Menezes shooting inquiry complete

[bigfootedfred]

anyone remeber this story?
The Brazilian man shot dead at london subway.

An inquiry into the death of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes,
shot by London police who mistook him for a suicide bomber, has reached its conclusion.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission is due to hand its report
to the Crown Prosecution Service for it to decide if anyone should be charged.
Ministers will also receive the report, but it will not yet be made public.
Mr Menezes, 27, was killed at Stockwell Tube station, in south London, the day after the failed 21 July bombings.
Police and soldiers were watching the block of flats where Mr Menezes lived,
believing a man suspected of the 21 July attacks lived there.
A soldier saw the electrician leave his flat and thought he resembled the suspect.
He suggested it was "worth somebody else having a look".

Evenly spaced shots

The IPCC investigation has focused on how this vague identification led to Mr Menezes being shot dead on the Tube.
The BBC has obtained an eyewitness statement, given to the IPCC,
which described how anti-terror officers shot at Mr Menezes 11 times.

The statement read: "The shots were evenly spaced, with about three seconds between the shots for the first few shots.
"Then a gap of a little longer. Then the shots were evenly spaced again."

Mr Menezes, from Gonzaga in south-eastern Brazil, was hit seven times in the head.
Commander Cressida Dick was in charge of armed officers,
and her colleague Commander John McDowell was in charge of surveillance officers on the day of the shooting.
But it is not clear who will bear the brunt of any IPCC criticisms, BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said.
Mr Menezes' family want charges brought against senior officers and those who pulled the trigger.
Alex Pereira, a cousin of Mr Menezes, said: "Those who came with guns all had an intention to kill. There's no way to forgive them."
But former firearms officers have warned charges could lead to protests, with armed officers refusing to carry guns.
Roger Gray, a former firearms officer, warned of a potential "crisis".
"If they start to, as they say, hand in their ticket, because they are all volunteers, and it goes beyond a certain number, then the ripple effect will go right through London and I think it will probably go through the country," he said.

Commissioner's conduct
IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick said last month the commission was confident
it knew what happened at Stockwell Tube station and why.
Documents related to the IPCC probe, leaked last August, seemed to contradict eyewitness reports and initial police quotes that Mr Menezes' "clothing and demeanour" added to suspicions he was a suicide bomber.
The inquiry has interviewed a number of Metropolitan police officers of all ranks over Mr Menezes' death, but the head of the force, commissioner Sir Ian Blair, was not among them.
A separate IPCC investigation is being held into Sir Ian's handling of the affair.
All 30 passengers in the train carriage at the time of the shooting have been interviewed,
and the probe took a total of 600 written statements.

source

Shot in the head....7times?...
This looks more like an execution

[stop-3]

The perversity of this incedent is incredible to me. When I first learned of the immediate details of this murder I was horrified. Yet what has transpired since is even more horrifying. I cannot understand how it is that some copper held him down and then another shot at his head deliberatly and slowly (I could understand it a bit more if he blazed away as fast as he could). Then there are all the lies we were told about, like the CCTV's being all broken and so forth. There is no doubt that evil men are in charge.

[imb39]

It is clear that heads must roll. I was prepared the give the police the benefit of doubt in the knowledge that the truth will out. Well the truth has surfaced and the behaviour of the police was, at best, severely lacking. It would appear that paranoia took over and this dictated the actions of the police officers concerned. Ian Blair needs to resign (he's head of the Metrolpolitan Police, after all and made some shocking statements in the aftermath of the shooting). The officers concerned should also be tried.

The news about the timings of the shots is quite distressing. I'm no military man - could any explain to me any benefit of this process when speed should have been the order of the day (if the original police statements are to believed). The actions of a few police have sullied the name of the force as a whole. The really alarming aspect is that those particular officers have received extensive training in the use of fire arms. How could it have gone so wrong?

At least my faith in the investigation has be upheld. There are not many countries in which the police cuold be investigated effectively like that. To be honest, though, I have less faith in the porsecution side...

