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Shooting on the tube

  
  

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Evil Scientist
10:03 / 24.07.05
This is an absolute mess. Hopefully there will be someone in the police force facing criminal charges when this is over. Although it's unlikely.

This accidental shooting is a terrible thing and I don't want to try and excuse the actions of the officers. But given the situation currently in London, i.e. that there is potentially now going to be a protracted campaign of suicide bombings, a certain amount of paranoia and fear is going to be present. Policemen aren't immune to that.

Put yourselves in their shoes for a moment. One day after four more bombers have tried to detonate bombs you try and stop a suspect for questioning in relation to the attacks and he legs it. Not only is there the risk that he's carrying explosives, but he's running towards a tube full of people.

Now. A great number of questions need to be asked. Why was this man a suspect in the first place? He had no links at all with the attacks. At what point was the decision to use lethal force made? Who authorised it's use? Why could this suspect not be contained in such a way as to prevent him from running into a crowded area?

This is not a case of police officers executing an innocent man for shits and giggles. I think anyone who is suggesting that is doing a massive dis-service to the police who do a fucking difficult job. It was a horrible, idiotic mistake, and those responsible for such a titanic cock-up need to be brought to book. We need to ensure that this is not the first of many panic shootings.

With regards to the use of lethal force by the police. You have to accept that it is sometimes necessary. By the very nature of their job police officers come into contact with people who are often armed and willing to use those arms to kill. The fact that the majority of police officers in this country do not carry firearms as standard I think says a lot for the UK's respect of civil liberties.

We should not shrug and forget Jean Charles de Menezes as an acceptable casualty of TWAT. That is essential.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:17 / 24.07.05
So, this is an intelligence failure, right? It seems that conflicting accounts of how long he had been tailed, whether he was a legal or illegal immigrant (legal, I think), and so on... As I think we've had said upthread, you have to start worrying about civil liberties a long time before people start getting shot in the head.

In this case, the bit that's sticking with me is that he was picked up coming out of a block of flats that was under surveillance rather than a private residence. A block of flats. That's a _lot_ of variables...

However, again, I'm not entirely sure what happens on a practical level after the order to stop is ignored, on a practical and procedural level.
 
 
pornotaxi
10:21 / 24.07.05
Put yourselves in their shoes for a moment

no, i fucking won't. police are now "satisfied" that the brazillian lad had nowt to do with bombings? now there's a thing. a "tragedy", is it? no mention of 'innocent' in the media, of course.

to paraphrase john major, we should be a bit quicker to condemn, and far slower to sympathise or understand. bastards.
 
 
invisible_al
10:22 / 24.07.05
From reading the news reports he lived in a building that the police had under survelliance, I think one of the bombers or one of their associates lived there.

As for why he wasn't contained, police were following him and did the 'half armed police' routine when he made to go into Stockwell station. They couldn't contain him, either people weren't in the right place or there just wasn't time.

As for when the decision to shoot them was made, well you can either point to an officer on the ground making a split second decision to, in his head, stop a suspected sucide bomber from denotating a bomb on a train full of people. Or you can say it was with Operation Kratos which changed the police rules of engagement towards suspected sucide bombers. According to the police's own rules, the policeman who shot him was completely in the right.

And to be honest I can't argue with those rules, only way you can stop a suicide bomber is to shoot him in the head. The guy ran into a tube station when challenged by armed police, what other possible reaction do you expect from the police in such a situation when hundreds of lives could be at risk.

Only way they're going to stop this from happening again is to get better intelligence on this group of terrorists and put a stop to this current terrorist campaign sooner rather than later.
 
 
distractile
10:23 / 24.07.05
Do you carry a backpack? Do you have olive skin? Do you look 'Asian'?

Yes, yes and yes. I might add that on Friday, I misjudged the weather and was thus wearing "inappropriate clothing" and sweating profusely (cheapo nylon T-shirt). Plus running to get on a Tube train, swearing loudly upon discovering it was the wrong branch and then charging off again might well have been considered "actingly suspiciously" by some of my fellow passengers.

