Series of police errors led to London shooting

[jakee 1,259]

So say leaked reports shown on ITV news.

http://www.itv.com/news/1677571.html

Among other things the surveillance officers tailing him did not have a positive ID before they pointed him out to the armed police unit. The armed unit only had visual contact with him for a few seconds before they shot him (eight times, three other shots missed).

He did not run from police nor was he wearing a heavy jacket that could have concealed explosives as per the initial reports.
Most worryingly the Metropolitan police chief commisioner attempted to block the investigation into the shooting saying it would distract his officers from their jobs.

Thoughts?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Gravitymaster 0]

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So say leaked reports shown on ITV news.

http://www.itv.com/news/1677571.html

Among other things the surveillance officers tailing him did not have a positive ID before they pointed him out to the armed police unit. The armed unit only had visual contact with him for a few seconds before they shot him (eight times, three other shots missed).

He did not run from police nor was he wearing a heavy jacket that could have concealed explosives as per the initial reports.
Most worryingly the Metropolitan police chief commisioner attempted to block the investigation into the shooting saying it would distract his officers from their jobs.

Thoughts?

Yeah, based on the info leaked so far, it sucks! I hope they do a thorough and open investigation.

[Tonto 1]

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it sucks!

That may well be the understatement of at least one lifetime.

To be standing on a tube, not run, be forced to the ground and shot 5 times and killed by people who missed 3 times... has just got to spoil your day.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[Mike111 0]

He did not run from police nor was he wearing a heavy jacket that could have concealed explosives as per the initial reports.
Most worryingly the Metropolitan police chief commisioner attempted to block the investigation into the shooting saying it would distract his officers from their jobs.

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I might be wrong on this, but it was eye witnesses who told the police that he ran away and was wearing a jacket - thast what they based their info on.

Witnesses are sometimes very unreliable, so if what i said is true = it could very well turn out wrong, then it would be unfair to entirely blame the misinformation on the police.

The Commissioner, well i think their is an alarming trend with some of the leaders - they are all pen pushers who get head of a specific area having had no experience serving in it at a lower level- excpt from they have the "managerial skills", who look out for themselves and not their men - John Stevens the previous commissioner and deputy Vaness actually defended their men when necessary and didn;t always think about their own position.

Blair isn;t the best of leaders of the police IMHO. So he probably ordered that to turn the attention away from it to stop him being criticsied.

that is just my 0.2

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[Newbie 0]

There is no getting away from the horrible mess of an operation that happened (the original surveillance guy was taking a piss when Menezes came out of his flat for godssakes so there was never a positive ID in the first instance).

He was a suspected terrorist who was allowed to get on a bus.

He was identified as an IC1 male (white) when they knew they were looking for non-white suspects in the flat under surveillance.

As has been said, worst of all, Ian Blair tried to block the investigation, and IPCC weren't allowed on scene for 3 DAYS, when usually they are on scene within hours.

For once i would like to see the higer level management heads roll. I assume it will all come down to the guy who shot him, who was probably just following orders that had been given to him by incompetent pen pushers.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Mike111 0]

However i think it is important to also bear in mind that it is very easy to criticise the police, yes ok it looks like they should have distuingished him as being white and the officer shuld have been focused, but i think it could have been still quite hard for them to be totally sure.

Thus, we , as people who weren;t there at the time should bear in mind it is helluva lot different for the person actually going to shoot him and make these decisions, and i doubt they would have made these decisions deliberately

Obviousely they were wrong, yes trajically wrong, but i still wouldn;t blame them spitefully . Yes some people would say well it is unacceptable, but mistakes do happen - we are humans.

Its veyr easy for people to sya what SHOULD have been done, but i would often liek to put them in the situation and see how they fuck up, and then go "oops oh i now see why it was hard for the police".

This isn't directed at you at all, just at people in general.

With regard to penpushers, the whole police seems to be filled with them unfortunately.

[Newbie 0]

Nah i agree, i'm totally saying this with the benefit of doing so with hindsight and being behind my desk as i type, not walking around with a gun, making split second life or death decisions.

