Shot man not connected to bombing

[Briar]

Shot man not connected to bombing

A man shot dead by police hunting the bombers behind Thursday's London attacks was unconnected to the incidents, police have confirmed.

A Scotland Yard statement said the shooting was a "tragedy" which was regretted by the Metropolitan Police.

...

The statement read: "We believe we now know the identity of the man shot at Stockwell Underground station by police on Friday 22nd July 2005, although he is still subject to formal identification.

"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday 21st July 2005.

...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711021.stm

[Oversea Visitor]

1. Sign of Madness of the times we are in

x(

[koopie57]

3. How sad ...

I wonder what I would do if police were yelling at me to stop. Both sides are terrified. In this day and time I think I would run too, just out of panic. I would have visions of torture pushing me along.

[Benbow]

21. How bizarre - but perhaps understandable in an American

whose compatriots are doing a lot of torturing of brown-skinned people in the name of liberation and freedom and democracy. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, and even outsourcing torture to countries who don't mind doing it for US dollars.

I don't recall American police ever being held up as paragons of restraint, tolerance, even-handedness, racially-sensitive. Rather the contrary.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Well, then...

This will certainly piss a lot of people off in Britain. As it should. The details I read of the shooting were quite dodgy. Shot on the ground and all that.

[Benbow]

22. Then you only read the last paragraph - he had a choice, he blew it

[unrepuke]

4. Imagine the police admitting a mistake like that, and publicly!

So, if a bomb goes off --- you had better not run ?

[acmavm]

5. Oh for God's sake, there is no way I'll ever be convinced that everyone

here didn't see this one coming. The descrition of the events as they unfolded by the witness they interviewed screamed 'mob mentality'. The way the look the guy was described, the look of terror on his face. Can you imagine the feeling of knowing you're going to die, be executed as a matter of fact, simply for being in the wrong skin at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Shoot first, ask questions later. That's the world we live in thanks to the neocons and their cohorts (Blair, Howard, Aznar, Berlusconi, et al).

[Benbow]

8. You would like the police to have waited until the bomb went off

- the bomb that they had no way of knowing that he wasn't carrying, under his full coat, as he ignored police calls to stop and ran into an Underground.

[acmavm]

11. Oh please. He was caught. He was terrified. He was unarmed. And the

last one, my friend, is the biggest point I have to make.

Are you really saying that we now live in a world where if in doubt, or plain flat don't know, shoot first? Seriously?

The guy was running away. If he was a suicide bomber all wired up and ready to go, why wouldn't he just stand there and then hit the detonate button and take as many of his targets, as well as police officers, out as he could.

I suppose if you think it's okay to get some guy down on the ground and put five bullets in his head based on a 'maybe', then it must be okay. To this poor schmuck it more than likely looked like a bunch of armed vigilante freaks out to get even for the 7/7 bombings.

[Benbow]

18. He had a choice, and very simple choice

In the UK, armed vigilantes are not known for shouting statutorily worded warnings before they shoot you.

[Benbow]

23. I seem to remember a video of several white US police executing a black

motorist who was in the wrong skin at the wrong place at the wrong time.

[frylock]

6. many people on this board defended the actions of the police..

I wonder what their take is now that this has been revealed?

[oscar111]

7. In USA, asylum cuts by GOP have loonies all over. Brit too?

the guy disobeyed orders to stop.

a looney action.

I figured days ago that he was just a looney. We have many tv reports here of bizzare acts by loonies on the loose, so i figured the same is happening in Brit.

Has brit. cut asylum beds like the GOP has done here?

Cuts are bad for loonies, and bad for the rest of us.. sometimes victims of the fraction of loony population that is the criminal sort.

{note i am not calling all loonies bad. Most are quite good people , just afflicted with nerves that cause them internal trouble. We should help them, and far more than even at the highwater point of help, the days of LBJ}

[Benbow]

9. He could have been a decoy

I don't what else explains his insane decision to ignore police commands to stop; and his insane decision to run into the Underground. Perhaps he thought that they'd catch him eventually and find that he had nothing on him, and then they'd look silly, and he'd have a good laugh about it with his admiring mates that evening. Which is what might have happened, if London had not just had three bombs that went off, killing 56 and injuring 700, and three that didn't explode.