I'm not sure why you use "you" in these questions unless it's to imply that those of us who share an approximate phenotype with some of those suspected of involvement in some of the recent, indiscriminate attacks would by virtue of that phenotype have a different opinion on the best way to prevent further such attacks.

Put all of these together, and you have how many 'bombers' walking around London?

Given that the press is now talking about a Leeds-based "Asian" cell and a London-based "African" cell, the population of persons of interest is quite a lot bigger than you imply. Add in the possibility of white al-Qaeda operatives (encompassing such suspicious figures as, er, Cat Stevens) and Aum Shrinkyo types, and, well, that's just about everyone, isn't it?

Should they all be shot if they run from police?

No, just the ones who are believed to be implicated in terrorist activity, fail to respond appropriately when clearly challenged by police, and subsequently act in a way which suggests an imminent attack that cannot otherwise be prevented.

But I don't really believe this answer either, because it's couched in terms of the reductionist approach of the original question, and I think reductionism fails to respect the complexity and gravity of the situation. The weasel words are "believed", "appropriately", "clearly", "imminent" and "otherwise" - whose fulfilment in this case will no doubt take an inquiry a great deal of time and effort to assess.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:06 / 24.07.05
no, i fucking won't. police are now "satisfied" that the brazillian lad had nowt to do with bombings? now there's a thing. a "tragedy", is it? no mention of 'innocent' in the media, of course.
Britain's police chief Sir Ian Blair apologised today for the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian man shot dead at Stockwell station in south London last Friday.

Suspect was innocent Brazilian electrician

He said: "I don't think he ran from police. I don't think he would do that. They can't show anything that shows that he had."

Incidentally, what I'm not seeing right now is any comment on the bombing in Egypt, where 88 or so people appear to have been killed, possibly by suicide bombers. Does that affect a utilitarian perspective on risk management?

On civil liberties - I quoted Lord Hoffman elsewhere, and I generally cleave to his view: that the risk to British lives needs to be kept distinct from the risk to the British way of life. The one is threatened by terrorists, the other by legislation that infringes civil liberties. Balanced against that, you have the awkward situation wherein, however much you may dislike or distrust the agents of law enforcement, they and the legal framework they inhabit are at least theoretically vouchsafed with protecting British citizens. Sooo... if one's position is that the Police must not be armed, must not be trusted and in fact should for preference not exist at all, what do you do instead? Is it practical to go straight into dismantling the concept of nationhood that requires or at least invites a police force, and would doing so be likely to save lives, either way?
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
12:13 / 24.07.05
On civil liberties - I quoted Lord Hoffman elsewhere, and I generally cleave to his view: that the risk to British lives needs to be kept distinct from the risk to the British way of life. The one is threatened by terrorists, the other by legislation that infringes civil liberties. Balanced against that, you have the awkward situation wherein, however much you may dislike or distrust the agents of law enforcement, they and the legal framework they inhabit are at least theoretically vouchsafed with protecting British citizens

Hmm... I see your point, Haus, really I do (unless I'm misinterpreting you, which is always a risk with text-based communication). But "the British way of life" sounds to me as though Hoffman is talking about sensibilities and not fundamental human rights. Both terrorism AND governments can be argued to be infringing on civil liberties and /or being the cause behind such infringement; either way, and in whatever fashion it's still wrong. I sincerely believe (and pray this wouldn't happen) that if the Police (as with any other group of citizens) enforce draconian laws down our throats under the (?) misguided notion that they are protecting us, then they are, quite frankly, wrong. As you rightly pointed out, terrorism is not unique to the West and the issues behind it are far more complicated than a "let's put a stop to it using Law Enforcement" solution can ever address. Of course, the ONLY effective way of dealing any problem is to deal with the causes. The solution our governments seem to be applying today (I've used this analogy many times, but it's still s a good one) is tantamount to putting a Band-Aid on a huge, gaping, festering wound.

