De Menezes Police Trial

[fish]

Met have been found guilty of health and safety breach? Sir Ian Blair says he won't resign? What planet are we living on?

[Nero]

Abso-bloomin'-lutely! Blue Peter editor goes because of Cookie-gate but Blair's cop kills an innocent man and he stays. Sheesh. Nero

[barrymarshall]

I know I know ... cops shoot someone seven times in the head at point blank range and it's a breach of H&S ... FFS!

[Brendan]

Health and Safety breach? What was that? Shooting someone without conducting a proper risk assessment first?

[downsouth]

In fairness it was a very testing time for everybody. I was using the tube quite a lot then and was very nervous whenever I had to get on to a packed carriage. In saying that it does look like a knee jerk reaction by the Met. Remember when we were told that armed police would be on the tube and we (maybe not all) were supportive of this under such extreme circumstances? I'm not defending the Met but trying to put their case across. If the orders from the top were the wrong ones then he should of course resign.

Edited for typos.

[atila the gooner]

fish Wrote:

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> Met have been found guilty of health and safety

> breach? Sir Ian Blair says he won't resign? What

> planet are we living on?

Who says the Police are above the Law. This case demonstrates the point as clearly as the waters of an unmuddied lake. Justice??? BAHHH:X

[Keef]

The man stinks of arrogance, can't imagine he'd ever resign.

[Michael Palaeologus]

Sadly the concept of "Honour" has deserted the Met and the police in general.

There have been calls for periods of custody without charge to be extended and police forces keeping criminal records for long after they should have been destroyed.

The Police will always want more power and more information - that is the nature of the beast. Generally I support the Police, but you have to always ensure that the Police serve the public and that this always has primacy.

[spadetownboy]

why should he resign, he didnt issue the orders nor pull the trigger. the ones who should face the can are the ones on surveillance duty who pretty obviously fcuked up.

[fish]

The buck stops with him.

[atila the gooner]

fish Wrote:

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> The buck stops with him.

Too bloody right Fish, well said

[Dulwich Born And Bred]

At the end of the day, the police could have stopped him in Brixton/Vauxhall or wherever he was, because they watched him from there and followed him all the way to the tube station and THEN shot him which is more of a danger with the public! 6/7 times? point blank? and all those errors they made? with the investigation and so on? Talk about trigger happy!

[SeanMacGabhann]

Sadly it isn't so much De Menezes getting killed that is the issue for Blair - it's the web of deceit spun after the event to absolve any blame. I don't buy the whole argument "in the context of London at the time it's excusable to shoot someone multiple times and then lie about his actions prior to the shooting" argument but many people do.

Osama, Saddam and the like would love us as a compliant population: "What's that you say? We are under attack from the west and you want us to take up arms and if anyone questions us we can say it is in the context? welll oooh kay then"

[atila the gooner]

What sickens me is the way thay have tried to besmirch demenezes character by saying he had traces of cocaine in his urine sample, implying that this is some way makes the 7 bullets to head justifiable. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. The police should have enough balls to apologise for their screw up and put the poor mans family out of their misery ( not that I think they will ever recover from such a despicable act)

[mockney piers]

"and put the poor mans family out of their misery"

my god, when will it end?

I have to say I thought it somewhat hypocritical of the brazilian authorities to criticise; as terrible as this extrajudicial execution was, it was f**k-up*, and a pretty unusual one at that; in Brazil death squads are police policy.

*Totally agree with Sean, it was the cover up that stunk, bad mistakes happen and hopefully we learn from them, but to come out with stuff about heavy coats, wires, unusual behaviour etc, lies, and he should walk.

[DaveR]

The judge was pretty scathing about corporate failures, for which Blair does have to carry the can. The atmosphere at the time was pretty hysterical, and it appears that the firearms officers had been briefed in a pretty incendiary way, making it inevitable that if they were called upon to 'stop' a suspect they were going to kill them - even more important therefore to make sure that surveillance, communications etc being done properly.

It sounds a bit lame to say that the reason someone was killed was because of management/organisational failures, but it often is true, and seems to have been true in this case. The failure of the senior officers and the organisation to admit any fault, and the non-cooperation/attempted cover-up/smear tactics suggests lessons haven't been learned and a change is needed.

[Keef]

Agree (as I've said on the other thread, why have we got 2?).

And yes, people are often executed on the streets of Brazil, and they don't need to be a murderer for it.

[atila the gooner]

mockney piers Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> "and put the poor mans family out of their

> misery"

> my god, when will it end?

>

> I have to say I thought it somewhat hypocritical

> of the brazilian authorities to criticise; as

> terrible as this extrajudicial execution was, it

> was f**k-up*, and a pretty unusual one at that; in

> Brazil death squads are police policy.

>

> *Totally agree with Sean, it was the cover up that

> stunk, bad mistakes happen and hopefully we learn

> from them, but to come out with stuff about heavy

> coats, wires, unusual behaviour etc, lies, and he

> should walk.

Mockney, I am well aware of the Brazilian authorities record in respect of human rights, that's not the point. This guy was shot, in public, in the head 7 TIMES For f**k sake. This is not about the Brazilian authorities, this about our "boys in blue" and an innocent human being being gunned down becasue he looked nervous, apparently. How f**k**g lame is that. Let's not forget that, and fall in to the trap of tit for tat and saying "well your human rights record is worse than ours". I suppose it would have been different if it had been "one of our own" would it??

[snorky]

The probably feeble cover up stank - the cioke & iffy visa stuff being revealed was slightly underhand.

Im not great fan of teh pigs, but I can see why something like this could happen on that particular day

Thye didnt go out to purposefully kill some innocent bloke & I think we all know that

As an MI5 chum says, the Security services have to be lucky every single time, the bombers have to be lucky just the once

I do think his extended family are now agitating for the "wrong" reasons now though.

[*Bob*]

I can hear the compensation till a-ringing already

[Keef]

Yeah I agree that some cousins and "close friends" seem to be on the hunt for some money. That said, maybe the family should have been offered more than ?15k compo straight after the event.

[mockney piers]

WTF atila? Talk about putting words into my mouth!!!

No, no different if it had been one of our own, whatever the heck that means, my being a spaniard, where it was state policy briefly to hire moroccan mercenaries to gun down 'basque separatists' (read innocent people), a shameful stain on that country the should have toppled the government when it came to light.

This was a shitty operation that went wrong and an attempted cover up ensued. I've said that was wrong and the man should go, what more do you want? I'd pick fights when they occur mate, don't make them up.

"he looked nervous, apparently." and by god you're swallowing the lies that was part of the cover story!!

[Dulwich Born And Bred]

I always look nervous when I go on the tubes, hate public transport!

I better not go out when there is a high public alert.

They should do their investigations properly, they are trained to know their job, but the whole operation was a shambles, he was completely the wrong man, I mean he looked nothing like the guy in the photo they were supposed to be watching, and these people are PROFESSIONALS???? our security depends on people like them!!

[SeanMacGabhann]

Atila/Mockney

Unnecessary bickering here methinks - MP's point about the Brazilian police was an aside on the bigger picture, not the whole point.

Atila's pick up on the aside shouldn't precipitate any disagreements. And when Atila said "he looked nervous apparently" I read that as being a criticism of the flimsiness of the whole operation, not a justification

Sounds to me like ye both agree but have become entwined over a minor comment on the Brazilian police (on which point I agree with Mockney, but it shouldn't deflect from Atila's point that we should expect better from our police)

[mockney piers]

ever the peace maker sean :) nice one.