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Police officer changed evidence into shooting
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
Shock horror the Police cant be trusted to give the right evidence about their shooting of an innocent person.
Surely this is lying in court and he should be charged?
Anyone surprised that notes about the event written one week after the event have been doctored to give a nice spin?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7667845.stm
Surely this is lying in court and he should be charged?
Anyone surprised that notes about the event written one week after the event have been doctored to give a nice spin?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7667845.stm
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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I heard a police spokesman the other day say that they don't 'collude', but they 'collaborate'. :yeees:
You seem to be in the minority. I find it incredible that notes for such an important event were written so long after the event, and we are supposed to believe them as completely accurate.
It was one of the things drilled into me at training. KEEP YOUR NOTEBOOK UP TO DATE
the armed police are allowed to 'compare' notes before turning them in so to speak
Technically any cop is allowed to, I just don't subscribe to it, I prefer to make my own notes, if other people choose to be liberal with the facts then it's their job on the line, not mine.
I very much doubt any of the Police officers involved in the shooting will even be made to resign, let alone be sacked. Although having said that Blair has had to go so that's one at least.
From what I understand though, a lot of the failings that day were the result of inaccurate intelligence sent down from the big-wigs e.t.c.
If this is the case it does seem unjust to prosecute any police officer on the ground for the death if they were simply acting on the intelligence they had been given.
At the end of all this though I'd hate for any officer to hesitate if required to shoot a real suicide bomber, the concsequences of a moment's pause in those circumstances would result in far more deaths.
As has been said above, it was the big wigs at the top who are to blame.
The same people calling for their heads for shooting, would be calling for their heads for doing nothing.
I've said on here from the start that I dont think the shooters are to blame, although with more training they might have been able to realise the likelyhood of a man in a thin jacket carrying no bag was unlikely to be a suicide bomber.
But that is missing the point somewhat, if we are going to have this policy of shoot to kill then there must be proper organisation, and decent command and control. This was blatently lacking.
Though honestly I don't think it's wrong that PCs follow orders in a situation like that. If they were being told to shoot on a crowd of protestors then that's completely different and something has gone very wrong above them, but if they are following a suspected terrorist and they get the order to shoot... someone has had to make that judgement call higher up based on all the evidence available and it shouldn't be the place of the PC to second guess that, because otherwise mistakes will be made and as whowhere said there could be even more tragic consequences.
It's tricky because what would you have done if you were in the position of making a decision. You have been told:
- following a suspected suicide bomber
- he's entered the tube station and getting on a train
- this is within weeks of other similar attacks
'Wait and see what happens' doesn't really cut it in that situation. But whoever was in charge, made the wrong decision, but based on the evidence given to them it was probably the right decision. Should they lose their job for doing what they believed was right?
If a doctor is trying to save someones life who's having a heart attack and gives them some kind of aspirin in the short time he/she has to make that decision - but it turns out the patient is allergic to aspirin and dies, should the doctor lose his / her job? Should the nurse who administered the drug lose their job? Should the nurse have hesitated and questioned whether it was ok to give aspirin to the patient?
Broadly speaking cock ups on this scale are far and few between and it is not due to incompetence it is due to a bad mix of circumstances.
it might be technical but my view is that an actual shoot to kill order is illegal. His view was that you can still only use reasonable force (now that can include shooting some in the head with dumdums if that's what it takes). However, if someone survives been shot in their head multiple times (unlikely, but not inconcievable) and is not a threat you can't kill them. You are always shooting to neutralise the threat, not to kill.
Though as I said to lawyer with whom I was talking about this, if I was confronted by a suicide bomber I'd take the Gibraltar route (at the inquest to the three terrorists shot dead in Gib, one of the SAS was asked why he stopped shooting - his response was "I'd run out of bullets")
I'm pretty sure that most people are allergic to 4 bullets in the head, so the comparison doesnt really hold water.
In this case it seems they took shakey and unconfirmed reports, and from that decided it was definitely him. Of course the choice to go ahead is going to be made in difficult situations, but it does need to be more positive than he looks a bit like him and he came out of the same block of flats.
