So we now know that the police officers who shot dead Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, claiming they thought he was a suicide bomber, will face no charges. Instead, Scotland Yard may face charges under, wait for it, health and safety regulations.
Yet all this utterly misses the point. I am willing to believe that the event itself was all just a horrible cock-up but what I am not willing to accept is that after shooting dead the wrong man, the authorities can issue a stream of bare faced lies with complete impunity. Very soon after the event it must have been clear to the police they had made a horrible blunder and this fact soon came out. However we were then told that the unfortunate Brazilian had significantly contributed to his own fate… he was wearing an unseasonable padded jacket1, he had run when challenged by the armed police and been chased in the tube station2 and finally had vaulted over the gate and run on to the train pursued by the cops3… all of which we now know was completely false.
The reasons for such lies are clear. I was horrified when I first heard they had got the wrong man but given what we were told about how it had all gone down, I was not unsympathetic to the police. After all, in the aftermath of the suicide attacks on London a few weeks earlier and failed attacks a few days before, anyone who runs from armed police when challenged only to dive onto a crowded train can only expect one thing. But then the truth came out as there were simply too many witnesses and too many inconsistencies. Yet even that did not stop the London Transport CCTV footage that we are told makes us ‘secure beneath the watchful eyes’ from being mysteriously blank.
So where did those lies come from? Who told the police spokesman to offer up those fabricated events and why are they not on trial for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice?
And yet it seems the entire stream of disinformation that the authorities tried to use to mitigate this ghastly error has just vanished down the memory hole. Why are Britain’s self-important press silent on this? THAT is what I want to know.
1 = He was in fact wearing a short jeans jacket
2 = He rode to the station on a bus without being challenged
3 = He calmly used his season ticket to pass though the automated gate
The shooting itself was probably a cock up. Cock ups get dealt with by firing people.
What followed was a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This should be punished with prison time.
Although this killing was almost certainly an accident the fact that covering it up does not get punished does, effectively, give the police a licence to kill; so long as they cover it up.
So where did those lies come from? Who told the police spokesman to offer up those fabricated events[?] . . . Why are Britain’s self-important press silent on this?
Perry –
While I’ve no love for the British police, there is in this case a more appropriate target for the nation’s anger, namely, Britain’s self-important press. Immediately after the shooting they were running around, waving their microphones and cameras, and asking, “Where you there? Did you see it? Will you give us an interview?” They gave the oxygen of publicity to buffoons like Mark Whitby. He and others like him were the sources of most of the lies you cited.
True, the police did not correct the media’s disinformation, but I don’t see saving the media from their own stupidity, or us from the media’s cupidity, as any part of the police’s job.
Actually the media were reporting this AS police information, so I think you have that the wrong way around… not to mention the mysterious blank CCTV tapes.
I agree with Perry that a cock-up is no crime as such. We all make them & some, as in the Menendez case are almost unforgivably regrettable. Trigger-happy post-teenagers with H&Ks who have watched too many S.W.A.T. soaps are the fall-guys in that scenario & I am desperately sorry for them because they are probably nice chaps who will carry the awful experience with them to their graves.
Totally unforgivable is the mendacity of their equally inexperienced superiors (and those who appointed them) who clearly have no concept of either truth or shame. The disgrace of all those involved in whitewashing this miserably handled incident is sickening.
This is an utter perversion of the justice system.
Britain is now a police state. This case marks the clear break where the police are now clearly above the law.
Is there a single parliamentary politician expressing rage over this?
A single party?
Anyone?
The message is plain don’t carry a chair leg in a plastic bag and don’t look Brazilian.
The plain fact is once police with guns have been called in the likelihhood is that someone will get shot.
Off thread…..please forgive me.
I have just read that archtwat Mandelson is banning Anchor Butter!
I gave up long ago, but…………………
Perry’s take is pretty much mine. The question is what to do about it.
For the future, one of the problems is that the responsible police officers, and those at risk of being placed in similar positions (ie all armed officers), view being placed on a charge of manslaughter as an adverse judgement in itself.
On this, it might be worth considering something along the lines of loss of a navy ship. There, as I understand it, court marshall of the ship’s captain is automatic: – it is no stigma in itself; there is only stigma in being found guilty.
Concerning this particular case, I think we have to leave it up to the family (or perhaps the Brazillian embassy). They could bring a private prosecution. If the CPS or Attorney General chose to take it over and drop it (using that well known phrase “not in the public interest”), that could be taken to judicial review.
However, I would be much more content on them taking such a course of action if, first, a future general policy was established something along the above-suggested lines. Otherwise, there is that issue of pre-judgement of actual wrongdoing implicit in the prosecution going forward.
What does seem clear is that there is a great deal of public unease in leaving to law officers, this particular sort of decision to prosecute other law officers.
Best regards
I don’t understand the references to manslaughter. Jean Charles was killed deliberately. There can be no doubt as to the intentions of a man who fires seven shots into another man’s head. This killing was murder, unless the killer had a valid defence. I am at a loss to know what that might be, and it should be a matter for a jury to decide.
Policeman have no special privileges in this respect, as a matter of law, and can’t you just imagine the exchange if you or I had shot this young man? Something like;
“Oh dear officer, I did shoot him but I thought he had a bomb up his jumper you see”
“Oh that’s all right then. Off you go.”
Yeah, right.
You’ve forgotten the big justice-perverting bit.
As I recall, the identification was not made by the shooters, but by Police Officers who were watching the flats DeMenezes left. I do not recall the exact changes, but it was something like from ‘This man is not a terrorist’ to ‘This man is a terrorist’ – in an attempt to cover up the blunder.