In other words there is too much grey (IMHO) to define Civil Liberties as being separate from the basic freedoms one may call the "British (or otherwise) way of life". This isn't a case of "it simply isn't cricket ol'boy", it's far more a case of "NO! You are taking away my freedom in the name of freedom." It's like 1984 double-speak: "War is Peace", etc.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:41 / 24.07.05
Hmm... I see your point, Haus, really I do (unless I'm misinterpreting you, which is always a risk with text-based communication). But "the British way of life" sounds to me as though Hoffman is talking about sensibilities and not fundamental human rights.

OK, PW. Here's the thing. The fact that you have said that makes it pretty clear that you haven't read Hoffman's comments. As such, why do you feel entitled to make such confident statements about them?

One of the duties of the Left is not to make life easy for the Right. One very good way to make life easy for the Right is not to know what you're talking about, because it makes it a lot easier to be made to look foolish personally and by extension to make it harder for the case of the Left to be asserted. This is my problem with many comments in this thread; they seem to assume that being of the Left is nothing more than a matter of self-identification, and that actual and factual knowledge is unnecessary as long as you make the right noises. This allows proponents of actions that would curtail civil liberties to ignore the deeper issues and instead focus on undermining the credibility of their opponents.
 
 
Cat Chant
13:07 / 24.07.05
The thing that's bothering me about all of this is the idea that it's not okay to shoot someone who was later proved not to be involved with the bombings, but it would be okay to shoot someone who was later proved to be involved. It's that "later" that bothers me. It seems to me that what matters - in terms of evaluating the actions of the police - is not whether the dead man was or was not a suicide bomber, but on what basis he was deemed to be a significant threat at the point at which he was shot. Does that make any sense?

I'm still also bothered about the four alleged 7/7 bombers - the Yorkshire Evening Post at least is now writing sentences like "The attacks were carried out by [four names]", with no "alleged" or "suspected", but I haven't seen any proof/evidence that these four men were, in fact, involved. There are doubtless legal and/or police-procedural reasons why no evidence is being released, but what freaks me out rather is that neither these reasons nor any evidence is even being alluded to anywhere that I can see. So it may or may not be the case that these men are being assumed guilty on the basis of being Asian, being Muslim, carrying matching rucksacks, and being on the appropriate trains, just as it may or may not be the case that this Brazilian guy was shot for being dark-skinned, wearing a jacket and running away from the police. I don't even really know what questions to even start asking in order to work out what the fuck is going on...
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
13:12 / 24.07.05
OK, PW. Here's the thing. The fact that you have said that makes it pretty clear that you haven't read Hoffman's comments. As such, why do you feel entitled to make such confident statements about them?

You're absolutely right, and I should have been more specific. I am, of course, typing about YOUR use of Hoffman's comments in this thread and the implications of this use.

(BTW, am I way off the mark here, Haus, to suggest that you are being more than a little hostile and impatient? Crimes which, although I have also been guilty of committing on Barbelith, I am still fully prepared to admit and try to make amends. For example, for a short while now I have been deliberately trying not to respond to what appears to be provocation on your part and diffuse the situation with questions rather than subjective accusations; but in this thread and others, you have virtually accused me of ignorance, bigotry, and egotism, and you can't expect me to sit back forever and just accept this. Ironically, if it's ALL in my head, then fine: I'll admit it. But I strongly suspect this isn't the case and if so, you are out of order to suggest otherwise. And please don't come out with this your usual "yes p.w, it's all about you" line, for it's YOU that keeps making this a personal issue, one which may or may not simply be explained as a matter of style over content and intention. Look back this thread. You will see I have only ever insulted you in retaliation and because I felt you were deliberately misrepresenting my opinions. Again, if I'm wrong about this, please enlighten me and SHOW me how I am the cause of this debacle. I assure you, I am not as proud as you might think.)
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:21 / 24.07.05
Blimey, this pattern of poster-meets-Haus should be studied as some kind of don't-inhabit-your ficsuit buddhist meditation.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:22 / 24.07.05
Dude, did you read the rest of my post? There is a reason why you shouldn't be talking about Lord Hoffman's comments without kknowing about them, which is that it makes life harder for you and other people who would like to see the civil liberties Hoffman was arguing for defended. I very sincerely hoped that you would take the opportunity to read his comments. I suggest that you do so now.

