swampster

iTrader: (1)

lol at the posts negs/positives in this thread... practically all posts questioning police actions have been neg'd & all the ones that are supportive are rated positively*...

somebody got some issues out there?

*edit, to note at the time of writing

jods

I get the joke - others may have missed it, hence the negs.

GC8

Itd be easier if they would all carrry something nondescript in a bin liner, wouldnt it?

cster

You wouldn't say that if you had ever been shot with a chair leg

Suresh

The person in question had an armed robbery conviction, so wasn't the little darling that police bashers pretend he was! The idiot also pointed his 'weapon' at the police. What do you want them to do with such scum - give them a cuddle and send them on their way?

Dave T-S

I have been around guns most of my life and am familiar with firearms and what they can do. Safety is always absolutely paramount when using them whether for sport/hunting or as a member of the police. Acting responsibly with firearms is totally about attitude.

What I find absolutely incredible is the way the officers used their firearms at the time of the shooting. According to evidence heard to date, Mr de Menezes was held down by a surveillance officer whilst he was shot seven times in the head with Glock 9mm pistols using 124 grain hollow point ammunition (put it this way, you would shoot a large deer at 200 yards with a smaller weight bullet and a single shot so that ammunition is more than capable of killing a human being) - from evidence given so far it would appear he was shot four times by one officer and three by another. He was also hit in the shoulder. In the confusion one of the armed police then apparently grabbed the surveillance officer at gunpoint and dragged him off the train at which point he was shouting he was a police officer, and even the train driver had a gun pointed at him.
This is completely over the top and unnecessary, and the only phrase I can use to describe this is gung ho, and was not acting with public safety in mind.

No, I have never shot a human being, and yes, they were in a high stress situation; but that is what they are trained to do. I often walk past Bishopsgate police station in the City and see ARU officers loading into vehicles to go out on patrol, and i'm not sure I would trust half that lot with a spud gun

billythekid

Hm,

Ok.

1) Stop watching Spooks, its nothing like real life.

2) SRR.

IMHO.

hodgy0_2

Mmm I’ve heard that defence before

I get increasingly fed up with the “I believe" line, people use it all the time
Tony Blair seemed to think it was an adequate defence of his total failure over WMD -- "oh well I believed Iraq had them" in spite oh no evidence to support his "beliefs"

And his justification of the war, with a simple “I believe we did the right thing” – well that’s OK then ---- as long as you believe it must have been right

The fact that the police believed he was a terrorist without anyone ever positively identifying him as one seems justification enough to shoot him 7 times in the head

I can believe anything I want -- the moon is made of blue cheese, pigs fly, my Scooby does 30 MPG -- but it doesn’t make it true

we seem to be going back to the dark ages -- where simple ignorant "beliefs" are enough and indeed are sufficient to shoot an innocent man dead let alone start a War

we'll be dunking witches soon!!!

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

spot on I just don't think these guys should be blamed because someone else mad the wrong call. At the end of the day they can't take risks. We've had all this before with the IRA and things have gone badly then (although they were guilty of planting a bomb if not armed)
BBC ON THIS DAY | 7 | 1988: IRA gang shot dead in Gibraltar

Even then it was ruled as unlawful and excessive force. What can the security services do?


Point is that all you need is a pilot on a sucide run. Someone who just decides to call in that he's going to crash a plane. It will be taken out no question and hundreds will be killed but whoever has their finger on the button will already have enough to cope with once they've done it without then being blamed for someone else's call. I'm sure that even with all the mis-information and half truthes here none of those officers feels good about what happened and never will.

5t.

hodgy0_2

no the issue remains that no one 100% identified him as a suicide bomber (surveillance officers identified him, to the SO19 guys, as the person they were FOLLOWING thats all -- but that’s not the same thing, a big difference)

and no one told anyone about anyone blowing up a train -- they may well have "believed" he was about too -- but please see earlier post on the stupidity and recklessness of acting on beliefs without requiring any empirical evidence to support them!!

hodgy0_2

how about the simple evidence that he was the suicide bomber they were after -- it would have been a start!!!

magepaster

iTrader: (2)

I am reading a lot that says the police did what they are trained to do. I suspect that firearms officers are trained to - above all else - assess the situation then act upon that assessment. No amount of orders could make me put a gun to a mans head and pull the trigger if that man had no bags or luggage, was a man that was sitting down with his hands in the air, was a man that was displaying no aggressive or dangerous signals. Firearms officers are not supposed to be hitmen yet that was the role they played that day.

scoobeenut

It seems to me that the armed officers in question have received specific training in how to deal with a suspected suicide bomber which would be Completely different to dealing with any other armed suspect.

1. They would certainly give no verbal warning so as to not allow the bomber time to detonate any device.
2. They would shoot directly into the head several times to extinguish all brain activity to ensure no chance that the person could trigger a bomb.