Round my way, a councillor has just been jailed for four months for telling her babysitter to cover for her for Drunk Driving.
Do I expect Jail sentences for falsifying documents to cover up the death of a dead man ?
No, I do not. Nothing will happen. It never does.
I would be quite content if the officers escaped punishment so long as Commander Cressida Dick, who most certainly did have complete awareness and control of the situation, was fired and prosecuted under manslaughter charges for this disaster. This conniving, manipulative officer failed completely to carry out her job through her failure to coordinate the surveillance on the apartment block, failure to provide for adequate operatives, even though given assistance from the army and her failure to agree on the correct killphrase even though she had issued it herself. Instead we are led to believe that Miss Dick should not be prosecuted under criminal charges for her incompetence (heavens forbid that a bureaucrat be jailed for failing to do her job) but instead the blame for an incompetent officer must fall upon all of the Metropolitan Police, which should be prosecuted for failing in its “duty of care” towards Mr de Menezes.
I do wonder how an organisation such as the Met can have someone like the sterling Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates, yet also have such officers as Cressida Dick amongst its ranks.
what is happening is absolutely appalling. i’m really disgusted with the evolution of britain in the past few years.
so basically, the people is completely disarmed (no guns, no knives, no pepper spray), yet police officers can shoot a man in the head 7 times, over a period of 30 seconds and get prosecuted for an offense as grave as no wearing a helmet on a worksite.
WTF. the worst is probably the fact that nobody seems to be really concerned. you can go to jail for shooting some burglars in your own home, you’ll be prosecuted for beating up the local knife wielding chavscum but if you’re a gun totting police officer then no probs, go ahead, shoot, everybody walks clean.
as grave as no wearing a helmet on a worksite…
You need to realise that in New Britain, nothing is more grave than disregarding Health and Safety: failing to comply with the official norms that keep us safe is blasphemy and treason. Deliberate homicide is a triviality by comparison, because that is only harm to an individual person, a casual deviance not in the sphere of regulation. It isn’t resistance; it doesn’t challenge authority or the received wisdom that is the sinew of power.
Couple of points:
1. The ‘lies’ told about the shooting of Mr DeMenzies reported above were in fact media reports from ‘eye witnesses.’ These included a gentleman interviewed on BBC News 24 within 60 minutes of the shooting, who had been on the train and described the shooting in ‘detail.’ He was within 3 feet of the incident and still got every detail wrong, including describing a man running onto the train in a baggy jacket who was grabbed and thrown to the floor etc. This it seems was one of the unarmed observation team. None of the comments described above are attributable to police sources at the time of the incident.
2. The IPCC specifically told the police to ‘shut-up’ about the incident and leave all comment to them, they were therefore unable to correct the misreporting in the media, which in any event is not their job.
Jim
There is nothing as uncommon as common sense.
That’s a very generous interpretation. I recall a police spokesman on the news saying the guy jumped the barriers and also that he was NOT restrained when he was shot. All that changed later but I am sure it was a fuzz spokeman who said at least those two things initially.
Not to get all conspiracy-ish, but I sometimes get a ‘trial ballon’ feeling about this case. It does serve as a good litmus for people’s ideas about citizen vs police authority.
Good post.
Sir Ian Blair and co are part of the “new breed” of Blairite (Tony Blarite) police – they are not good people.
From a far remove, I was under the impression that the British press had suffered a “Katrina moment” and had broadcast misinformation gathered from eyewitnesses and from anonymous sources.
It might be an interesting exercise to go back and see exactly what the official police spokesperson said and exactly when they said it. It would also be interesting to see what information the spokesperson provided and what information came from reporters questions.
Precisely Shannon, and if you did so you would find that they said none of the things about him jumping a barrier, etc.
This does give rise to concern over issues relating to the wider relationship between the public and the police, but they do not revolve around a sudden-found desire by the police to indiscriminately murder us in our beds. Rather they concern the ability of the police to develop effective tactics which retain the support of society as a whole, i.e. do not rob us of the liberty we are trying to protect.
The DeMenezies shooting was a tragic cock-up. Everything that happened stemmed from an initial misidenfication of Jean Charles as a terrorist who had left his London Underground travel pass in the bomb that failed to go off on 210706, and who resided in the same block of flats as Jean Charles. This observation, on the home of a suspected terrorist, was conducted by unarmed officers. That meant that when they saw the subject on the move they couldn’t intervene against him until officers with firearms arrived. This meant that they couldn’t intervene until he was on public transport, which in turn was an effective death sentence unter the Op Kratos/Clydesdale guidelines.
Hence the Health & Safety prosecution. The Met, for all its bragadacio about ‘the best anti-terrorist system in the world,’ does not have sufficient numbers of firearms trained officers to support its anti-terrorsim operations. So guess what? You’ll be seeing a significant increase in the number of armed officers fairly soon, maybe even all officers in the Met being permanently armed. Wait to see the number of mistaken shootings then.
Shannon/Jim –
Quite. The BBC published a list of the discrepancies between what was reported by the media and what the police said in a leaked report here. It’s worth noting that the disinformation attributed to “police lies” stems originally from the statements of one eyewitness or another.
The Beeb also produced a timeline of events here. See especially the item headed 1050 BST: “Many of the mistaken eyewitness accounts are now circulating in the media.”
I suggest a course of action, available to any Londoner on jury service.
Refuse to convict anyone of assaulting a police officer, obstructing a police officer, or any other similar offence, until the scum responsible are in prison.