The rest of your response is not relevant to the thread - we can take it to PM if you want. I think you are right to detect irritation, but I would suggest that this is inspired by, as mentioned, the way ill-informed comment makes it harder for others to separate signal annd noise. Others more impartial, however, have commented on your behaviour in this thread, so I don't see a need to do so again.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:39 / 24.07.05
I'm still also bothered about the four alleged 7/7 bombers - the Yorkshire Evening Post at least is now writing sentences like "The attacks were carried out by [four names]", with no "alleged" or "suspected", but I haven't seen any proof/evidence that these four men were, in fact, involved.

The Evening Standard yesterday carried the front page headline 'Bomber Shot Dead On Tube'. The article itself used the term 'suspected bomber', but the damage was done.

I think this is the problem, really, that looms large over this thread. The position that says we shouldn't comment until we know all the facts is problematic, because our sources for the 'facts' are always going to be mediated and therefore carry attendant risks of inaccuracy, but also, perhaps more importantly, because the same hesitation and concern for the 'facts' is not going to be shown by the almost exclusively right-wing mass media.

However if we comment early and rashly - as I think it's fair to say that paranoidwriter has been doing - then we risk looking foolish and making said media's job (in this case, sneering at 'conspiracy theories) a lot easier. I think this has been responsible in part for the number of people apparently defending the police's actions which Mister Disco has commented on - ie, it's not all been defence, some of it has just been a critique of perceived flaws in a specific line of criticism (I hope we can all agree that "they should only have shot him once" isn't a good argument). However I think there have also been people who assumed that our good old British police force would never unload five shots into a totally innocent man without good reason (whatever that is), and that position hasn't come out of this thread well either, to put it mildly. Then again, to my memory threads on Barbelith about the police have always been fairly divided, with the "agents of state violence" analysis tending to be in the minority, whether you like it or not (I don't, really).

I'm still alarmed to see people fall into the trap of either blaming the victim - "he shouldn't have run" - or even confusing who the real victim is - ie, it's not the person who pulled the trigger. If the British police start adopting IDF tactics, British Barbelithers need to make sure that we don't start adopting the mindset/rhetoric that's used to excuse those tactics (the one that says that Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and countless 'unnamed' Palestinians shouldn't have got in the way of people who were doing a very difficult, necessary job).
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
13:39 / 24.07.05
Sigh....
 
 
pornotaxi
15:51 / 24.07.05
threads on Barbelith about the police have always been fairly divided, with the "agents of state violence" analysis tending to be in the minority, whether you like it or not

being at the sharp end of police violence does tend to colour your vision somewhat. being truncheoned as a child leaves an impression. analysis as an armchair pursuit is something else entirely. we all have histories that make us lean one way or another, when the spectacle arises. i don't like the police. i particularly don't like the met. i've never felt protected by the authorities. if others feel differently, perhaps it is their gain and my loss.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:00 / 24.07.05
I don't think "sigh" is a terribly useful addition, PW - that is, it's hard to know what it's about. The misfortune of Corrie and Hurndall?

(And yeah, Flyboy, good point - the IDF is by no means a simple repository of handy hints on dealing with suicide bombers - it's an agency which requires certain presuppositions.)

Pornotaxi: The tabs in particular seem to be using "innocent" in their headlines, probably because shorter. The Miror and the Express both had it, as did the Sport. Whether that feeds into a critical attitude to the Police or not I haven't had a chance to check, but I think attitudes to the indiscriminate use of deadly force are harder than you might think.
 
 
Evil Scientist
17:25 / 24.07.05
Pornotaxi, what are your feelings on police using lethal force in general? Do you feel that it is unjustified in any situation?
 
 
Psych Safeling
18:31 / 24.07.05
Deva - a clear explication of the concern I have been trying to isolate (I'm a bit slow, and I'm in a state of altered reality since cycling from Smithfield to Suffolk last night - threadrot, I know, but I'm proud) since the revelation that the shot man was innocent. This is all after the event. Surely the concern is that he could have been, and how likely he was to be?

