[NFS]

I can't remember ever getting seriously riled up about something like this, but the John Charles de Menezes killing really made me angry.

Sir Ian Blair and his mates sat in a darkened room and dreamed up 'operation Kratos'. They decided that the police could shoot dead anyone they suspected was a suicide bomber. They even decided to use hollow point bullets and aim for the head to guarantee an instant kill.

It seems immediately obvious to me that there is a big flaw in this plan. They have no way of differentiating between innocent bystanders and suicide bombers.

The inevitable result of this policy was that an innocent person would be executed by the police and the first time they tried it that is exactly what happened.

They shot someone dead because his neighbour was a suspected bomber, he looked a 'bit foreign' and he got on the tube. It could have been anyone.

Now the courts have judged that the police breached health and safety law. Specifically because they placed innocent peoples lives (Mr De Menezes) at risk with this policy. But the moron who introduced the policy doesn't seem to think that he did anything wrong.

At the time he lied, he told reporters that the De Menezes behaved erratically, was wearing a big coat, did not heed warnings. When he was caught out he refused to apologise.

He has presided over a defense team which did it's best to discredit the innocent man who they executed. Alleging that he was an illegal immigrant and that he used cocaine.

Even now, Sir Ian Blair maintains that the police were acting in incredibly dangerous circumstances. The ONLY people in danger that day were those in the vicinity of his police officers. ANY one of them could have been summarily executed because of his arrogance and incompetance.

Bizarrely he still has the support of the government and ken livingston. He's got into trouble before for recording conversations. I can only imagine that he has some choice material on tape which the government would prefer to keep quiet.

[threethirty]

I agree he should resign in light of the ruling.

It's no defence, but people were shitting themselves in London in the wake of 7/7 and 21/7, and that includes the police. So give them guns and dodgy leadership and there you go. The terrorists who caused the state of alert should be blamed too.

I wouldn't say it was because he looked "a bit foreign" ... he actually looked like the particular guy they were hunting.

No excuses. A terrible tragedy and now the police have been found guilty he should go.

[Evil Diesel]

The main cock up here was to take local control away from the people on the ground and give tactical instruction from a control room at Scotland Yard. It was inevitable that Mr Cock Up was comming to call .....

[peterg1965]

The big issue is accountability. There is absolutely none in the public sector. How many Ministers resigned in the wake of the Iraq debacle? NONE. (130 odd UK servicemen dead, countless 10,000's of innocent Iraqis) Although Short and Cook resigned on principle before it kicked off. The same goes for the shooting of de Menzes, no one has taken the rap. Would it have been different if it was a white UK national??

[zedman]

Originally Posted by peterg1965

The big issue is accountability. There is absolutely none in the public sector. How many Ministers resigned in the wake of the Iraq debacle? NONE. (130 odd UK servicemen dead, countless 10,000's of innocent Iraqis) Although Short and Cook resigned on principle before it kicked off. The same goes for the shooting of de Menzes, no one has taken the rap. Would it have been different if it was a white UK national??

who knows whether it would have been different, but it seems suspected terrorism is an excuse for anything and nobody should be accountable. It's about time in the news they should start referring to his death as murder - at least the police have been forced to come clean about the circumstances surrounding his death!

[- Paul -]

Good article on BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7074311.stm

[Steve A]

NFS i agree he should be sacked in any other indusrty heads must role.

However regarding the surroundings of Mendes' shooting i am glad i wasnt the one with the gun, as however mush training these guys get when the bombings started happening then human emotion becomes involved and thats when things go wrong.

A shitty result from a shitty day.

I hop he RIP.

[Dave_3]

I firmly believe that day was an exception.

Everybody worked to the best of their abilities and tragically an innocent man was shot. The selfless acts of many that day made me proud.

But.

I do not in the slightest feel that because of the fog of war (that's what it was - multiple attacks on trains and a bus), heightened senses, nerves, fear and dread of another attrocity taking part at any minute that we should use hindsight to find someone to blame. The perpetrators are solely to blame.

Certainly, everybody will have learned from this. This is good.

But I don't want the guys who are defending us, looking at a possible target get onto a train - in the knowledge that 2 other trains were destroyed previously, and hesitating because Health & Safety regulations could ruin their careers. If a suspect blows up the train ... how many would decry that they should have acted sooner ? I prefer that they sway to immediate action.

Not related to CDM, but we do not have rogue bands of trigger happy policemen roaming the streets shooting people in a cavalier manner (I am more than happy to use the tube, and walk through London). Brasil, on the other hand .... how many are shot by police each hour ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4463010.stm

D.

