, that is what you do. You don't vault a ticket barrier and run towards a train full of people.

Well said Dave.

Do you see the capture on TV. One of them actually said "I have got rights". No doubt Cherie Blair will make another fortune.

[prometheus]

You can't ask your men to kill innocent people for no reason.

The fact that these trained killed shot the guy doesn't suprise me. I don't know if those people have emotions. I don't care.

But the officials that made up this policy, they are insane. They get payed and elected to think and to be wise. I am also shocked by western people that don't get angry about this. It seems westerners forgot what we build up over the years after WWII ended. All that talk about "We proudly defend our demcracy, freeedom and values blabla..." I don't see anything of it. Any sensible person that likes that what makes the western world civilized would rather have all of us die before we start to kill innocent people intentionally. It's really absurd, I don't understand it at all. I though killing was bad.

Really, you know what I would do if I lived in London. I would write a letter about this. Get my thick coat, put the letter in it, and a backpack and walk around in the metro for the police to tell me to stop and then I would run away. That is fighting for freedom. Really, every civilized person should want to do this.

But my friends would never let me so I woudn't do it if I lived in London.

Really, without freedom, fair jurisdiction, democracy, basic human rights and secularism the western world is nothing. It's an uncivilized place since we have an equal number of bad things unique to our civilization.

[c18cont]

Pro, ..I have said before, I am rather reserved for this, I don't usually involve myself in controversy.

None the less, I agree with your previous material, and applaud you for being willing to speak out. We are seeing dangerous changes in western thought today....

John

[aqu01rius]

In the name of Allah?

[da jake]

Shame it had to come to that; but really, who wears a heavy coat in the middle of summer, then runs away from armed police officers...all this considering all the recent anxiety accompanying terrorism in the tube? What WAS that guy thinking?

@Bernhard:  It seems as if you're trying to paint life under Blair's administarion as some kind of totalitarian hell. I think your insinuations are insensitive and in short, ignorant.

[jolly]

Lots of erroneous information contained within this thread.

A few points:

1. Standard police procedure for deadly force is center mass placement. That is the easiest, and most effective way for an officer to get his shots on target. Ditto for combat situations.

In the case of a suspected bomber, however, doctrine is shot placement to the head. You want to turn off the switch as quickly as possible. When you shoot someone in the body, even with high velocity rounds, people do not die instantly. There is ample time to set off a bomb, and a guy that just got shot doesn't have the quandry of whether to die or not.

2. Police are trained to look for the unusual. the gentleman came out of a building that was under surveillance, wearing clothing inappropriate for the climate. He should have been stopped, and the police attempted to do so.

3. The gentleman fled, after being told by officers to halt. He did not run down the street, but ran immediately to the nearest mass transit system. After having those bombed, I think the British police would be remiss in their duty to allow a possible bomber to take more innocent life.

Life is full of choices. Unwise choices result in unfortunate consequences. The gentleman committed suicide by cop as soon as he started running towards that tube station.

4. Benjamin Franklin has a very famous quote about liberty and security. It is often misused. Liberty with no security is anarchy.

[leahcim]

There may be lots of erroneous information - but filling a post with a biased spin and your own cultural and political opinions on what happened didn't correct any of them

In what sense is wearing a jacket in Britain "inappropriate for the climate"? I do it all the time. In what sense do you need to train someone to spot this if it's a relatively warm day? People often say "You're wearing a jacket to go out?" My Gran was obviously ex-SAS perhaps not though, when she said "You'll catch your death going out like that" I usually wasn't wearing a jacket

The man was running at some stage, yes, but it's slanted to suggest he was running towards something and that he didn't use the street - tube stations are all over London, the entrances are on the street. It seems just as likely [I would say more likely] that he was running away from something - the people that later shot him perhaps? A tube train, in that case, would be a lot better than legs, no? For all his panic, at least he's thinking on his feet.

If a few plain clothes policeman wanted to detain someone who has no idea he is about to be detained they could do it before he had chance to say "what!" and without giving him any chance to decide to run, let alone do it. The reason they didn't do that and started shouting at some distance suggests that far from some split second decision about him based on his clothes or actions - they'd already decided before he left the house - that's not surprising since they were watching the house for that reason. If they made a mistake in that intelligence it's a huge mistake way before you start looking at the events that unfolded.

However, at the time he was shot he wasn't running, more than one person had "pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and shot him 5 times in the head" - 5 shots and piling atop the victim doesn't sound like the calm, collected, trained, quick off switch you suggest they are trained to perform, does it? Were they panicing as much as the guy?

In Britain there are no armed police in general and no death penalty - refusing to obey the police does not result in a death sentence nor is it "suicide". There's no justification for shooting someone who refuses to stop in general. IMO there's no justification for that to change unless you've got clear evidence that someone has a bomb or is a danger.

