More thoughts on the De Menezes shooting

[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?

Comments

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Pushed for time to comment right now but you might like to have a squint at leoburrows' journal, though I don't recall how much of it is written publically.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Er, publicly. See, I'm really rushed!

[lemur-man.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that the officer who was supposed to make a positive ID of the suspect before they began the pursuit was too busy having a slash to do it properly tells us a lot.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Taking the piss? They were giving it away!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Actually in a way it does. The guy concerned (apparently a soldier not a plod) was totally up front about not being in the least bit sure what he had seen and called for a further identification. Someone in the Met chain of command chose to ignore that request and authorized killing De Menezes. As far as I'm concerned the "taking a piss" story looks like one more way of trying to deflect attention away from what the Met chain of command did or didn't do.

[coughingbear]

I don't understand the three to six months part either - if someone else had shot him, a murder investigation wouldn't take that long necessarily, and in this case we know who all the witnesses/perpetrators are. I believe that sending officers who've shot someone on leave is normal practice, though I can't remember where I heard that. Allowing them to leave the country before being interviewed just bewilders me.

The media (at least Radio 4, my main exposure) do seem to have been much more critical since the leaks came out; initially I suppose they were reporting based on witnesses who claimed to have seen 'wires' coming from De Menezes's belt, and him jumping over the barrier, and so it seemed possible there were reasons leading up to the shooting (setting aside whether the police should be trusted with a shoot-to-kill policy. Not, I tend to think). The latter it's turned out was a policeman, and of course there were no wires either. I don't think the witnesses were lying, just trying to make sense of what they'd seen (& it reminded me of a Met recruitment poster a few years ago, where various people were chasing down a street and you had to identify the police/criminals. They presented this as how the police learn not to leap to apparently obvious but wrong conclusions...)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

First, a point on terminology.

"Shoot to kill"
What other sort of shooting policy should we be advocating when starting from the presumption that someone is a suicide bomber? Shoot to irritate? Shoot to wound? Shoot to hit the bomb and set it off? If you're in that sort of situation, a head shot would seem to be the only way to ensure someone can't pull the trigger.

Surely the point of having a procedure for dealing with suspected terrorists is that it takes away the necessity for "common sense" or, indeed, for thinking at all. If a certain set of parameters are matched, you take action.

If there was evidence that this was a deliberate decision to kill someone who the police or army knew was not in a position to harm anyone (say, for instance, if he was out for a stroll in Gibraltar) I'd be worried about the integrity of the people we give the power of life and death to.

In this case, there was a cock-up of grand proportions. Actions that should come out of that are a review of the procedure, and, in my opinion, the holding to account of anyone who did not act in accord with his instructions. I'd also like to see the senior responsible officer resigning, but in a situation where that might amount to an admission of guilt when crimninal procedures are still an option, that might not be the smartest thing to do right now.

Let's try not to go to town too much on this - next time a policiman is told that he has to kill a bomber to stop him blowing up a train, I want that instruction to be the result of following the right procedure, but I don't want him thinking too long about how he'll look in the Sun tomorrow before he pulls the trigger.

And there is a word for those who have the power of life and death over us without being given our authority - they're called murderers.

(Music, funnily enough, F*ck The Police by NWA)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think the only place we differ fundamentally is that I regard "a cock up of grand proportions" as intrinsically highly probable given who is formulating and executing policy here. You seem to think it's an unfortunate unpredictable outcome. It's also far from clear that the "head shot" is the best way of disabling a bomber as it assumes that the gunman will actually hit what he's aiming at. I understand that half the shots fired at Stockwell did not hit the head.

I agree that a thorough review of procedure is what should happen. Do you think it will? The reaction so far has been to obstruct any kind of investigation; the five day delay, the mysterious missing CCTV disks, witnesses being sent on holiday. There's not much sense of urgency is there?

Do you really think anybody is going to be held to account? I think it's about as likely as Blair facing war crimes charges over Iraq.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

thanks for your reasonable resonse - you've stirred up my own thinking on my complacency on this. Do I think anyone will be held to account? Yes - the media witch-hunt running now means that someone will get thrown to the mob. Will changes get made? Yes - they were made after the last two killings I know of. At the very least the current policy will be made clearer, and communicated better to the poor sods at the sharp end.

You've just got me confused about the accuracy though - I'd heard eight hits, seven to the head and one to the shoulder. Does that mean there were another 8 shells fired? It could be the nature of the weapon used - it could be firing dozens of rounds a second.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I heard four head hits, one to the shoulder and three misses. It could be wrong. I don't know what weapons were used but I'm assuming an automatic pistol so it could have been firing three round bursts, though I would imagine that single shots would be more prudent in the circumstances.

You may be right about someone being thrown to the mob but I'd be surprised if it was anyone senior, or indeed responsible.