[dxb335d]

dave you make some sense mate, i agree actually with what your saying.. but if it was your relative (or mine) im sure your and my attitude would be very different

[silverbmwz3]

I think:

i) He should go. My father is a construction company director. Someone dies on one of his sites and he would either resign, go to prison, or be sacked or some combination of that. Doesn't matter whether it is directly attributable to you or not, it is on "your watch" so you are responsible and you go. This was a very exceptional set of circumstances and it is very difficult to say "yes I have all eventualities covered" but that is almost irrelevant other than perhaps to explain why he has various people's support - he should still go.

ii) NFS makes the whole shoot to kill thing/Kratos thing sound a bit silly, however I believe that if they truly thought he was a suicide bomber posing a genuine threat they should've shot him. The fault was with the intelligence and monitoring not with the guy who shot who he believed was a suicide bomber or with the policy of doing so. The 'hurdles' and procedure for authorising shooting someone should be higher i.e. positive ID, though it seems they felt they had that here. I'm with Dave in that all the people using the benefit of hindsight here would probably be the first to say they should've acted sooner if that tube had been blown up.

iii) The two guys look no more alike than Piers Morgan and David Cameron. Similar but that's it. It sounds like the surveillance was poor and the firearms guys got their late, and I do tend to think there is a way they could've challenged him then shot him if he didn't respond appropriately but perhaps that's naive.

iv) The terrorists are clearly more to blame for this than anyone else, and my thoughts are with the family of this innocent guy.

[NFS]

Originally Posted by Steve A

NFS i agree he should be sacked in any other indusrty heads must role.

However regarding the surroundings of Mendes' shooting i am glad i wasnt the one with the gun, as however mush training these guys get when the bombings started happening then human emotion becomes involved and thats when things go wrong.

A shitty result from a shitty day.

I hop he RIP.

This is exactly the point I think. Operation Kratos sounds reasonable, until you think about it.

No person on the ground with a gun is in a position to decide if someone is a suicide bomber or just a normal person. So they shouldn't be put into that position.

The person to blame is the one who put the police on the streets with hollow point rounds and a shoot to kill policy - Sir Ian Blair.

The decision the firearms officers made was impossible. I think I would probably have done as they did.

The rest of the force didn't stop De Menezes when he left the house. They didn't stop him when he got on a bus, then another bus.

Instead they let him get on the tube and gave the order to murder him because of it. The murderer isn't the man who pulled the trigger .. it was the idiot who thought that a normal firearms officer should be judge, jury and executioner, in a situation where he has no back up or information about the target at all.

There was no possible outcome to this situation other than the death of an innocent civillian. It could have been any one of us or our families.

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

I think:

i) He should go. My father is a construction company director. Someone dies on one of his sites and he would either resign, go to prison, or be sacked or some combination of that. Doesn't matter whether it is directly attributable to you or not, it is on "your watch" so you are responsible and you go. This was a very exceptional set of circumstances and it is very difficult to say "yes I have all eventualities covered" but that is almost irrelevant other than perhaps to explain why he has various people's support - he should still go.

ii) NFS makes the whole shoot to kill thing/Kratos thing sound a bit silly, however I believe that if they truly thought he was a suicide bomber posing a genuine threat they should've shot him. The fault was with the intelligence and monitoring not with the guy who shot who he believed was a suicide bomber or with the policy of doing so. The 'hurdles' and procedure for authorising shooting someone should be higher i.e. positive ID, though it seems they felt they had that here. I'm with Dave in that all the people using the benefit of hindsight here would probably be the first to say they should've acted sooner if that tube had been blown up.

iii) The two guys look no more alike than Piers Morgan and David Cameron. Similar but that's it. It sounds like the surveillance was poor and the firearms guys got their late, and I do tend to think there is a way they could've challenged him then shot him if he didn't respond appropriately but perhaps that's naive.

iv) The terrorists are clearly more to blame for this than anyone else, and my thoughts are with the family of this innocent guy.

Again, the problem is with the policy. This event has clearly shown that the met did not have scooby doo who was a bomber and who was an electrician.

The shoot to kill policy only makes sense if you have some sort of plan in place to find out who you are shooting.

That's why the policy was flawed from the start. The ordinary policeman who enacted it aren't to blame. The dangerous lunatic who dreamt it up and decided that the Israeli police and american film industry were the best source of advice is to blame.

[silverbmwz3]

That's kind of obvious though isn't it - I'm sure no-one is suggesting a shoot to kill policy for people who might be innocent. The intelligence was clearly the mistake but your OP (and the last sentence of the one above) made it sound like shoot to kill in general was a bad idea, but I think it is a necessity when backed by sound intelligence.

[dazzapb]

i agree, but whilst this case highlights issues with the police, PLEASE do not forget his death was a reaction to the terrorist attacks and 50 people died a week beforehand, and yet we never hear of those poor souls. RIP

[NFS]

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

That's kind of obvious though isn't it - I'm sure no-one is suggesting a shoot to kill policy for people who might be innocent. The intelligence was clearly the mistake but your OP (and the last sentence of the one above) made it sound like shoot to kill in general was a bad idea, but I think it is a necessity when backed by sound intelligence.

Of course 'shoot to kill' is a bad idea.

How sure would the police need to be that someone was a suicide bomber before they execute them?

They had no idea who John Charles De Menezes was ... none at all. But that didn't stop them killing him. The level of 'evidence' required seems to have been extraordinarily low.