UK law is reasonable force, not minimum, eg if a pathologist says that the first bullet would have stopped him, that's minimum, if you fired half a dozen that's reasonable. If ten minutes later you went and shot him again in the head, that's excessive
You're right, but European law overrides UK law in cases where lethal shootings are involved. Pretty confusing, no?
Oh and budda - you pretty much missed my point. That the 'decision maker' has to make a decision in quick time based on the evidence they have available. Sometimes, that will be the wrong decision and this could lead to the ultimate price - the unneccessary loss of life. But I believe that this is seldom the case, and even when it is the case it is not due to gross incompetence but just due to the way people have to deal with quickly changing situations.
If it was the wrong decision the higher up person made, fair enough, and they should lose their job for it. But like I said, why shoot the messenger? But considering all the evidence, even for us now looking back it's still hard to say 'definately yes, based on the evidence he had available he made the wrong choice'. Because if you were in charge, and this 'suspected' bomber had just entered the tube, you had lost radio comms, what would you do? Would you order your officers to detain the man and hope he doesnt set off the bomb? Would you order them to continue following him and see what he does? Would you order them to use lethal force?
I don't know what I'd do but I haven't been in a position where I've been through countless scenarios through training and experience as no doubt the police execs in charge of the operation had been. I think they should be accountable where necessary but also I think that it is difficult to know 100% what the right thing and the wrong thing to do is when we're not in the situation and when we have never been confronted with that situation.
Are you sure about that? as far as I'm aware all types of homicide still remain under UK law, if not that's a fucking big surrender to Brussels. Are you talking about the European Convention on Human Rights, which isn't counted as European law (and isn't criminal law anyway - it only relates to states).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Legal_status
Seems like you're right
It might be different for suspected suicide bombers, but it's the case in all other jobs.
I don't know about the shooting for the head thing but I spoke to a firearms officer who said basically they do shoot to kill always. He said it's not like in movies where they will shoot someone in the leg, they will shoot to bring that person down completely.
But you're the cop, not me lol
We're getting muddled on terminology - in the sense that peelers aim for the mass of the body rather than a leg or arm it's a shoot to kill (as its more likely to kill someone), but legally its a shoot to incapacitate, ie if someone is down and not a threat you can't continue to shoot at them if they're alive.
Quite where would Mr de Menezes have been carrying a bomb under that thin (and opened) denim jacket, or why did he need shooting seven times are other matters.
I'm not shooting anyone, I'm just suggesting that people who gave to order to kill someone based on very shakey evidence should be fired. Of course it is a hard choice, but this is a clear case them jumping to conclusions. All they knew what he looked a bit like someone they were trying to find (in reality he only barely looked like him in that he was a bit dark) and that he came out of the same block of flats. Do you think that is enough to sign someone death warrant?
Frankly I feel safer being white because I know if this happens again it is bound to be another person of colour.
When they shoot someone, there is a 99% chance that the person will die, but they don't shoot to kill because then they would be deliberately taking a person's life, when all they're trying to do is incapacitate them.....
bascially, they're just not allowed to say it.
but being able to co-oberate notes would aid in allowing them to dust their own tracks when things go tits up, yes mistakes happen the idea to be transparant about it, most people in this country recognise their job is bloody difficult, trying to cover it up makes bad decision seems worse
like the amount of mis-information put out about jean charles straight after, most of which was a lie - like the statement that he ran and jumped barriers, when it was the officers that chased him as he walked onto a train - or the one that he had a big jacket, when in fact he had a denim jacket on - or that they had no idea what their actual suspect looked like, and that the CO was taking a leak at the time - or that instead of reprimanding him as he was walking, they followed him for like 2 bus rides etc
or the fact they didn't consider that he might of used a deadman's switch if there actually was a terroist
It's unlikely he would have - terrorists would be a bit worried they might trip over as they went out the door and then exploded. As far as I'm aware a dead man's switch has never been used by a person bomb (as opposed to a car bonb in the last seconds of targetting) - the disadvantages are too great.
There's a lot of justified criticism about the shooting - comms and control broke down and there was misidentification. Seperately there's further criticism about the immediate aftermath (which doesn't matter on whether they were right to shoot or not).
But the deadman's switch is a red herring - as is the jacket (it couldn't have conceal a belt, but it could easily have concealed bracers).