Those suicide bombers on 7 July have changed everything but perhaps the not very bright have not twigged that.

[Benbow]

10. Three bombs that went off in the tube, I mean

as well as the one on the bus (which had probably been meant for the tube).

[Anarcho-Socialist]

12. I have no idea what possessed him to ignore the police

We may never find out.

[Briar]

13. Well we can hardly ask him. Not now.

As for ignoring the police - how did he even know if they were the police?

And since when is ignoring the police a capital offence to be punished with instant execution?

[Benbow]

24. It is not a capital offence to ignore the police - however, in the

circumstances, it is extremely unwise. He had a choice, and he was stupid enough to think that he could outrun the police and/or - even though his behaviour was abnormal, and the whole city on high anti-terrorist alert - that they wouldn't bother.

If he had thrown off his coat while he was running, he would probably still be alive.

[fedsron2us]

15. It seems he was a legal immigrant

and spoke decent English. Why he ran for it he ran for it when the police challenged him in the street God only knows. His fatal mistake was to try and get away on the Tube. I suspect that his choice of escape route convinced the security forces that he was a suicide bomber. Once that happened his fate was more or less sealed since they have probably been told to use whatever force is necessary to prevent terrorists setting off explosives on the trains. What this tragic event does highlight is another failure by the intelligence organisations. As the reports say that the victims address was under observation then you might have expected some more sophisticated technology to be applied to determine who dwelt on the premises and what they were doing. It appears that they were only able to identify this individual once he was dead. This would suggest a shoot first ask questions later approach is being adopted. If so it is a disastrous decision because it justs gifts a propaganda victory to those who planted the original bombs. At the moment the British authorities are displaying a dismaying lack of competence and the terrorists are winning their war.

On edit - changed to reflect the facts about his immigration status

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Good points (and I said the same kind of thing

in the LBN thread on this). What he had in common with the suspect was (police quote):

The man emerged from a block of flats in the Stockwell area that were under police surveillance as part of the investigation into the incidents on Thursday 21st July.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-23T165052Z_01_MOL358140_RTRUKOC_0_SECURITY-BRITAIN-INNOCENT.xml

You'd expect several people to emerge from a block of flats in the morning. That shouldn't be enough to make you a bomb suspect - and nor should then heading for a Tube station.

[Benbow]

20. But running onto a train when told to stop by armed police was his choice

[bennywhale]

30. Plainclothed white men with Glock 17's don't look like British policemen

I bet he was fucking shitting himself.

Wear a suit, walk slowly, have white skin and obey anyone that shouts or chases you or you may be executed.

"Forwards not backwards"

[Benbow]

33. Well, the Brazilian seems to have had had a pretty light-coloured skin

and understood English well, and made his choice - to ignore or obey the order "Armed police stop". What about the fear of those innocent people caught up in the bombings on 7 July, and those on the trains that were affected by this idiot's poor judgement on 21 July. Why is all your pity for this bloke who had a choice, after all, and not a word about everyone else?

[LeftishBrit]

35. We have had, and still have, many words about everyone else!

I have many relatives and friends in London, and have to go there myself at times. I am very worried about the situation there!

And what is more, I don't think that the British police are evil. I just think that they include some people who lack the training and common sense to deal wisely with difficult situations.

But I wouldn't blame the victim at all here. It might be one thing if he'd run from uniformed police (doesn't mean he deserves to be shot, but would be a foolish thing to do under the circumstances). But Bennywhale is right - Brazilian cities have a high crime rate, and a Brazilian who finds himself followed and shouted at by two youngish men is not necessarily going to assume that they're the police. And as others have said on the board: what if someone is autistic or hearing-impaired or just not very bright?

Sympathy for someone who died from an error does not preclude sympathy for victims of terrorism. That's like saying that those who are concerned about the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq don't care about the victims of 9-11, or that concern about people who were executed or even just imprisoned for many years for murders that they didn't commit means that we don't care about the victims of real murderers.

I certainly hope that the real perpetrators are caught, and soon!

[bennywhale]

39. I apologise for having sympathy for an entirely innocent man who was

shot in the face and head five times.

