chickenfeet

I have been thinking a lot about the De Menezes case, the way the Met and the government have responded to criticism and the relatively easy ride they have been given in the British press.

First, a few thoughts about the "shoot to kill" policy, the nature of police forces and, ultimately, the near inevitability of what happened at Stockwell tube. It seems clear that the events leading up to the shooting of De Menezes were a series of embarassing cock ups, miscommunications and blind following of orders where common sense was required. Should we be surprised by this? I don't think so. The police are not recruited from the country's intellectual elite. In fact, most of them are fairly thick. Add to that that police officers tend to gravitate to the type of work that appeals to them. Those who want a quiet life move to the leafy suburbs, those who enjoy a punch up on a Saturday night to the inner city and those who are a bit too enthusiastic about guns to "elite firearms units". That's not a criticism, it's a fact of life. To compound this, the Met is a vast bureaucracy and like all such beasts promotes based on keeping one's nose clean and unswerving loyalty to the institution and one's superiors. If one poses the question of what happened at Stockwell in the context of a bunch of not overly bright gun enthusiasts commanded by not overly bright procedure following bureaucrats it all becomes very understandable. What is harder to understand is why any sane person would give such people the power of life and death in the first place.

And so to the response. Sir Ian Blair (with the full backing of Downing Street) has claimed that his statements in the immediate aftermath of the shooting were based on the best information available to him at the time. I believe him. What I want to know is who in the chain of command was preventing the truth, which must have been apparent within minutes, from reaching Sir Ian. I'd also like to know why, if Sir Ian knew the full story on the following day, he spent the next four days trying to prevent the IPCC from investigating the incident. I have no doubt that the Met desperately wanted to bury this story. Further evidence of their desire to delay is that two of the key officers the IPCC wanted to interview went on holiday the day after he shooting! I can guarantee that if I had pumped a police officer full of lead at short range, the reaction would not have been "Take a couple of weeks in Spain my son and we'll talk about this when you come back".

What's really scary is that, apart from selective disinformation, the met/government will use waiting for the IPCC report as an excuse for doing nothing in the meantime. And, finally, why does it take three to six months for the IPCC to produce a report in a case like this?