Eyewitnesses are frequently wrong of course. But what the family believes is quite frankly irrelevant. They were in Brazil. They weren’t there. And they’re very upset.
As to whether the men were SAS or not, maybe they were. But you can’t tell by the type of gun they were carrying. There is no such thing as a special “SAS handgun”. And just how did the Times journalist determine what kind of guns were used in the incident anyway? The eyewitness described it as a black automatic pistol. Nothing more than that.
Fact is, we don’t know the truth of what happened, and we’re not likely to for some time. But I’m not buying this SAS deathsquad shit-stirring without some kind of evidence.
Discounting the eye-witnesses and the type of jacket. If the police saw he was just wearing an ordinary denim jacket why did they think he was a bomber,and why did they let him get on the bus?
As to the SAS,I can still remember the Iranian embassy siege and the convenient way all the hostage takers were shot dead by the SAS.
Eyewitnesses are often wrong and, indeed, there is much in the accounts you linked to that we already know to be wrong. The man is described as ‘Asian’ whereas he was a light skinned Brazilian, the witness describes 5 shots, we know there was 8.
The family may not have been there, but they have had meetings with the Met Police and are reporting what they say they were told during those.
I think it’s fairly beyond doubt that there has been some SAS prescence in London for the past few weeks. In what capacity they have been operating is more unknown. Quite frankly I’m not really sure it’s much relevant whether the shooter was SAS or SO19, the SAS train the firearms cops anyway…
If someone is operating in a context where it is important to incapacitate someon e totally and rapidly for fear of them doing a great deal of damage, it will pretty much always lead to a ‘shoot till they stop twitching’ outcome.
However, given the amount of totally conflicting reports that are currently floating around, I’m not sure discussing the ‘facts’ of this case gets us very far unless we are willing to reconvene in a year or two when the report gets issued. You can’t even read anything into the IPCC being called in since they are always called in for a fatal police shooting.
As regards the general principle of whether the police should be allowed to use lethal force without warning (as they currently are), I guess that comes down to the amount of faith you have in their restraint, general competence and the quality of the intelligence they receive. And personally I think that is determined by the individual experiences everyone has had with their own police force.
However, since the streets of London are now swarming with coppers who would normally be on holiday or desk duty, I’m now safer from ordinary criminals than I have been since 9/11. Unless the Met of Al-Quaeda cause a bloodbath, I’m quids-in!
quids-in = something good?
I’m not being intentionally obtuse. I just want to make sure I understand the meaning of these terms.
[sup]bolding in all cases was done by me[/sup]
I’m thinking that the first one was supposed to read ‘the Met or Al Qaeda’. Met referring to the Metropolitan Police.
Quids in refers to being in a good position to benefit from a situation (quid being a colloquial term for ‘pound’ so usually refers to something that will benefit one financially).
If half of what that article says is true, I am revising sharply downwards my faith in the competence and intelligence of the authorities. And concluding that the policy that led them to shoot the guy in this case is absolutely unacceptable.
The victim of this shooting wasn’t looking suspicious in any way nor behaving suspiciously in any way. They had the wrong guy. It could have been you or me. There was no reason to shoot him whatsoever. It was a total fuck-up by the police. (That is, going by the aforementioned article.)
ITV news has just been running a feature where is has managed to obtain leaked documents and police witness statements . It doesn’t make good reading for the police. Things started to go wrong right from the start of the operation. An undercover policeman who was supposed to video everyone who exited the block of flats was taking a leak when the guy left the building and so did not get him on camera. When de Menezes reached the tube station the police have now said that he did not leap the barrier, but used his travel card and even stopped to pick up a newspaper. He only ran when he was near the platform and heard a train was in the station. He entered the train normally and sat down . Then the police rushed in ,he got up out out of his seat , was pushed back into the seat and was shot by at least two officers.
I support the police 100% in just about everything as I my SO is a police officer and I tend to understand the background to all the major stories. But on this one, from what I saw today, I hope justice is served on all those reposnsible.
So, I’m just wondering… if a guy was, say, standing near the President, wearing an unseasonably warm jacket, like, say, a heavy jacket zipped up to his neck, in Texas, in August, why wouldn’t the cops shoot him?
I was reserving judgement on this until the details were clarified, but the latest reports make depressing reading. At this point, I’m surprised they actually shot the guy who was being tailed and not some other passenger.
Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes police mistakes lead to unwarranted deaths. But it seems unforgivable is the police spinning the story to obscure the facts. How does this build confidence in the police?
What confuses me is that the original version of events was based on eyewitness accounts. BBC news ran an interview with one such person who (IIRC) described de Menezes jumping the barrier. The latest revelations contradict this, and the most worrying part is the claim that one police officer already had him restrained before the other one shot him.
Witness statements can be very unreliable. A few years ago the following experiment was carried out in the UK :-
After a conference of magistrates, the delegates was ushered outside to the front of the building , ostensibly to have a group photograph taken. Just as there were all assembled a three car accident was staged just across the road from them. All these “witnesses” were then taken inside and asked to write a statement of what they had seen. These accounts varied widely regarding such fundamental details as the number and colours of cars involved , the direction they were travelling in, and who did what to whom. These magistrates were supposedly intelligent people, but even so many of them were way off the mark regarding what actually happened.
I think the suggestion had been made, even before the new revelations, that the man seen vaulting the barrier could well have been one of the following police, who weren’t uniformed, after all. The eyewitness only testified to seeing a man jumping the barrier.