The "fear of those innocent people caught up in the bombings on 7th July" have zero impact on my levels of sympathy for an innocent man having his brains blown out by police in broad daylight.

"What about those on 9/11" was the cry that went up defending thousands of innocents being slaughtered in Iraq who had nothing to do with 9/11

Can you see the connection? Can you see how equally innocent these dead people are?

7/7 INNOCENT people killed by terrorists = wrong
21/7 INNOCENT man killed by police = wrong

One does not justify the other and i'm astonished that you are implying it does. You are blaming the man for the trauma the people went through on the platform that saw his brains being blown out byu policemen. Perhaps they should sue the bastard eh? What the fuck was he thinking running away from plain clothed glock carrying young men in South London. What a terrorist supporter.

[Benbow]

41. I am sorry for him and his family, too, but much more sorry for

those who have died and or been injured, bereaved or traumatised and who did nothing at all to "deserve" it.

[bennywhale]

42. So dead innocent people need to compete for your sympathy.

I sympathise equally with all dead innocent people. In fact i have never dissected and categorised my "sympathy" in such a way. I don't think i care to either.

An innocent man is terrified by unidentifiable armed men and flees. he is then subsequently shot in the face and head 5 times. that man gets my sympathy along with the innocent massacred on 7/7. You save yours for someone more deserving if you like.

Perhaps its sympathy fatigue.

[Tom Bombadil]

74. Not sure about that

"Plainclothed white men with Glock 17's don't look like British policemen"

Who do they look like then? I stand to be corrected but do armed villains and thugs generally chase people into tube stations in broad daylight?

[Benbow]

19. His *family* back in Brazil say that he was a legal immigrant

but what struck immediately is: the UK has enough electricians who are British. He could not, IMV, have got a UK work permit to be an electrician. So what sort of work was he doing, and was he earning enough to live on as an electrician.

The victim's address had been under observation for less than 24 hours, as I understand it - ie only because the contents of the rucksack bombs that had failed to explode led the police to that house (divided into flats).

Again, I am sorry he is dead but he had a choice, and in the circumstances (two weeks after four bombs do explode, and one day after four don't but the bombers themselves get away) he was extremely unwise to run when told to stop - and run onto an Underground train. Given the information available to them at the time, I think that the police were extremely brave and did the correct thing.

[Mr Creosote]

26. Is that true?

"the UK has enough electricians who are British".

Not in this part of the UK. Which, to be fair, isn't London - but isn't there a general shortage of tradesmen?

[moggie]

44. Where are you going with this?

You appear to doubt that he was a legal immigrant. How exactly is that relevant?

[Benbow]

53. He *was* working illegally

Being confronted by three armed plainclothed officers, he could have been frightened and fled. Coming from Brazil, he may have been particularly nervous of armed officers. In the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, police shot dead 1,470 people in 1992. This fell to 272 in 2001, although half were shot in the back. Although his friends and relatives say he was living legally in Britain, it appears he was here on a student visa, and was working illegally as an electrician. He could have been trying to avoid capture. So far the only details of his final moments come from eyewitness accounts, which are often inaccurate. Until CCTV footage is examined and released, we will not know whether he was challenged and if he did - as described - jump over the ticket barrier and run downstairs.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article301475.ece

Bad conscience made him run. Unfortunately for him.

[Benbow]

61. His student visa expired in 2003

and he was earning money to send home.

Friends of Mr Menezes in London said he had recently returned to Brazil for eight months to be with his father, who was being treated for cancer.

Fausto Soares, 26, said Mr Menezes had been sending money to pay for the treatment and was concerned how the family would now cope financially.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4713753.stm

I am afraid that the family's proposed lawsuit is holed below the waterline.

[bennywhale]

32. I would bet he didn't know they were police. A group of

young white men in plain clothes and handguns in south London is not something i would instantly associate with being police.

Being from Brazil (the second highest handgun deaths in world, NI August) he probably knew the drill when faced with this.

Fucking leg it.

Unfortunately he was executed in broad daylight

[Benbow]

34. You seem to be having a problem in appreciating the threat level

from terrorists in London. The four bombers whose rucksacks failed to explode on Thursday last are still at large. Given his behaviour, how would you have been able to tell whether or not this Brazilian was a bomber?

