I must admit that I agree with his cousin who said

We find it unbelievable that our innocent cousin could be shot seven times in the head by the Metropolitan Police when he had done nothing wrong, and yet the police have not had to account for their actions
Patricia da Silva Armani, Jean Charles de Menezes’s cousin

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35927775

It’s a difficult one. Very hard to disagree with what she says, but very hard to see how they could successfully prosecute any individual because of the way the law is written, and very hard to see how they could change that legislation without jeapordising any effective capability to respond to incidents where lives are at risk. I’ve mulled this one over a fair bit since it happened and since the inquest, and still don’t know what the answer is.

It is tricky. TBH for one thing there should be a way to hold the state responsible without necessarily blaming individuals- it was a catalogue of failures, it’s not reasonable to blame it all on the person pulling the trigger, they were just the pointy end. And often you can’t get to the big problem- the rules of engagement and control of the situation- while individuals are scared of prosecution.

The whole thing stank, to me, start to finish. I’m just not sure charging an officer is the solution. But serious questions over their fitness to do the job, certainly, TBH the “self defence” argument only worked if the officers had collectively lost their ****ing minds. But that’s perfectly plausible.

The double irony was always that if de menezes had been a terrorist, he’d have succeeded, the “chase” took him through several ideal target areas- so it was a failure in pretty much every way. People tried to justify it as part of protecting the public from a potential attack but that never made any sense.

People tried to justify it as part of protecting the public from a potential attack but that never made any sense.

But whilst running full pelt through a tube station full of people, with a gun, a few days after several people blew themselves up, believing that the guy your chasing could blow you up at any second?

Making sense is relative, at that second it probably made absolute sense to pull the trigger.

and yet the police have not had to account for their actions

They have had to account for their actions. Convicted under H&S and paid civil damages claim.

following a thorough investigation, a prosecutor considered all the facts of the case and concluded that there was insufficient evidence against any individual officer to meet the threshold evidential test in respect of any criminal offence.”

If you want a different lower standard of proof for cops I don’t think many will volunteer to be AFOs.

thisisnotaspoon – Member

But whilst running full pelt through a tube station full of people, with a gun, a few days after several people blew themselves up, believing that the guy your chasing could blow you up at any second?

Making sense is relative, at that second it probably made absolute sense to pull the trigger.

No, what I mean is that they’d already totally failed to control that situation- the dude was commuting, yet somehow the police operation became a panic. He took a wee trip on a bus, stopped to get a paper ffs. It was only police errors that ever led to the final confrontation happening as it did in the first place- it doesn’t justify anything, it just shows how badly they’d screwed up.

As I recall the key issues were around the chaos in the ops room, the lack of control/competence of the officer in charge and the out and out lies spread by the Met after the shooting.

As always it’s the lies and attempts to misdirect that cause the real damage

They ****** up really badly. They were also racist “Mongolian looks” I heard mentioned. So they went after him because of his skin colour. The whole think stinks, I’m almost embarrassed for the Police. Someone should get the sack. So the cops can assassinate someone and no-one his held responsible? What a ****** joke.

Mongolian eyes, was the line. Because obviously the great khan and his numberless hordes remain a major threat.

The serial incompetence that caused the original incident stinks. The cover up they attempted stinks. The failure to deal with this properly stinks.

Ah yes, Mongolian eyes.

Surely the Mongolian eyes thing was to help identify the suspect? Or did someone say shoot him *because* he has Mongolian eyes?

I feel for their family but it really was an unfortunate chain of events.

I also feel for that person(s) who made the judgement call and held a honest held belief and shot an innocent man.

Hugely disrespectful how most of the newsreaders seem incapable of the piffling degree of research required in order that they correctly pronounce the victims name. A niggling detail, maybe? But the very least respect is at least some.

As I understand it, the Firearms Officers are all volunteers. I guess that if they drop one or more in the mire over a coms failure at Gold or Silver level then they would all un-volunteer.

Then Teresa Shoes could get G4S to do the work, and she’d see how well that pans out.

The serial incompetence that caused the original incident stinks.

No it doesn’t, it’s down to resources, training and organisational culture and leadership.

The only way to find out whether you have it right is in the real world so you sometimes learn by a mixture of luck, error and exception. Expecting operational teams to make no errors is unreasonable, the Mets post incident response however was criminal and shames the organisation

I fear that they have got justice. Just not the result they were hoping for.

We expect armed officers to put their lives on the line to protect us from truly terrible events. We expect them to make instant decisions in the heat of the moment that could kill one innocent person, or lead to a guilty person killing dozens of innocent people.

You can train and test till you are blue in the face, but terrible tragic mistakes will be made. For every case that they get so terribly wrong, there are lots where they get it right.