Does what we're discussing essentially boil down to what constitutes reasonable doubt, and in what circumstances reasonable doubt becomes the wrong point at which to draw a guilty vs. innocent conclusion? Or am I being hopelessly reductive?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
21:50 / 24.07.05
The thing that's bothering me about all of this is the idea that it's not okay to shoot someone who was later proved not to be involved with the bombings, but it would be okay to shoot someone who was later proved to be involved.

The difference is in pondering that the police must have had some information to lead them to such action and later discovering that actually they appeared to have very little information of any accuracy.

It's not okay to shoot anyone and my first reaction to the shooting was great upset but it is logically acceptable to find that someone has been shot was behind an attack in which 50 people were killed or umpteen potential lives would have been lost because the assumption is that the information that was acted upon meant something. It meant that there really was a risk and the police force 1)handed out a gun on the basis of that and 2)the shooter was reacting to the information. That's not to suggest there's any glee involved in that reaction, just a knowledge that the police are human and were armed for a reason and sensibly believed there was an absolute risk. To find that there was no absolute risk, that the information was incomplete, that they were armed for a reason that is not ascertainable and that the decision was based on impulse provokes a very different reaction.

The difference lies in the belief that the shot man was a real risk but with the knowledge that we now have regarding factors involved I don't understand why anyone was carrying a gun. Where guns are involved there's always a chance that someone will end up shot because panic is a very human response and the evidence suggests that this man was shot in a fit of it.
 
 
Seth
22:31 / 24.07.05
Seriously mate, you're out of order. Can you tell me why you decided to have a pop at me about this?

Because I misread your post. Sorry.
 
 
illmatic
07:16 / 25.07.05
Pornotaxi, what are your feelings on police using lethal force in general? Do you feel that it is unjustified in any situation?

I think Pornotaxi has already expressed his views with his first post in the thread: ACAB

- which stands for, for those who don't know: All Coppers Are Bastards. Now, dude, I am sorry if you've been the victim of police brutality, truly I am, but can you not see you seeing all of the police as one homogeneous mass, rather than as individuals, is exactly the same process of stereotyping, de-individualsing, that causes this brutality to take place in the first place? If you start seeing simplifying people so they are simply members of a group that you dislike, rather than complex individuals with lives outside this narrow role, it becomes a lot easier to blow them up, spray them with naplam etc.

Class War used to have a page in their paper - may still have for all I know - which was a kind of pin up of "assaulted copper of the month". Horrible macho bollocks.

I used to work with an ex-copper who I noticed had a disability sticker on his car. I asked a colleague how come, and he told me that this was because he had major back problems, because he'd been pulled off his bike in the Brixton riots and had the shit kicked out of him by a crowd. Did he deserve that?
 
 
Not Here Still
08:45 / 25.07.05
It isn't a matter of peering forward anxiously into a misty future, but of proving how right you were all along.

Well, we can all do that, from George Galloway to Jack Straw, from Tribune to [Melanie] Phillips. Politicians aren't paid to scratch their heads and get eaten alive by John Humphrys. Top cops and intelligence chiefs, out in the open, have to seem to know what they're doing. Media pundits of any persuasion are supposed to come up with steaming theses before breakfast. But, just one dead Brazilian electrician later, there's a codicil to add.

Uncertainty - simple, inevitable fallibility - isn't a crime. It's the human condition. What do suicide bombers do when the police have them cornered? In Madrid, one blew himself and the arresting officer up. Naturally, that makes police officers edgy. Maybe revised guidelines don't help. Stuff happens, and we're crazy to rush on to soapboxes when it does. Always pause for reflection (on more than Europe's constitution).

Good column there by Peter Preston from the Guardian, who I don't always rate. Worth bearing in mind, perhaps.


Flyboy:

I'm still alarmed to see people fall into the trap of either blaming the victim - "he shouldn't have run" - or even confusing who the real victim is - ie, it's not the person who pulled the trigger.

I don't subscribe to the ACAB theory.

The main victim here is Jean Charles de Menezes, who whatever happens isn't going to have to live with himself.