[bennywhale]

37. You seem to be having a problem with accepting this as either utter

incompetence or worse.

this wasn't a split second decision. The man was chased down a street into a station across a platforma and onto a train.

Whereupon he was lying on the floor surrounded by five armed police. He was shot five times in the head.

I can't belive you think this is in any way justified or successful. Its somewhere between incompetence and execution.

And how would i have reacted to the bizarre behaviour of someone being terrified by gun carrying men chasing him. Well i wouldn't have shot him 5 times in the face.

[Benbow]

38. OK, you believe what you want, I don't care what you think

[bennywhale]

40. Good point well made

[D-Notice]

14. "Those suicide bombers on 7 July have changed everything"

That's like saying "9/11 changed everything"

[Benbow]

17. I am not talking about 9/11 - 7 July was the worst peacetime attack in 50

years. There were no warnings - even the IRA sometimes issued warnings, and the IRA never used suicide bombers.

[Spider Jerusalem]

25. The IRA almost invariably issued warnings...

at least, the Provos did (thought the "Real IRA" didn't), to minimise civilian casualties.

[bennywhale]

31. Ok so those amongst us who are intellectually slow may be

murdered?

What about autistic people who make up a fairly large % of the population.

They can't "read" social situations well. if a group of men with handguns made one of them run should they be murdered?

Considering we are all living in such fear why not implement marshall law. Tell everyone so we all know where we stand. the ones doing the shooting will be in fatigues and if you don't obey you die.

This will leave the police to cleanse this great country of all that is wrong with it.

[moggie]

43. Oh, the "changed everything" talking point

Right, that justifies everything.

Many people talk about this case as if he came out of the block of flats, walked across the road, and ran into the local tube station. That's not the case. He took a bus from his flat to the tube, and plainclothes officers followed him onto the bus. If they suspected that he was a bomber, why allow him onto the bus, given the recent bus bombings?

[T_i_B]

28. Well a good many of us defending this...

...were also advocating an enquiry. And I think that a public enquiry is pretty much essential now. How did this go so badly wrong?

[LeftishBrit]

36. I agree - an enquiry is needed!

[HamdenRice]

29. I apologize -- I was a victim of the war on tourrrrists

I posted to this forum in support of the police day before yesterday, and admit I was completely wrong. This is pathetic. The so called war on terrrrrr has the police panicked and the public cowed into supporting the most atrocious and incompetent resulting police behavior.

This makes us all victims of the war on tourrrrists.

[Nihil]

65. Speaking as one of the "many people" ...

... I still stand by my comments.

I find it tragic that an innocent man has been killed.

The Brazilian was being followed as a suspected - not known - threat.
He left a building that was under surveillance following the recent
terrorist activities. The rules of engagement were explicit enough
and they were followed to the letter.

I still feel sorry for the armed policeman who is only now finding
alternative reasons to explain the suspect's death other than the
ones that his superior officers had told him to be prepared for.

I doubt anyone will know why an innocent guy ran, jumped over the
barrier and legged it down to the platform but behaviour like that
from a *suspected suicide bomber* is precisely the reason why the
armed officer killed him. There is no wiggle room here: if the
suspect had stopped when requested, he would still be alive today.

If I had been under surveillance, ignored police demands to stop,
hurdled the ticket barrier, ran down to the nearest platform, tripped
then struggled with whoever was trying to hold me down I fully
expect that I would have been killed in exactly the same way and
I am a white Englishman.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Guy_Montag]

45. I'm afraid I kinda support Benbow here,

for all everyone says about coming from Brazil (high gun-death rate etc), he lived in the UK for three years, surely long enough to know that people don't regularly pull guns & start popping away.

I have the deepest sympathy for his family, but also for the policeman who shot the wrong guy. The latter may not need my sympathy, but I suspect he's in a bad way himself. For those that say he had a choice, well did he? As far as the policeman was aware a suspect, potential bomber, was running away from him, into a busy confined area, refusing to stop when called at. He made a call, it was the wrong one & he will probably regret it for the rest of his life.