[GeneralLee]

They shot him in the head because they were scared :wub: he was going to blow up. Stupid in hindsight but at the time nobody wants to be a casulty. Yes they held him down but if he was a suicide bomber what would stop him from flipping a switch or hitting a button at the first opportunity? Yes it was wrong to suspect him and the officers let their paranoia get in the way of their profesionalism by the sound of it.

[Ahiga]

Perhaps training on how to take care of a suspect suspected of being a suicide bomber would be a valuable teaching for British and other Police forces.

[stop-3]

All the training in the universe will not exorcise pure evil. I am sure that the killer is an evil person. If this wasn't blair's cool brittania I think they may be a chance that he be charged and tried. Since it is Blair (two of 'em'!) I think not. When you have a profoundly evil person at the very top all perversions are possible.

[imb39]

I understand the initial rationale given - but was he really the threat made out? He didn't run - as said by the police. He wasn't wearing a thick jacket - as described by the police. He wasn't acting suspiciously - as described by the police. If you read my posts when the fiasco first came up, I firmly backed the police and took your stance. As the affair unravelled, though, it has become apparent that the police lied through their teeth and were more interested in covering their backsides rather than sorting out the mess. Ian Blair, also, handled the situation poorly.

I would like to repeat that I do not envy the position that we place our police in and the decisions they make are crucial, but you simply cannot go around gunning people in these circumstances.

[Habelo]

Talk about injustice:'(
And this looks rather obivous to me what the police did....

[Custor]

Many people were prepared to give the Police the benefit of the doubt given the timing of the incident and regards potential suicide bombers. The subsequent demolition of the story fed to the hacks about the suspicious nature of the 'suspect' quickly led to a reverse in many peoples opinions.

It'll be interesting to see what the final version comes out to be.

Call me old fashioned but I think that the Police should put themselves at risk to keep the Public safe, rather than put the Public at risk to keep themselves safe.

[Habelo]

Errr, ive lost my father when i was 10 years old, its hell and i would ****ing go on killing spree against the police if some cop killed him becuse he *think* that someone is a terroist:@
I mean seriosly people are idiots and should not hold responsible to kill somone just out of touch(yeah my instincs tells me that hes a terroist)

[imb39]

I mean seriosly people are idiots and should not hold responsible to kill somone just out of touch(yeah my instincs tells me that hes a terroist)

There is absolutely no evidence of ANY link between Menezes and ANY terrorist organisation. Indeed there was a lot of suposition about him being an illegal immigrant - that has also been disproved. The police made a hash of it big time.

[bigfootedfred]

There is absolutely no evidence of ANY link between Menezes and ANY terrorist organisation. Indeed there was a lot of suposition about him being an illegal immigrant - that has also been disproved. The police made a hash of it big time.

and evenly spaced shots....

whoever said, it, no it was not panic.
"Anti-terror" officers shot at Mr Menezes 11 times
7 of those shots in the head, evenly spaced over something like half a minute.
thats not panic fire

The shots were evenly spaced, with about three seconds between the shots for the first few shots.

yeah, sounds like panic huh?

and then

"Then a gap of a little longer. Then the shots were evenly spaced again."

the officers let their paranoia get in the way of their profesionalism by the sound of it.

read above, sounds like they did a very professional "job" to me.

[The Alcotroll]

Someone hasn't been paying attention to the whole story.

The Police did indeed shoot Mr DeMenezes seven times in the head, without issuing a warning. They were deliberate shots.

They did this as per their training, in accordance with the Operation Kratos shoot-to-kill policy brought out as a typically knee-jerk Government response to the 7th July bombings. It comes from Isralei experience dealing with suicide bombers and the rationale behind it is simple. A man warned to stop by armed officers, or shot in the chest after failing to comply with a warning (normal procedure being to shoot for the center of mass) is still capable, if determined enough, to detonate any explosives attached to his person. Even a head-shot can result in muscle spasms that can trigger the explosives. The only way around this is to sever the spinal column, which is achieved by several shots to the head.