But as others have pointed out, the police officer too will have to live with him or herself and this may not be a simple case of a gung-ho plod getting trigger happy. The person who pulled the trigger will have to live with those consequences and I for one don't know enough about him (or her) to know whether that will happen.

When George Bush said "You are either with us or against us" I treated the sentiment with disdain. I haven't changed my mind.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:11 / 25.07.05
What relation does that bear to what I posted?
 
 
Cat Chant
09:29 / 25.07.05
it is logically acceptable to find that someone has been shot was behind an attack in which 50 people were killed or umpteen potential lives would have been lost because the assumption is that the information that was acted upon meant something.

Just to clarify in response to Nina's post, I'm not trying to have a go at anyone here or accuse anyone of "glee" or anything of the sort. What I mean is that, even if the guy had in fact turned out to be an immediate threat to the lives of those around him, if the police had shot him because he had brown skin and was wearing a coat, they would have been just as wrong. I mean that I don't share the assumption that if they were factually right, they must have been acting according to the correct information and following the correct procedure. I know what you mean about the fact that this guy was totally unconnected to any of the attacks making it much clearer that mistakes have been made, but... oh, anyway. I'm just very worried about the processes by which assumptions and assertions are being made at the moment, from "That Asian guy is running away, we should shoot him" to "Those four Asian guys were wearing the same backpacks, they must be the ones who blew stuff up." The thing is that in the absence of clearer information from the police, I don't know whether they're basing assertions about who is and isn't involved in terrorism on actual evidence about, well, involvement in terrorism, or on irrelevant and/or racist assumptions. Which means I don't know what to think about anything. But that's not really a new feeling for me.
 
 
Not Here Still
10:16 / 25.07.05
Fly, check your messages.

"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."

Around that time, Mr De Menezes left the council flat where he lived in Scotia Road, Lambeth, and cut through to Tulse Hill, where he boarded the No 2 bus, heading north towards Stockwell. Boarding with him, it now seems clear, were several plainclothes police officers.

"When he didn't call me, I called and called and called," Mr Avila told the Guardian. "I left messages on the voice message system. I sent him SMSs. All day I was worried."

At around 12.45am, Mr Avila went to bed. "Then the phone started to vibrate by my bed. It was a police detective. He said that he had something very important to tell me."
 
 
Not Here Still
10:48 / 25.07.05
For clarification, the George Bush "with us or against us" is more my feelings on this issue generally than a response to Flyboy, and the statement I don't agree with the ACAB theory is not in response to him either.
 
 
pornotaxi
15:04 / 25.07.05
can you not see you seeing all of the police as one homogeneous mass, rather than as individuals, is exactly the same process of stereotyping, de-individualsing, that causes this brutality to take place in the first place?

so what happened at orgeave, or the beanfield, or wapping, is okay, because it's a bunch of individuals, doubtless good family men, just following orders? just how does respecting the individual humanity of tooled-up coppers stop brutality occuring?

i see the point you are making, but i don't agree. i am srraying off-topic here, though.

last week, police denied they were implementing a shoot to kill policy. that's all changed now.

Sir Ian said he regretted the killing but warned that Mr de Menezes might not be the last to die. "Somebody else could be shot," he said

i can't believe what i'm hearing. the paint isn't even dry on the apology..
 
 
pornotaxi
15:59 / 25.07.05
this may not be a simple case of a gung-ho plod getting trigger happy.

i don't think that either. the man would have been shitting himself, because after piling on top of the brazillain, he thought he was about to be blown up by a bomb.

what i do doubt, is how much the concept of "public safety" came into the equation.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
16:06 / 25.07.05
I'm just very worried about the processes by which assumptions and assertions are being made at the moment, from "That Asian guy is running away, we should shoot him" to "Those four Asian guys were wearing the same backpacks, they must be the ones who blew stuff up."

I know what you mean and I think that's why I'm getting so hung up on the fact the guy was armed. If anything this seems to me to be the time when our police definitely shouldn't be armed.
 