[muriel_volestrangler]

46. There was an interesting post in GD or LBN

by an American who has been involved in investigations of shootings by the police. They said that very rarely can the final decision to shoot by the individual policeman be faulted; the mistakes have often happened in the way the incident got out of control earlier, when there were options other than shooting. Some reports say there were 10 policemen following this guy; you might have thought they'd have been able to surround him, which would have been a less fraught situation than a chase.

[Mr Creosote]

48. Yeah but

surrounding someone you think is a suicide bomber is surely about the stupidest thing you could do?
I'm sure you are right about the mistake happening earlier - for instance was a warning shouted? WHY were they certain that he was terrorist - did they make that call themselves, or did someone else tell them?

[muriel_volestrangler]

50. They say they shouted 'police!"

or similar (it's getting so hard to find the news stories in which I saw things by now). I'm still not absolutely certain if they challenged him in the street, and he ran into the tube station; or if he was in the station foyer. If the latter, I'd expect someone to be manning the ticket office at that time of day, so there ought to be witnesses. Even in the street, there should be a good chance, though I don't know how close they'd be (you'd think that anyone who heard it would remember - it would scare the shit out of me).

I suppose the distance at which you surround him may be crucial. How much knowledge the armed men had could make a lot of difference, and your point about who made the call is important - I fear there could have been 'Chinese whispers' which inflated the suspicion of him. If they'd convinced themselves he was a bomber, then maybe they'd give him so much room that he'd be able to run - and, in that case, he'd already be highly likely to get shot, given what the policy seems to be now. If they had some doubt, then they might have thought he'd stop if innocent.

[Mr Creosote]

56. Well apparently

they let him ride to Stockwell on a No2 bus while he was under surveillance. Which doesn't sound quite right, does it?

[lockdown]

54. The decision was made centrally by a "Gold Commander"

WHEN an alert flashed to the control room of Operation Kratos at Scotland Yard last week that a suspected suicide bomber was entering an Underground station, a senior officer was asked to make a snap decision.

His judgment that the London public were again under threat led to advice to officers at the scene that the man should be “neutralised”.

Seconds later three officers jumped on a man on a Northern line train and one pumped five bullets from an automatic pistol into his head.

(snip)

Last night the officer who fired the bullets was facing investigation and possible criminal charges. So, too, is the “gold commander” — a deputy assistant commissioner or above, according to police sources — who gave him the instruction to open fire if he felt it was necessary.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1706244,00.html

As Mr Menezes waited to cross the busy main road, the decision was taken at Scotland Yard that he must not be allowed to get to the platform.

The marksmen were told: if you think he has explosives under his coat and he fails to heed shouted warnings, then you must shoot to kill.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1707480,00.html

The decision was made just as he was entering the tube station, with the 3 man team (marksmen) told he mustn't be allowed on the platform and authorised to kill. Witnesses are disputing any warning was given. He was late for work, maybe he was the first to run trying to catch the train he died on, right as the shooters were being told to stop him reaching the platform at any cost. This whole Gold Command thing, sounds like he was killed by fucking quango.

No warnings given?

By far the most controversial claim comes from a number of witnesses who have cast doubt on police statements that they shouted a warning or identified themselves to the suspect before opening fire.

Lee Ruston, 32, who was on the platform, said that he did not hear any of the three shout “police” or anything like it. Mr Ruston, a construction company director, said that he saw two of the officers put on their blue baseball caps marked “police” but that the frightened electrician could not have seen that happen because he had his back to the officers and was running with his head down.

Mr Ruston remembers one of the Scotland Yard team screaming into a radio as they were running. Mr Ruston thought the man that they were chasing “looked Asian” as he tumbled on to a waiting Northern Line train.

Less than a minute later Mr Menezes was pinned to the floor of the carriage by two men while a third officer fired five shots into the base of his skull.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1707480,00.html

He knew that if a policeman says stop, then you stop. In Brazil, if you don't stop, they shoot you in the back, just like the British police shot him now, in the back of the neck."

...
But he said his cousin was law-abiding and had co-operated with police on four occasions on which he had come into contact with them.

Three times, he had been stopped on his 90cc moped and once at Brixton station, his usual stop, when a police sniffer dog showed interest in his bag.