I agree - mistakes happen, but for a mistake of this gravity to happen means something went seriously wrong somewhere up the line, and to me that mistake needs to be corrected in the only one possible, by at the very least, removing from power, those people who:

a) didn't have the full facts, knew this, but greenlit the go command
b) Ian Blair, who tried to stop an independent investigation when he knew they had done something terribly wrong.

I know we live in tough times (the shooting of this guy is 10 mins from my front door, it's about as close to home as you get) and i think Operation Kratos has a role to play. That doesn't mean when mistakes are made, things should be covered up and swept under the rug. Quite the opposite infact.

Some may say you can't have one (head shots to kill) and not the other (innocents dying), but i beg to differ. This is a prime example of a policy being put into action under the wrong circumstances, and we have to ensure this doesn't happen again. Someone somewhere along the way was careless in this operation and i want that person(s) removed from their place of power so we limit this happening again.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Mike111 0]

Sure, for a mistake like this to happen,. it should be found out and tried to be corrected, but without having consequences for the officer involved.

As you lives 10 min away , i guess it will have a different impact for you - i lvie in watford which is NW London which is miles and miles away from that , so i have less "urgency "in my view - do you see what i mean? Im much less afected by it as a result so i will have a much different view - not saying your view is worse at all, not at all, but we might have differnet oppinios slightly if you see what i mean.

Like a guy who has never lost a family member in a war will be more likely to support a war than one who has - hope that helps my explanation lol.

I hope blair goes, and that he is replaced by someone better.

[mr2mk1g 10]

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b) Ian Blair, who tried to stop an independent investigation when he knew they had done something terribly wrong.

Bear in mind the IPCC investigation must start within 4 days. It is true that they usually start straight away but the fact that this one only started after 3 days is not of itself instantly an issue.

In circumstances where the police are investigating what they may well have initially believed was a terrorist attempt to blow up a tube and latterly thought the deceased could have been linked to active terrorists then I can imagine it being important that the police retain control of the situation initially...

Then again I can see that there is the possibility for this delay to have been an attempt to derail an enquiry which would otherwise have gone on to expose serious police and or security services bungling for which heads would have rolled.

The important thing is that we realize that a delay in the commencement of the investigation on its own is not actually indicative of anything thus it is essential that we don't allow our objectivity to be swayed by it until we know more about the story.

[Newbie 0]

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Sure, for a mistake like this to happen,. it should be found out and tried to be corrected, but without having consequences for the officer involved.

As you lives 10 min away , i guess it will have a different impact for you - i lvie in watford which is NW London which is miles and miles away from that , so i have less "urgency "in my view - do you see what i mean? Im much less afected by it as a result so i will have a much different view - not saying your view is worse at all, not at all, but we might have differnet oppinios slightly if you see what i mean.

Like a guy who has never lost a family member in a war will be more likely to support a war than one who has - hope that helps my explanation lol.

I hope blair goes, and that he is replaced by someone better.

No i hear what you are saying, and agree.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Newbie 0]

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b) Ian Blair, who tried to stop an independent investigation when he knew they had done something terribly wrong.

Bear in mind the IPCC investigation must start within 4 days. It is true that they usually start straight away but the fact that this one only started after 3 days is not of itself instantly an issue.

In circumstances where the police are investigating what they may well have initially believed was a terrorist attempt to blow up a tube and latterly thought the deceased could have been linked to active terrorists then I can imagine it being important that the police retain control of the situation initially...

Then again I can see that there is the possibility for this delay to have been an attempt to derail an enquiry which would otherwise have gone on to expose serious police and or security services bungling for which heads would have rolled.

The important thing is that we realize that a delay in the commencement of the investigation on its own is not actually indicative of anything thus it is essential that we don't allow our objectivity to be swayed by it until we know more about the story.

Good points. I wonder if the IPCC starts its investigations "days" rather than "hours" into fatal shooting incidents though? I would assume the latter but i don't want to make an ass out of myself (do you have any clue?).