Let's hope the inquiry finds the same, so the silly season can stop.

The odd incident where someone gets shot for carrying a table leg or standing naked in a bedroom compounds that - and we've had years of terrorist activity here, Blair isn't going to justify his phoney "war" by shooting tourists and sticking a few fat gun carrying buffoons around London - we've had real wars here too.

There are lots of dead Britons / Europeans with famous quotes you can pull out of the hat to make any point you want. Churchill made a good one, but I won't use it as perhaps you've already tried everything else

Life is full of choices, here we call bad choices - mistakes. Mature adults generally consider it morally correct to admit when they've made them. Our legal system considers some choices that are mistakes to be negligance. IMHO, there was definately more than one person who made a mistake during that incident.

[jolly]

Remember the incident in Iraq where the American Marine pumped half a clip into a wounded combatant? Do you remember that he was brought up on charges, and immediately exonerated? Do you know why?

I've already told you what standard anti-terrorist procedure is. You kill people before they can kill you, or innocent by-standers. If a terrorist is knocked to the ground wearing a typical nail bomb distributed by a vest, if he can get a finger to the triggering mechanism to set it off there are going to be several people in the blast pattern, and most of them will be killed, or badly wounded.

It is a bad day when an incident like this happens. But it is a worse day when procedures are not followed, and we start bagging the scrapings to bring to the coroner for identification just because some cop went wobbly and didn't do his sworn duty.

If in the officer's shoes, I most certainly would have shot the man - he had no choice.

[leahcim]

You kill people before they can kill you, or innocent by-standers.

Yes, we're talking about an innocent by-stander being killed in a city. As I said, whatever "intelligence" decided he had a bomb, a coat wasn't enough and doesn't begin to compare with your wounded soldier on a battlefield.

The police aren't soldiers, it's not the same job or task. The latter aren't going in to ask questions "Excuse me sir, is this your AK47?"

We weren't there, but the eye witness accounts don't back your statements about the trained way to deal with terrorists - they simply did not do what you claim they should have - at least from the "evidence" we've seen so far.

As I said, if they wanted to apprehend the guy and they were in plain clothes etc, it would have been simple. The fact they shout from a distance suggests that they thought he had a bomb, way before he'd run, otherwise he never would have had a chance to run.

But later, if they thought he had a bomb and that was compounded as you suggested by the direction he was running or the fact he was running or anything else and you're honest when you say that, in their shoes, you would have done what they did and jumped on top of someone who you believed had a bomb strapped to them - all I can say is, fair enough - I can get you an application form if you like

[jolly]

No, if you decide lethal force is necessary, you do so as quickly and expeditiously as possible. The police decided that it was necessary, and acted in accordance. The soldier illustration was merely to draw attention to the fact that even people shot to doll rags can still kill you.

I've never fired a weapon at someone else, but I've seen three people shot to death. It is not the movies. People can, and will hurt you with their dying breath.

To better understand what I am saying, you need to be in a situation where everything goes to pieces in a matter of moments, and you have milliseconds to make a life or death decision. That is very hard to do, and training is what propels most people into action.

It is very easy to sit in one's easy chair, and second guess.

[leahcim]

It is very easy to sit in one's easy chair, and second guess.

So I see

You seem to have this idea that it was all "heat of the moment" as though the only question about negligence / mistakes made etc refer to the officers leaping atop an innocent man and shooting him 5 times. Wind back the tape - they weren't outside his house or chasing him because they saw a random guy who walked out of a random house wearing a jacket.

I'd say there are a lot of questions, the guy clearly made a big mistake, but I think there are questions about mistakes others made too.

That said, the stuff you've pointed out about the training they should have had, and the way they should deal with terrorists is very compelling, they probably made more mistakes than I initially thought, thanks for your input.

[bernhard]

I have refrained so far from answering this thread since not enough was known about the case. But as of today (17/8/2005) the following has been ascertained:

1.   Jean de Menezes (the Brazilian murdered by the police) was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving the block of flats where he lived.

2.   He was unaware that he was being followed.

3.   He was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time have suggested. He was in fact wearing a denim jacket – which is not suspicious even in summer in the UK.

4.   He never run from the police[/u]. Mr. De Menezes was completely oblivious to the stakeout operation going on around him. He left the block of flats (which was under surveillance because the police believed one or two terrorist suspects might be in there) and was wrongly believed to be one of the suspects (see item 1 above). He calmly walked to a bus stop and boarded the bus going to Stockwell tube station. He was followed by a surveillance officer all the time without realising he was being followed. He then left the bus walked calmly through the barriers at the tube station (and therefore never run or jumped the barrier), collected a free newspaper from a stand and then went down the scalator. That was the only moment he ran in order to catch the train and not from the police (incidentally all of this is shown on CCTV footage – a footage that the police/politicians on the Sunday papers three days ago were still insisting did not exist).

