[QUOTE=Terrifel]
I’d just like to say how much I enjoyed this little joke.
[/QUOTE]
I fear I’m being whooshed… are you doubting the figures, or questioning whether anyone would really think there are a similar low number of police shootings in the USA? 
[QUOTE=e-logic]
I fear I’m being whooshed… are you doubting the figures, or questioning whether anyone would really think there are a similar low number of police shootings in the USA?
[/QUOTE]
The latter. Although my inner juvenile also delights in the reference to “members of the pubic.” 
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Oh, for fuck’s sake…
PiS, BBF - newsflash: Pit Ratings stopped being funny or clever a little while before Oakminster took his toys and left.
[/QUOTE]
Well, as George Bernard Shaw once observed, in life we can assume we all share the same taste - except in humour!
[QUOTE=Terrifel]
The latter. Although my inner juvenile also delights in the reference to “members of the pubic.”
[/QUOTE]
Reminds me of the time I asked my folks what “public lice” were, having misread the instructions on a bottle of headlice cream. :o
[QUOTE=Nametag]
What’s unclear? If you don’t know what the Tube, the Underground, or the Metro Police are, just click the frickin’ links – you’re in Wikipedia, fer chrissake!
[/QUOTE]
::: Sigh:::
I need to pit my dyslexia. I read that word as unarmed not unnamed. I thought how the fuck does an unarmed cop shoot a guy? If I glance at a word, my mind will sometimes add or subtract, or jumble letters to come up with a different word. Then the problem becomes if I just re-read the word, I keep seeing the same wrong word. I have to go back and spell it out letter by letter to get it straight.
I obviously did not do that in this case.
:o
Carry on.
Because, in the context of the Tube bombings of July 7th, and the unsuccessful attempt to repeat them the day before, they convinced themselves that this was a suicide bomber ready to pop.
On a previous occasion they have pointed out that “Yes, we don’t have to carry these guns, you know, and if you’re going to make life difficult for us when we screw up, then screw you, get some other guys to do this job - if you can find any”.
[QUOTE=Rick]
::: Sigh:::
I need to pit my dyslexia. I read that word as unarmed not unnamed. I thought how the fuck does an unarmed cop shoot a guy? If I glance at a word, my mind will sometimes add or subtract, or jumble letters to come up with a different word. Then the problem becomes if I just re-read the word, I keep seeing the same wrong word. I have to go back and spell it out letter by letter to get it straight.
I obviously did not do that in this case.
:o
Carry on.
[/QUOTE]
Talented though they are, British coppers have yet to evolve the ability to take down a suspect by pointing their fingers at him and shouting “pow!”. 
The Health & Safety aspect of this turns on the systemic failure of a flawed policy, and it appears to me that the death of an innocent person was inevitable.
On any given day in London there are many hundreds of thousands of people wandering around whose first language is not English, maybe not ever their second or third language.
Their cultural referances will also be differant, their experience of police in their own nations will be very differant, their expectations of violent muggers and robbers will be very differant.
In a state of national high anxiety, our police will get it wrong, they are looking for one potential terrorist among maybe a million individuals, and in those million individuals there will be several hundred viable suspects, almost none of which will turn out to be genuine terrorists.
This means the police will certainly be attempting to detain viable suspects who will turn out to be false alarms.
Add this into a jumpy police force, inevitable operational difficulties, and someone who is suspicious of anyone carrying guns - doesn’t trust police and does not understand English too well when challenged, then put in place a policy of execution, of premptive shooting, and this death had to happen.
The policy was flawed in concept, the managers and developers of the policy were too blind to see the obvious outcome, even in ideal conditions, but add in Mr Fuck Up and the public will die.
What else could they have done ?
If I suspected anyone of being a suicide bomber, and to be carrying the device on their person, they would not have even left their residence, let alone make it to a bus and into a tube station, this is breathtaking incompetance.
If I had been watching this person, I would not have even allowed them to sleep through the night, I would certainly have broken the door down at 2am and arrested him, a live terrorist is far more useful to me than an exploded corpse, not only that but he would not have had any chance to put my officers at risk, you don’t generally sleep in bed with a bomb strapped to you.
You cannot stand by in an intelligence operation with the threat of imminent death to dozens of people just in the hope of following an operational suspect and catching his accomplice, the risks of such an operation losing the suspect are far too great compared to the possible outcome.
The operation, the policy and the personnel were a complete shambles, if Menezes had not died, some other innocent would. Its not enough to say he was unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time, this stupid operation put every person at risk in London, because if he had really been a terrorist, he had plenty of chance to set it off in a crowded place, and sooner or later someone like him would be killed due to a mistake by the police.