I can understand the anger and frustration of the victims family. I also understand that taking away the armed officers legal protection will mean that they would all hand in their weapons. There is no way to square that circle. Either we accept that unless they are really reckless, they have greater protection, or we accept that the most the Police can do to protect us is to shout “Stop!” a bit louder.

Flawed as it is, I’m happy to live with the system we currently have.

Edit – yes, I agree their actions in the aftermath should have seen some people dismissed for gross misconduct, appalling behaviour.

The judge in his summing up of the original inquiry admitted the firearms officers colluded to lie about the circumstances of the shooting afterwards.

It just seems a catalogue of incompetence followed by a concerted effort to hide the truth afterwards

Wtf does ‘ Mongolian eyes’ even mean ?

The judge in his summing up of the original inquiry admitted the firearms officers colluded to lie about the circumstances of the shooting afterwards.

I would say he pointed out the collusion rather than “admitted”, the sad bit was the lack of action subsequently as it was probably institutional and led from the top.

Was it alleged that they colluded to lie about this incident, or was it that questions and concerns were raised about the established and long standing practice of them debriefing and writing up their notes together rather than doing so in isolation?

Because while I agree that practice creates doubt in people’s minds it is, for whatever reason, the accepted and normal practice, so it is not correct to conclude that just because they did so then they must have been colluding to make stuff up.

If there was something in particular about this one that lead a judge or whoever to conclude they had got together and made stuff up then fair enough, and I’d be interested to see it, but I thought it was just concern in general about the practice and a strong suggestion that it should be reviewed if people are to have more confidence in the police.

Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?

I don’t find it hard to choose who to prosecute. It goes through chain of command down to the shooter.
Blooming easy to do. But then the chap ain’t white and comes from a poor country…

No doubt it was a dark period for the security forces, the actions after the shooting where in many ways more serious than the shooting itself. However as @More_Dash says people will make mistakes, its easy to forget the level of stress in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, the police where following a live lead who lived in the same building. They made a bad error in shooting Menezes, they also made an error in allowing into the tube station – he should have been confronted before when perhaps the fear of him conducting a suicide bombing on the tube would not have been so elevated. However also as @Dash says they have had justice, they have followed the legal process to the very end and it has delivered its verdict.

don’t find it hard to choose who to prosecute. It goes through chain of command down to the shooter.
Blooming

@MrsFry the familiy is very well represented legally, money has not been a factor. The police officer acted in good faith, he made a mistake.

The post incident careers are interesting as well
https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/cressida-dick-uk-foreign-office-secret/

jambalaya – Member

However also as @Dash says they have had justice, they have followed the legal process to the very end and it has delivered its verdict.

TBF, legal history has many cases where people followed the legal process to the very end, but received no justice.

@big_n_daft nor should they disclose details of people working in security related positions

@Northwind yes I take your point

Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?

People might not like the concept, but its not unusual:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY[/video]

Now – imagine that played out in a police/court/inquest scenario – where half a dozen witnesses are saying that there was a bloody great big gorilla, and you’re being accused of lying/murder because you never saw it. Did you fire five rounds or six? did the suspect have a hat on or not? was the car blue or grey? – repeat ad nauseam.

The F-kups with lots of different versions of what happened (some coming form eye witnesses, then being repeated as fact) were inexcusable – but at the same time we all know that had the police said “no comment till we have taken statements and worked out what happened” then the same people would be criticising them for that too. Dick (and the cover up of her inadequacies in planning, lack of clarity and poor decision making) should have been prosecuted for misconduct – but that has nothing to do with the officers ‘on the ground’ and the instant split second decisions that they had to make.

The biggest error is in a system that seeks to lay blame, and prosecute police officers for murder over making a genuine mistake, rather than analyse and identify systemic and institutional error – look at what the airlines have done to tackle that over the years.

mudmonster – Member

Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?

In fairness, some of the eyewitness reports were pure fabrication. Mark Whitby invented the famous winter coat, and Anthony Larkin went a bit further and hallucinated a bomb vest with wires sticking out. These 2 seem to have been malicious, tbh if it was up to me they’d have received a new arse for this. Start with wasting police time, maybe a bit of libel…

(I had to give evidence for an assault the other week; I called it exactly how I remembered it, and drew attention to bits I wasn’t sure of- but I can almost guarantee some of it’s wrong. Your brain fills in gaps. But these dudes actually made stuff up. Who knows what other witness bullshit there was.

OTOH, the “jumping the ticket barrier” was repeated by police long after they knew it wasn’t true- it seems to have started as an innocent mistake but was intentionally used to create doubt and take pressure off police.

For just about the first time ever I agree with Ninfan- I think blaming the firearms officers on the scene, who were called in right near the end of the chain of events, is like blaming the guns. But Cressida Dick and Ian Blair should have been held responsible.

mudmonster – Member
Just heard on the radio that the commuters on the tube gave a totally different story about the course of events. Why did the police have to lie about it?