Also, we knew within 24 hours of him being killed that Menezes was unconnected to the attempted bombing the previous day. Why then, did it still take so long for the investigation to begin? I know what you are saying, about it not being "out of the ordinary" but when the police admit the guy was innocent, why did it take another 48 hours after he was dead for the IPCC to get on scene?

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[mr2mk1g 10]

From my limited knowledge of police shootings it's normally more like hours (if that) before the IPCC gets going.

As for when they stated Menezes had nothing to do with the bombings... I don't recall the exact chain of events - a search of newspaper reports would provide that quite quickly though.

The material date is when the police decided Menezes wasn't anything to do with others who were suspected terrorists living in the same building as that which Menezes departed from.

[Newbie 0]

The day he was shot, he was "directly linked" to the enquiries in the bombing campaign

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4706787.stm

The next day, he was innocent...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4711275.stm

As for coming out of the flat that was under surveillance - i initially thought he came out of a different flat. This would be backed up by the fact the guy who was watching the place now appears to have been taking a leak at the time he left.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1551401,00.html

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When Jean Charles de Menezes left the block, the soldier was relieving himself and unable to turn on his camera.

His log report reads: "As he walked out of my line of vision I checked the photographs and transmitted that it would be worth someone else having a look ... I should point out that as I observed this male exiting the block I was in the process of relieving myself ... At this time I was not able to transmit my observations and switch on the video camera at the same time. There is therefore no video footage of this male." At this point there were two surveillance teams around Scotia Road and a firearms team on standby nearby.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Mikki_ZH 0]

For me this is not just a mistake.
He was not running, he even took his time to get a free newspaper, he sat down in the metro, he had not the kind of jacket that they told he was wearing and he got shot in the head 7 times.
I understand that the police was under pressure but this does not justify such a killing.
They did not do there job correct. If they are not capable to do there job under pressure replace them. And punish them for killing an innocent person brutally.
Yes, we all make mistakes. But we (normal citizens) have to carry the consequences.
I say send to two officers who perforated the poor guys head to his mother and let them explain that mistakes happen...

Michi (#1068)
hsbc/gba/sba
www.swissbaseassociation.ch
www.michibase.ch

[mr2mk1g 10]

Yes I thought it would be possible to find such reports. Remember though the pertinent date is not the date on which the police concluded he was not connected with the tube bombings on 21/7 but that he was not connected with terrorist suspects in general.

As I said though... one does have to wonder what the reason behind the delay was if it is not the case that the police were actively investigating his involvement with some kind of terrorist cell.

[mr2mk1g 10]

The one thing that really does back up the way the police dealt with at least the immediate aftermath of the error is the contemporaneous reports by members of the public.

People who were on the train gave statements to the waiting media less than an hour after the shooting. They played a number of those last night on the radio.

Some clearly stated that Menezes was running, was challenged by the police and was wearing a big puffy jacket. Now I'm well aware that witness evidence can be absolutely appalling at times (mores the pitty), and it would appear that this is one of them as security camera footage quite simply directly contradicts those reports... but those were the reports the police given to police. I can hardly criticise them for intially putting a degree of weight on them.

So when we have statements by the police that he was running and wearing a puffy jacket... I can't blame them entirely for making statements in line with the evidence eyewitnesses had given them.

One does have to wonder though why they simply didn't check with their own officers first... although you could argue that if you want appear to be impartial don't give an officers account, give an eyewitness account.

[Mike111 0]

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The one thing that really does back up the way the police dealt with at least the immediate aftermath of the error is the contemporaneous reports by members of the public.

People who were on the train gave statements to the waiting media less than an hour after the shooting. They played a number of those last night on the radio.

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So when we have statements by the police that he was running and wearing a puffy jacket... I can't blame them entirely for making statements in line with the evidence eyewitnesses had given them.

One does have to wonder though why they simply didn't check with their own officers first... although you could argue that if you want appear to be impartial don't give an officers account, give an eyewitness account.

Fully Agree with you on that. Its all to easy to blame the police, + witnesses would be in shock and distress possibly explaining the bad reports from witnesses

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