This is a pre-planned policy, that those men would have trained for. That is the proscribed way to deal with suicide bombers.

The fault lies not with the armed responce officers who killed Mr DeMenezes, since they were following the orders they had been given.

The fault lies in two places: Firstly the surveillance team that identied Mr DeMenezes (erroneously) as a potential suicide bomber (note the word potential). Secondly the command chain (we don't know exactly who) who misinterpreted that assessment and gave out the order that DeMenezes was a definate suicide bomber who should be delt with according to the Kratos guidelines ie; to be shot without warning, several times in the head, in order to sever the spinal column.

That much is fact (or as close as we can get in the circumstances...)

This much is my own opinion:

Any death is a tragedy, especially the death of an innocent man. It's worse when that man is killed by a law enforcement agency tasked with the protection of the innocent.

But it occurs to me that if DeMenezes had in fact been a bomber (and the address of his flats was found in one of the bags left bhind by the 7th July bombers), and if he had managed to detonate a bomb on the underground, then those same voices decrying the injustice of his death, would be demanding to know why the Police didn't protect them from a dangerous terrorist.

It also occurs to me that you have far more chance of being run down by a speeding bus than being shot by a policeman (or blown up by a terrorist). It puts things into perspective a little, (bleak perspective though it is) when you think that the poor man could just as easily have been run over by a taxi, killed in a botched mugging, or contracted cancer as a result of the inhalation of second-hand smoke.

What we need to do now is move on, stop criticising the Police (and further reducing their already damaged morale) and concentrate on removing and replacing a flawed piece of legislation that should never have been allowed to exist.

[bigfootedfred]

@ The Alcotroll

So in other words, my description of an excution style killing is quite accurate here.

The problem is this was all based on a soilder saying that it was "worth somebody else having a look".
That, led to him getting shot dead (11 shots) on the tube.
if you notice i wasnt blaming the officers.
I said right from the start ofthis thread, exactly what i thought this looked like.
it was not panic fire, or in response to some provaction.
The intention was to kill him.

and all this based.
on a quanitiy of "evidence" that could fit in writting on the back of a matchbox.

[The Alcotroll]

Big Foot; I take exception to the term 'execution', which implies some sort of judicial process and social mandate behind the killing. I'd also point out that the problem wasn't that the surveillance team erroneously identified DeMenezes as a possible terrorist, but that someone higher in the chain of command misinterpreted that. There seems to have been some sort of Chinese Whispers game going on, that resulted in the armed team being ordered to shoot to kill without warning. In fact, the fault lies with Operation Kratos itself, and the fact that it should never have been introduced in this country, and certainly not kept as a secret.

Apart from that I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I was aiming my comments at Ahiga, who thinks that the Police force needs better training, and Stop-3 who seems to be under the impression that the shooter is a closet psychopath who joined SO-19 so that he could kill people.

[bigfootedfred]

Big Foot; I take exception to the term 'execution', which implies some sort of judicial process and social mandate behind the killing.

Well i said "execution style", i was thinking more along the lines of the Russian mob than an official execution.
which, in effect was what happened.
A clandestine group, had their men, kill a Citizen without warning or provocation (or evidence!)
That we (as in the government supposedly representing us) apparently authorized this type of thing is quite horrifying to me.

In fact, the fault lies with Operation Kratos itself, and the fact that it should never have been introduced in this country, and certainly not kept as a secret.

indeed.

[the Black Prince]

i hardly feel any fault lies with the officers on the scene. given that from what is available, they wre persuing a suicide bomber, their actions were in accordance with a planned procedure to deal with these bombers, as outlined above.
if any rank doing it exists, it lies in the chain of command that mis-interpreted surveillance and gave the fire order.

[Foultrajik]

If you run, youll only die tired.