"He was asked to open it by the police and he did so. I do not believe he ran. I do not believe he jumped over station barriers, not unless they show me the pictures and there are many cameras there."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/25/nshoot225.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/25/ixnewstop.html

Late for work

The 27-year-old Brazilian-born electrician had been due in Kilburn, to help fit a fire alarm. The only impact the previous day's attempted bombings seemed to be having on him was the one they were having on other Londoners: they were making him late.

"He rang me ... saying that he would be a little late because the tube lines weren't working properly," said Gesio de Avila, a builder and close friend who Mr De Menezes had been due to meet that morning for the fire alarm job. "I said, 'OK, as soon as you get to Kilburn, call me.' That was the last conversation I had with him."

/http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,12462,1535566,00.html

Gesio de Avila, a work colleague, said Mr Menezes ran simply because he was late for a job to install a fire alarm.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/day-jean-charless-luck-turned-lethal/2005/07/25/1122143775935.html?oneclick=true

[muriel_volestrangler]

55. I think it's witnesses down at the station entrance that are important

By the time he'd leapt the barriers, he was clearly running away from the police, whether or not he realised they were police; I don't think the lack of warnings on the platform makes a difference. I'm not convinced that he was running because he was late (again, vaulting the barriers? Not common practice - and de Avila has said "OK" when told that Menezes would be late. Why risk getting picked up for fare dodging?)

[Mr Creosote]

57. It seems likely

that he legged it because he was here on an expired tourist visa - and who can blame him given the ridiculous hysteria whipped up about that by the press?
But I still don't understand why they let him ride the bus.

[muriel_volestrangler]

58. Some stories say they started off hoping he'd lead them to other

'conspirators'. I can understand they wouldn't try an arrest in sight of the flats under surveillance. Perhaps there were other people waiting at the bus stop, and they felt they couldn't do it.

Maybe the visa would make him panic when challenged. As we said, we need to know all the witness statements before we can get a good picture of what happened.

[lockdown]

60. I've read that a few times

They didn't pick him up earlier because they wanted to see who he might lead them to.

[Mr Creosote]

62. So speculating wildly

Police have small block of flats under surveillance (block where they've subsequently made arrests)
Swarthy looking gentleman emerges.
They follow him but don't challenge him
They allow him to board bus (why? Not because they think he has a bomb, presumably to see where he goes)
He leaves bus and makes for Stockwell tube
At some point they challenge him (why? He hasn't led them anywhere - do they now think he has a bomb?)
He legs it (because he's on an expired visa)
They chase (because they think he's a bomber)
They catch him & kill him.

So when and why did they suddenly perceive him as an immediate threat to life and limb? That's the $64,000 question.


So it seems he died because he had the bad luck to be doing something a little bit illegal in a block of flats where the police thought the most wanted men in Britain were. And let's face it - I bet it never crossed the mind of a brazilian electrician that anyone could confuse him with an islamic fundamentalist terrorist.

[lockdown]

63. But did they challenge him?

Given he's been stopped and searched before without problem, he knew how to deal with police. If he knew they were police, he knew they were no ordinary police, and I find it hard to believe he'd run from what he knew to be armed plainclothes because of an expired visa. His family and friends say he knew what happened if you run from armed police in Brazil, you get shot, so it sounds like he knew how to deal with armed police too. (His cousin is denying police claims his visa was expired.)

I just found this. Under the revised guidelines, it sounds like they don't HAVE to give a warning.

The police deployment of firearms is governed by a manual published by the Association of Police Officers, last revised in February 2005.

It is not true to say that police officers must identify themselves or shout a warning when confronting a suspect believed to pose a grave and imminent threat.

The manual says that that procedure "should be considered" but recognises that the key aim of an operation is to "identify, locate, contain and neutralise" the threat posed.

In many situations, this would require the suspect to stop moving and put his hands in view.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4708373.stm

[Mr Creosote]

64. Well Sir Ian Blair said they did

but that was in the same interview where he linked the dead man to the bombings - so the information he had wasn't exactly top notch. Don't see why they wouldn't have shouted a warning - and whilst he was running surely his hands were in plain view?

[lockdown]

67. One possible reason

Speculating again, but I could imagine no warnings for suicide bombers being justified by the policymakers because it gives them time to react and detonate. Doesn't make much sense in this situation though, they might not have identified themselves but they hardly took him by surprise either.