Operation Kratos is specifically for situations where armed police are confronted by a suicide bomber who could endanger the public.

Problem is, Operation Kratos will only ever be used when police don't have intelligence. If they knew someone was going to carry out a suicide attack they would stop them before they became a danger to the public.

Instead with Operation Kratos they are flying blind, they are in a panic and have absolutely no way of knowing if the target is a bomber or if the 'danger' is real.

Operation Kratos is lunacy. The only possible outcome is the death of innocent people and the people behind it are dangerous idiots

[dxb335d]

Originally Posted by silverbmwz3

I think:

i) He should go. My father is a construction company director. Someone dies on one of his sites and he would either resign, go to prison, or be sacked or some combination of that. Doesn't matter whether it is directly attributable to you or not, it is on "your watch" so you are responsible and you go. This was a very exceptional set of circumstances and it is very difficult to say "yes I have all eventualities covered" but that is almost irrelevant other than perhaps to explain why he has various people's support - he should still go.

ii) NFS makes the whole shoot to kill thing/Kratos thing sound a bit silly, however I believe that if they truly thought he was a suicide bomber posing a genuine threat they should've shot him. The fault was with the intelligence and monitoring not with the guy who shot who he believed was a suicide bomber or with the policy of doing so. The 'hurdles' and procedure for authorising shooting someone should be higher i.e. positive ID, though it seems they felt they had that here. I'm with Dave in that all the people using the benefit of hindsight here would probably be the first to say they should've acted sooner if that tube had been blown up.

iii) The two guys look no more alike than Piers Morgan and David Cameron. Similar but that's it. It sounds like the surveillance was poor and the firearms guys got their late, and I do tend to think there is a way they could've challenged him then shot him if he didn't respond appropriately but perhaps that's naive.

iv) The terrorists are clearly more to blame for this than anyone else, and my thoughts are with the family of this innocent guy.

for what construction company is your father a director?

must be on a mint

how old is your dad? must be retiring time no? (no offense intended if im like 10 years out or somethibng)

carlos

[jwbmw]

Originally Posted by dxb335d

for what construction company is your father a director?

must be on a mint

carlos

After 8, I take it? ( you know how tight construction companies are Carl)

[dxb335d]

Originally Posted by jwbmw

After 8, I take it? ( you know how tight construction companies are Carl)

i dont get the 8 bit mate? yeah they are tight.. they should be paying me double

[jwbmw]

Originally Posted by dxb335d

i dont get the 8 bit mate? yeah they are tight.. they should be paying me double

Think mint

[dxb335d]

Originally Posted by jwbmw

Think mint

thats the first thing i thought of mate but still dont get the relevance here?


Carlos

[silverbmwz3]

Originally Posted by needforspeed

Of course 'shoot to kill' is a bad idea.

How sure would the police need to be that someone was a suicide bomber before they execute them?

They had no idea who John Charles De Menezes was ... none at all. But that didn't stop them killing him. The level of 'evidence' required seems to have been extraordinarily low.

Operation Kratos is specifically for situations where armed police are confronted by a suicide bomber who could endanger the public.

Problem is, Operation Kratos will only ever be used when police don't have intelligence. If they knew someone was going to carry out a suicide attack they would stop them before they became a danger to the public.

Instead with Operation Kratos they are flying blind, they are in a panic and have absolutely no way of knowing if the target is a bomber or if the 'danger' is real.

Operation Kratos is lunacy. The only possible outcome is the death of innocent people and the people behind it are dangerous idiots

If they knew someone was about to carry out a suicide attack? How do you know that for sure? I'm sure they don't advertise it - surely the only way to find someone about to carry out a suicide attack is when they have something strapped to them and are about to detonate it ? Anything else and you are catching them with bags of fertiliser in their bathroom surely?

I can't agree that shoot to kill is a bad idea. If I was on a tube and a guy walks on with a bomb I want someone to shoot him dead. It seems you are confusing/clouding it with the intelligence being poor. Perhaps the intelligence will always be poor, but to be fair they knew this guys neighbour was a terrorist. What if it had been him?

Excuse me Mr Terrorist NFS would like you to disarm that bomb you are wearing but he wouldn't like me to shoot you so if you'd like to escort me to the station .....

I'm sure these guys didn't dream this policy up for the good of their careers - I think they've proved that already, they dreamt it up for a reason.

[silverbmwz3]

Originally Posted by dxb335d

for what construction company is your father a director?

must be on a mint

how old is your dad? must be retiring time no? (no offense intended if im like 10 years out or somethibng)

carlos

Would rather not say. No he's not mint, less mint than your family I'd say anyway. Construction companies don't seem to pay all that well from what I can make out. At least not those that specialise in Piling and Foundations.

[jwbmw]

Originally Posted by dxb335d

thats the first thing i thought of mate but still dont get the relevance here?


Carlos

My drunken sarcasm! On a mint you said, hence I had visions of him being paid an "After 8 Mint" as we know the crap wages construction companies can pay (thats why I went the systems engineering / project management route)