5.   Once inside the train, and still unaware that he had been followed and placed under surveillance, he sat down. The surveillance officer that had been tagging him all along (including inside the bus) sat beside him.

6.   At this moment, and just before the train departed, C019 (firearms squad) officers barged into the train with pistols and shouting. Here is the testimony of the surveillance officer sitting nearby Mr. Meneses:

“I heard shouting which included the word “police” and turned to face the male in the denim jacket [Menezes]. He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the C019 officers… I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side. I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been sitting… I then heard a gun shot close to my left ear and was dragged away on to the floor of the carriage.”

Here is the testimony of a man sitting opposite Mr. Meneses:

“Within a few seconds I saw a man coming into the double doors to my left. He was pointing a small black handgun towards a person sitting opposite me, He pointed the gun at the right hand side of the man’s head. The gun was within 12 inches of the man’s head when the first shot was fired.”

7.   So all the talk about Mr. Meneses running from the police and jumping barriers was basically baloney. And shame on everyone who tried to place the guilty of this murder upon the victim.

You    can read the full details here (with a photo of Mr. Meneses dead in his denim jacket):

https://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1550815,00.html

So should we support the police in its fight against terrorism? Of course we should. This goes without saying. But that is not the real question. The real question is, should we blindly support a policy of “shoot to kill”? Should we blindly support policy makers and opportunist politicians who use terrorist acts to further a totalitarian agenda (while at the same time claiming that “terrorists” want to deprive us of democratic freedoms which is exactly what these politicians are doing)?

I think the facts above speak for themselves,

I rest my case.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

PS: To Koji: What is my suggestion? My suggestion is that we treat “terrorists” as criminals within the already available and extensive legislation. To create a special legislation that goes against all principles of basic human rights is to play their game. You do what the Dutch did in the case of  Van Gogh’s murderer. You bring him to justice, not as a “terrorist”, but as a murderer. To treat a terrorist as anything more than a murderer is to give him a status he does not deserve. To “wage war on terror” is ultimately to give terror nation status. Only a cretin like Bush and his mafia could come up with this sort of stupidity. But then we know what this war on terror is really all about. Or don’t we?

It has been interesting reading this thread and the amount of conditioning and misinformation people are prey to. I guess it is not only the radical muslims who are in a state of brainwashing.

[thracozaag]

I
PS: To Koji: What is my suggestion? My suggestion is that we treat “terrorists” as criminals within the already available and extensive legislation. To create a special legislation that goes against all principles of basic human rights is to play their game. You do what the Dutch did in the case of  Van Gogh’s murderer. You bring him to justice, not as a “terrorist”, but as a murderer. To treat a terrorist as anything more than a murderer is to give him a status he does not deserve. To “wage war on terror” is ultimately to give terror nation status. Only a cretin like Bush and his mafia could come up with this sort of stupidity. But then we know what this war on terror is really all about. Or don’t we?

It has been interesting reading this thread and the amount of conditioning and misinformation people are prey to. I guess it is not only the radical muslims who are in a state of brainwashing.

  Unfortunately, it was Britain's insistence on civil liberties at all costs that led up to the bombings, imo.

koji

[bernhard]

I forgot Tony told us this had nothing to do with Iraq...

[prometheus]

You do what the Dutch did in the case of  Van Gogh’s murderer. You bring him to justice, not as a “terrorist”, but as a murderer

Actually, he has been found guilty of murder, with a terroristic character.


But I don't really agree here. He said he killed Van Gogh out of faith. He insulted the prophet and Allah ordered him to kill him. That's it. Shocking society had nothing to do with it. He followed Allah's orders because of faith and faith only. That's what the killed said and  everything he said was credible.

But the judge ruled otherwise.

And he can still be found guilty of being part of a terroristic cell, (or criminal organisation). But cannot get punishment for that. Actually, its a bit unusual that he has to stand trial for the other things.

"War on terror" is a paradox anyway. It is almost as Orwellianesque as naming the mission in Afghanistan 'Enduring Freedom'. Sense of humor these people have...

[thalbergmad]

I forgot Tony told us this had nothing to do with Iraq...

Since he is incapable of lying, we will simply have to go with him on this one.

[prometheus]

He might be forced to lie because of matters of national security. 

[leahcim]

But as of today (17/8/2005) the following has been ascertained....

Yeah I was reading that this morning.

Mea culpa, a lot of what I've said is baloney too in retrospect.

Although the more detailed events of his journey make it look worse. Someone doing perfectly normal things on a commute to his workplace, shot for apparantly no reason other than because he lived in a particular block of flats :/