I am starting this as a new diary (and cross posting it on Kos) because the BBC is reporting a new factor which may help clarify the whole picture of the shooting. It is highly relevant to the discussion and I do not want the information lost in a response in another diary.
The big puzzle all weekend has been why de Menezes ran from the police when challenged. The new report provides a possible reason for that.
The new report suggests de Menezes had an expired student visa and no work permit and was therefore in the UK illegally.
As I write the story is only headlined on the ticker on the BBC News front page. More links as the story goes up.
None of this is justifiable reason on its own for de Menezes to be killed. What it does do is explain his fatal error in running from the arned police. It does however help dispell questions as to why he ran.
Having wrongly identified him as a suspect, the police challenged him. Instead of stopping to be searched and cleared he ran, leapt a ticket barrier, ran downstairs and on to a train. That action we now know was wrongly intepreted by the police as a desperate attempt by a terrorist to kill after being detected.
What the information does do is put the lie to the allegations that the police acted in an arbitary or racist manner. It confirms the opinion of those who were willing to wait for more information before the police’s intent could be assessed.
The thing is, we have dozens, if not hundreds of incidents like this in the U.S. each year. Some individual with a minor reason to be afraid of the police decides to flee and it leads to a chase and a shooting.
Sorry to see the UK joining the ranks of shoot first ask questions later.
Too true; see my post re my city in Susan Hu’s diary on this. Frankly, from what has happened in my city with police killings of unarmed, innocent people . . . I probably would run from them, too. . . .
I am not sure how I would react to this myself but the
obvious word that comes to mind is “panic.”
I read that the police aimed for the head because they
thought that a body shot would set off explosives.
What about shooting him in leg?
It’s all so sad, indicating panic on both sides.
The opening statement at deMenezes inquest revealed he had been shot once in the shoulder and seven times in the head. The shoulder shot might account for the reported stumble into the train.
The British police training and policy to prevent a suicide bomber setting off their explosives is quite clear even though it is being quite rightly questioned. The officer was required to destroy the victim’s brain utterly and completely. That is to prevent any nerve signals reaching the hands to set off a detonator trigger.
However horrific this is, the officer was carrying out his orders and training. The decision to kill was wrong but should be separated from the manner in which it was carried out.
The decision to kill was “policy” . . . a policy learned from Britain’s Israeli trainers. How many innocent “suspects” have they killed in Israel? Thousands? How many will Britain now kill as you follow their “policy”?
Of course in Israel killing an innocent goy, while regrettable, is acceptable if the intent was to save Jewish life. What’s the British excuse?
The grisly truth is that the manual says, when confronted by a ‘suicide bomber’, “shoot to kill instantly”. A man wounded in the leg is still capable of detonating his explosives.
BTW I repeat that a witness described the victim as having ‘wires in his coat”. He was an electrician going to work.
If known by the chasing officers, this information would have signed his death warrant.
Whatever else is known, there are several factors involved.
The man emerged from a building under surveillance
He was similar in physical appearance to one of the four listed in the manhunt
He wore a bulky jacket on a warm day
He took a bus
(but did he have a rucksack? Did a policeman also get on the bus? )
He stayed on the bus past one tube station
He alighted from the bus at Stockwell tube station
There (presumably after communications between various members of the tracking team) it was decided to stop him from entering the station.
When challenged by the police (undercover + uniformed?), he leapt over a barrier and ran down the stairs toward the concourse.
A witness saw wires on the man. But we don’t know yet if this information was passed to officers, or whether they noticed it themselves at some point.
He entered a train, chased by undercover officers.
In a short space of time (less than an hour), police officers (who are in communication with each other and with base) had gathered a set of circumstantial evidence, that, in the context of the events of the day before and two weeks earlier, would put them on the utmost alert.
With everything they knew, they still attempted to stop the man without threat as he entered the station. The fact that he leapt the barrier then, gave the police only a few seconds to decide how to act.
In the context, the police at close quarters were facing death themselves, as well as lots of innocent passengers, if a bomb was detonated.
While a tragic mistake, I don’t see how they could have acted any differently.
Differently, like shoot him once in the leg ?
The investigation will reveal the details since there were so many witnesses and the case is under international scrutiny. Blair himself has said that he is “desperately sorry.”
I am going to leave it at that instead of reading more justifications for the killing.
What Blair says means shit. He’s one-time-for-all forfeited his word, whatever honor it once may have carried.
I don’t know… I think it says something that the first time this policy is out of the box (as far as I know), they get it wrong.
If any collection of innocent circumstances can all conspire to make one an instant suspect, where the punishment is death, that means that effectively the police have the right to kill anyone at all. Well, anyone of a ‘suspect’ hue. I don’t think this policy will stand for long, although I could of course be wrong.
Coroners report states 8 bullets in the victims body.
and this from “The Australian”
A wounded man, face down on the ground, held down by two men receives 5 shots to his head.
And yet, many will try to justify this.
That man could have been cognitively disabled.
How many times have disabled citizens been told to leave a store because they were “acting weird”, “didn’t respond to clerk”…
We’ve even had autistic men CONFESS to robbing banks… imprisoned… only to find out later they were innocent.
We are trying to teach my son to not panic when approached by authority figures. But to also be able to protect himself from the get go by not resisting… but when confused, scared, when he thinks he is in trouble.. he tends to freak out.
Shoot first and ask questions later is not a good policy.
I can list ten reasons why someone is wearing a bulky jacket on a hot day.
Nowadays in America… if I were confronted by police… I sure as hell wouldn’t feel too safe even if in total compliance. I don’t trust them as much as I don’t trust this government.
There are any number of reasons why he might have run (have you not heard his relative said Menezes was attacked recently by white thugs?). We are no closer to discovering the reason because the police decided to kill Menezes. Nor does it matter why he ran, since it is not illegal to run in the Tube. Waiting for more information will not change that.
What matters is that the HQ for this unit (SO19) radioed in telling the officers on site to “neutralise” Menezes, though they lacked any substantial evidence that the man presented any danger to anybody. That was lawless.
The only time shooting to kill a man is justifiable is (A) when the police KNOW he is an imminent threat to do serious harm to others, and (B) there is no reasonable alternative short of killing him that is going to prevent him from doing that harm.
People have rushed forward to excuse the police actions by hammering immediately on (B), as if the rest of us don’t understand what danger a suicide bomber presents. What they ignore is the (A) was never met. The police never even came close to knowing he was a threat to anybody.
I don’t see how the information (even if it can be trusted–and British officials have lied repeatedly abot the “facts” of this case) puts the lie to anything. There is no cause to shoot a man because he’s running.
You may be willing to assume that Menezes knew they were police, but there is no evidence for that either. The fact that so many witnesses have come forward saying that they never heard the police identifying themselves ought to give pause to anybody arguing that the police behaved appropriately.
Btw, have you wondered why the British government was so eager to investigate Menezes’ visa status? And why so many anonymous figures were leaking all kinds of info about it, before anything had been determined? The question proves nothing about Menezes actions that morning. It might, however, provide another opportunity to savage Menezes’ reputation–which is what the police began doing almost immediately after they killed him.
.
Jean Charles de Menezes, supposedly with explosives packed vest of 5-6 kg on a suicide mission, cleared the entrance barriers in a jump is quite remarkable.
I do hope the innocence of Jean Charles is not smeared by putting any blame on his behavior, doing his daily routine by using public transport to get to a job that needed to be done.
~~~
~~~