As others have pointed out, witnesses are not always particularly accurate. A former colleague of mine is in charge of monitoring all the traffic signals in our town, along with all the traffic cameras attached to them. When a pedestrian was struck by a car and killed at a signal-controlled crossing, the police contacted him for the CCTV footage. Two eye-witnesses, completely independently, gave police the same version of events: the pedestrian had been waiting at the crossing, got the green man, started crossing, got hit by the car which had run the red light.

The video showed that the pedestrian had approached the crossing, pressed the button, immediately started crossing (against the red man and without waiting), the car (on a green light) then hit him when he stepped in front of it.

Two independent witnesses, two entirely wrong versions of what happened.

The mess up here was from the top down, the control room messed up in a high stress situation.
I feel sorry for the officer who killed him. This officer ran towards a man who the control room had led him to believe was a terrorist with a bomb. I can’t even imagine the level of commitment needed to your job to run towards a (believed to be) suicide bomber knowing that you are the only person who can stop him. In that situation I am not surprised he fired. Prosecuting the poor sod with the gun sounded wrong to me.
The mess up was why did they even let him get on the tube and it’s obvious that the MET handled the aftermath wrongly/dishonestly/ineptly.

Jambalaya

In good faith!? Wth. They followed and killed the wrong person because of the belief that everyone who isn’t white looks the same. Good faith my backside. Massive chicken up more like.

They followed and killed the wrong person because of the belief that everyone who isn’t white looks the same.

That’s some leap. We’ve all said the mistakes were appalling, but the firearms officer was left with no choice due to others mistakes.

I just wonder how many hours the poor guys at the sharp end had worked in the last week or so.

This is the statistic I found most worrying from yesterdays reporting;

1990-2015: 995 deaths in police custody or following police contact and 55 fatal shootings by police officers in UK. Not one conviction.

Now I can accept that the police generally do a good job (one of my sisters is a DCS) but I can’t believe that every death in custody and death involved no act by a police officer that fell the wrong side of the law.

ninfan makes a good point. without top down institutional change you end up with the the guys at the pointy end having the perverse incentive of colluding to protect themselves as they can be damned sure no-one will stick up for them. The police that use weapons should be the very first to be able to say “I made a mistake” but they won’t because they know full well that the weight of shit that will pile down on them, and miss the likes of Dick and Blair…

the whole episode makes recent boasts regarding the shortcomings of European anti terrorist services ring hollow.

[/quote]It is tricky. TBH for one thing there should be a way to hold the state responsible without necessarily blaming individuals- it was a catalogue of failures, it’s not reasonable to blame it all on the person pulling the trigger, they were just the pointy end. And often you can’t get to the big problem- the rules of engagement and control of the situation- while individuals are scared of prosecution.

The whole thing stank, to me, start to finish. I’m just not sure charging an officer is the solution. But serious questions over their fitness to do the job, certainly, TBH the “self defence” argument only worked if the officers had collectively lost their ****ing minds. But that’s perfectly plausible.

The double irony was always that if de menezes had been a terrorist, he’d have succeeded, the “chase” took him through several ideal target areas- so it was a failure in pretty much every way. People tried to justify it as part of protecting the public from a potential attack but that never made any sense.

i think this pretty much sums it up for me…if the officer involved cannot be individually held to account for his death then the police force should have been held to account for its failings in the operation

the fact that the officers seemed to have colluded and changed their version of events and that it was contradicted by those of the eye witnesses was alarming.

[/quote]Making sense is relative, at that second it probably made absolute sense to pull the trigger.

but to shoot him 7 times in the head and once in the shoulder?? 1 shot to head should have put him down…these officers are supposed to be highly trained in using firearms…even they should have realised that after that first head shot that he had been stopped…if not because they had slightly missed then a second could possibly be justified….but seven?!
if you run through it as if you were holding the gun i find it hard to justify pulling the trigger 7 times at someones head especially when eye witness statements seemed to suggest he had been pinned down first before being shot…thats an over zealous finger on the trigger.
if this was a criminal investigation 7 shots to the head would have suggested that the shooter had maliciously continued as if fuelled by some sort of rage and hatred but seeing as it was a police officer holding the gun there couldnt have been any malice in that could there(?)

Two officers fired a total of eleven shots according to the number of empty shell casings found on the floor of the train afterwards. Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at close range, and died at the scene. An eyewitness later said that the eleven shots were fired over a thirty-second period, at three second intervals. A separate witness reported hearing five shots, followed at an interval by several more shots.

11 shots fired….what happened to the other 3 bullets? how can a trained SO19 officer miss at point blank range?? also they were using hollow point bullets

Would you be taking chances if you thought the suspect had a bomb?

Also 11 shots at three second intervals? Sounds bollocks to me, thats a bloody long gap.