[lockdown]

59. Nor am I convinced

I'm not asserting he did run first, just speculating, no doubt he ended up running from the pursuers. But I wouldn't call jumping barriers unusual, not when there's a train there and your late. Is Stockwell overground does anyone know? If a train was pulling in would you know from outside?

What does seem clear is that the central order to "stop" him came very late, seems recklessly late, leaving very little time for officers on the ground to react.

On fare dodging, I'm sure I read somewhere he had a pass.

[non sociopath skin]

47. I tend to go into "there but for the grace of God mode at times like this.

Having never been in the position of either the victim or the officer I don't know - really, really don't know - how I would have reacted in either of their situations and I can't put my hand on my heart and say I would have done otherwise or better ... especially in the mood which must have prevailed in London last week.

Yes, an enquiry is urgently needed.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

49. I agree with The Skin

I think that both the policeman and the victim panicked, and that this led to tragedy. I might well have panicked too in such a situation.

One difference is of course that the police are trained to deal with crisis situations without panicking; most of us aren't. But I think we definitely need to know more.

On a more trivial issue: I am surprised at the statement that Britain has enough electricians. In most areas of Britain, there is a big shortage of electricians and other skilled tradespeople.

[non sociopath skin]

52. I remember, as a councillor, reading in an economic development report ...

... at the time of the Tory pit closures. These coincided with the closure of a local power station, and the report suggested that electrical engineering skills - in an area where you used to be able to find a clutch of "pit sparkies" in every Club - would be lost to the District.

100% spot on.

The Skin

[Guy_Montag]

51. Shot 5 times!

I notice this has been a cry from a substantial number of people. Now call me old fashioned, but I'm unlikely to care whether I'm shot in the head once or five times (to tell the truth, if I'm shot in the head once, I might survive terribly brain damaged, so five shots would - for me - be preferable).

But I digress, I've heard several people claim that this makes it worse. I find this very hard to understand, I cannot see why making sure a suspected bomber is dead is worse than probably killing him, but not being totally sure.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

66. I hope the U.K. government pays the family compensation

It'll never replace their relative, but something would be nice.

[Name removed]

68. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Woody Box]

69. Cold-blooded murder

is allowed in these cases?

That's new for me.

[LeftishBrit]

70. This should be irrelevant!

If you found out that one of the July 7th victims had been staying here illegally on an expired visa, would you think that made it quite acceptable for the terrorists to kill them?

Whatever anyone thinks of the police, and their reactions to this crisis, they would not shoot someone just because they were working here illegally!!!! So it's not relevant in any sense whatever!

And, since you've brought it up (though it's also not completely relevant) it would be quite possible for an electrician to send money home to Brazilian family:

(1) Skilled tradesment can earn quite a lot, especially in the current skills shortage.

(2) To relatively poor families in Brazil, quite small amounts of money can make a huge difference.

[lockdown]

71. Who made the decision

This article on the July 7th bombings says the Gold commander is appointed at the time of an emergency, and the second part reads like Chief Superintendent Chris Allison was Gold commander on the 7th. It only definitively says he was for the Live8 concert, but reads like he was by routine and had the same role on the 7th (confused me, seems to contradict the first part). For what it's worth, this simply says In the case of London, the metropolitan police commissioner (Ian Blair) is the 'gold commander' and all other services and agencies work to and with him."

Either way, on the 7th Allison was in touch with Cobra by video link and had access to cctv footage of "passengers emerging from the tube bleeding and in tears", so it could be that whoever gave the order to "stop" Menezes was watching him on cctv. Total speculation here, but maybe the first time the Gold commander saw Menezes was as he neared the tube station?

I need to read up on this Cobra thing, know nothing about it except the name is fucking stupid.

[fedsron2us]

72. The name is COBR rather than Cobra.

The media love using the term because it sounds like it comes from a James Bond movie. In fact the title it is really just the initials for the Cabinet Office Briefing Room where the Civil Contingencies Committee who deal with issues such as terrorism meet. The correct title for the group is CCC but that does not sound very sexy so the press do not use it.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmdfence/518/2050810.htm

[lockdown]

73. Thanks

I'm glad the name is a media contrivance, if it was official i'd imagine the people running it had watched too much Man from UNCLE.