 
Char Aina
18:25 / 25.07.05

so what happened at orgeave, or the beanfield, or wapping, is okay, because it's a bunch of individuals, doubtless good family men, just following orders?

i think you may have missed the point.
no one said it was all good because it was individuals.
the point is that blaming those not to blame is wrong.
the guy who has to live with this has to live with his mistake.
he did it, he pulled the trigger, he was the knife that made the wrong cut.
to say that the entire cutlery set is bad because one knife is too sharp is clearly silly.
even if several are, it doesnt follow that all are.
 
 
pornotaxi
20:35 / 25.07.05
the guy who has to live with this has to live with his mistake. he did it, he pulled the trigger, he was the knife that made the wrong cut. to say that the entire cutlery set is bad because one knife is too sharp is clearly silly.

so we can't talk about the police's role collectively, only the individual, the knife as it were. yet cutlery don't sharpen themselves, do they.
 
 
Char Aina
21:02 / 25.07.05
of course we can talk about them collectively, but only if we talk about the things that are relevant to all of them; procedure, for example.
being born out of wedlock doesnt, to me, seem to be one of those things.
 
 
astrojax69
21:07 / 25.07.05
what i do doubt, is how much the concept of "public safety" came into the equation.

i expect this is a significant factor in the training that these officers received. in the heat of the moment, the training is expected to come second nature, so the methodologies of how the firearms are used, the context and the environment all factor into that learning ina way designed to be instilled through the natural panic. of course, no training can really simulate such a situation as that officer/s encountered and so a degree [and a serious one] of risk is entailed in a 'live' situation.

not that i intend with this post to condone the actions, but to try to answer your doubt. i suspect a greta deal more attention to public safety was at work in this situation thatn perhaps you imagine.


aside from that, as for blaming the officers that actually shot the poor bastard, then that is a narrow view of the situation. as discussed by and by above, the intelligence in this situation appears to have been poor (certainly it turned out to be unfounded) but the actions of the police, so far as i can see. seem to be exemplary. if [and of course it is sadly only hypothetical] the victim had in fact been intending to detonate a device, the situation seems to have been handled in exactly the right manner, if it did stretch out to the very last possible moment. no-one else was hurt, the offender [to use the term in the hypothetical vernacular] was disabled and a disaster averted.

what else were these agents acting within a faulty system supposed to do? let's discuss the system of intelligence and police force methodology, not lambast the individual officer who probably, yes, has a distinct and particualr existence outside his role as police officer, with a family and circle or friends.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
22:25 / 25.07.05
________________________________________________________________

(I have typed these words here, and similarly those over there, to try and avoid off-topic-ness but mainly because I wasn't sure where on else Barbelith to put them and didn't want to start a new thread.)

Dear all:

Yesterday many things were typed by different parties here and in the 'Greenpeace Viral Ad' thread, which may or may not have been necessary or fair.

In this respect, I hereby acknowledge and apologise for my ego's part in all this, and though I can't promise to get similarly annoyed in the future, I will endeavour to learn better tactics (etc) to at least try and prevent this from happened again, in any arena. Since yesterday, I have taken a step back, got some sleep, managed to get hold of some food, and given myself a good slapping before re-reading the two threads in question a few times. (I've really got to sort my body-clock out and /or not post in a low-sleep mind-state.)

I assure you I am always editing myself and trying to avoid' threadrot', but as far as I can judge, a little thread-rot is always unavoidable (including this post!), although this is no excuse for bad posts. That typed, I have decided to take the following course of action to try avoid any further threadrot in these two threads.

1) I have decided to take a back seat in this thread. I think it's better to watch as other, brighter members type similar stuff that I would have done, but only far, far better.

2) I sent a PM to Seth to thank him/her for the apology earlier in this thread. Many of us (myself included) should learn from his/her example (I'm trying, I promise)

3) I have posted two new posts over there.

Again, sorry everyone. I'll try not to let it happen again.

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pornotaxi
06:00 / 26.07.05
being born out of wedlock doesnt, to me, seem to be one of those things.

okay, that's a fair point, that both you and lucky liquid have made.

it's a deep prejudice of mine and i'll refrain from it here in future.
 
  

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