The police officers where most probably doing exactly what they had been trained to do in these circumstances and the real blame lays with the people who had identified Mr de Menezes as the target in the first place and authorised his killing in this way.

GC8

over-serious failure!

astraboy

Yep, totally agree. Flawed intel or not, the firearms officer percieved a threat to the public and neutralised that threat.
Some might consider his actions excessive, but like was said earlier, these people are trained to consider all circumstances. It would be entirely possible that people who would blow up a train could be ripped to the **** on drink or drugs and body shots might not stop them.
Five shots in the head will eliminate that possibility.
I also like the message it sent out. Similar to john smeton's in that if terrorists come to our shores 'we'll set aboot ya'
Blame the intel,blame his seniors, but whatever you do, you can't question his actions
Astraboy.

hodgy0_2

but as it turned out not the actual circumstance -- that it was a totally innocent man sitting on the tube -- before they pumped 7 bullets into his head.

People seem to be very cavalier with a person’s right to travel on public transport without being shot!!

astraboy

Thats not the point I was making. I'm not saying innocent people dont have a right to travel on the tube without getting shot, thats not even in question.

What I am saying is that the shooter's job was very simple. He has been trained to follow orders. The orders that he was issued with was that man he was following had a very real possibility of turning a carriage full of commuters into hamburger.

I'm not being cavalier at all, you just have to consider the situation he was in. Orders were received and he acted on them. He cant be blamed for doing his job, his job is to receive orders and act on them as his seniors deem fit. If he receives orders to neutralise a terrorist threat, thats what he'll do.

The shooter did nothing wrong. He was trained to act on his orders and his orders were to neutralise a threat and he did that in the most effective way possibe. I believe the phrase goes "five in the head and you know they're dead".

He's hardly the first. The SAS operatives were who were investigated over the gibraltar IRA deaths were asked why he had shot one terrorist in the head 13 times. His answer? "thats how many bullets the magazine holds"

These people are trained to kill. Its an unpleasent fact, but its what these people do. His job is not to interpret orders its to act on them. Lives may depend on his swift execution of their orders.

In this case, its obvious something went wrong. But one thing you cant cant deny. The man at the sharp end did his job to the best of his ability. Its the people who issued him his orders who are at fault.
astraboy.

boomer

..and did these "orders" include lie-ing in a court of law????

{Thus bringing the thread back to topic}

mb

CrisPDuk

Given that their ultimate boss at that time was a certain Ian Bliar, I would say that was almost certainly the case, yes

mrtheedge2u2

if they lied due to orders or because they are simply lieing ***** is irrelevant.... the fact is they attempted to cover up the fact that shot an innocent man.... first by making the guy sound like he was a terrorist ie jumping over turn styles etc and then by fudging recordings of what happened.

Now I do not know how far it is from this guys flat to the tube station but I am amazed a whole team of people did not make out his face properly in that time......

Suresh

So should they follow the suspect until he explodes and then say ' yep that's him'!

P.S. Menendes didn't have a ' right' to travel on public transport - he didn't even have a 'right' to be in the country.

Hol

iTrader: (1)

LOL. Do us all a favour, get in your time machine and tell all those nice people in Southampton, NOT to get on the Titanic. There's a good chap.

At the moment they firmly believe that the ship is unsinkable, because that is what they have been told.



Id like to ask, who on here was in London within a half mile of one of the blasts (close enogh to feel it), or come to that in Canary Wharfe when the last IRA bomb went off.

If you weren't there, and hence most of your oppinions are are based on subsequent information can I ask if you have ever been to a rock concert, or other highly emotional situation where you have gotten caught up in the moment.

When this happened, there were a lot of scared people running around and 'yeah' 100% of the public were caught up in the moment.


No comment from me whether it was right or wrong what they did. BTW.

Just that for 48hours, all the normal rules and feelings of safety in our own capital were completely gone.

Hol

iTrader: (1)

Err??
You don't know the FULL facts - but you have a strong view, based on what you don't know anyway..

Okaaay!!

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

A suspected terrorist runs onto a tube train, where only a few weeks before over 50 people were blown to bits by fanatics. Can you blame the police for being jittery

mrtheedge2u2

Hol.... if you are in a pub with some mates and they say 'look at that bird over there' how difficult is it for you to manage to see her face in the space of 5 mins.......?

Now imagine you have half an hour etc.. are you telling me you could not manage to see someones face?

I love intelligent arguments

speedking

So are the police, when confronting a potential suicide bomber, required to shout "ARMED POLICE" or not?

If they are, and they didn't, then they were not doing what they were trained to do.

If they are not, then why would they (lie and) claim that they did? Maybe they weren't sure and said that they did just in case Why not just state that "no warning was given, in accordance with ... instructions"?

Yes all normal rules and feelings of safety were gone for the public, but hopefully not for highly trained people who's raison d'etre is to deal with exactly this situation.