Menezes - more Keystone Cop moments

[WouldBe]

If the officer didn't know the station was closed, yes.

From the link you helpfully provided, it seems that is his evidence:

However, he reported Mr de Menezes's movements on his radio, but had not seen the Tube station was closed.

Not very observant then was he.

If he couldn't get back on the bus to avoid blowing his cover he had plenty of time to look around as well. You've already pointed out he had a radio so could have passed on the info that Brixton was closed to any other officers following him.

 

[bluestreak]

As an organisation, yes. They should not have been deployed in the way which eventually happened.

As individual officers, no. Dragging other people (including unarmed officers) away from the suspect robustly is a pretty standard tactic until they are sure the threat has been stopped.

mate, that's not what happened and you know it.

i don't know about individual officers, i don't necessarily believe that any idividual is responsible at ground level, but the person who killed JCDM was the one who should have crossed the ts and dotted the Is, and not vice versa.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

You cannot avoid splitting an overall decision to shoot JCdM at that particular place and time into a series of precursor decisions because they were made by different officers at different times and in different places and all were in the context of an ongoing surveillance - there was no time or opportunity for a conference or meeting or anything, surveillance is just not like that. It'd be nice if it was. But it simply isn't, and I cannot see anyway in which it could be (though there is always scope for more and better communications).

They certainly were all made in different places, and that's part of the point. It not only allows organisational arse-covering (nobody specific was to blame for the whole lot ergo nobody at all was to blame) but it's a regularly and deliberately used tool to excuse actions that, if one person could be said to be responsible for them, would be utterly unacceptable.

I would very much doubt that there was any deliberate motive in this case (why would the Met actually _want_ to shoot some innocent Brazilian? it's hardly been good for them) but the correspondence between that and, say, Iraq war justification, is overwhelming and, as a practice, it is something that can't be allowed. If a system results in this sort of result it needs to be gutted and rebuilt.

 

[laptop]

i like the fact that they had so little clue that only the rapid flashing of his badged saved one of their own boys from receiving seven accidental bullets to the bonce.

Likely yer man's family is happy he's still around, and stuff.

But if he weren't, we'd have seen a much more thorough investigation into surveillance team members' inability to spot that a Tube station was closed, and so forth, wouldn't we?

(I suspect the problem there was that the officer in question simply doesn't use the Tube, preferring the nerr-naw mode of transport, so what's obvious to many Londoners isn't to him. Lesson: if you really believed in "making London safer" you'd have to live in normal London, wouldn't you?)

 

[Jazzz]

All you need to know about the competence of this police response was that it was based on the police's ability to make a quick, clear identification of the suspect in real time and pass it to a commanding officer.

Yet by his own admission Sir Ian Blair claims not to have any idea they shot the wrong guy until a day later!

Go figure!

 

[lostexpectation]

For fuck's sake. they say he was acting suspiciously because he got off and on a bus. the reason he got back on is that he saw that Brixton tube station was closed. suspicious?

i expect to be shot for 'paying for a Mars bar' anyday soon

fucking numpties

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7035620.stm

seems like prime example of somebody overstepping their job, being gun ho, perhaps emotionally distracted by the previous weeks events,(and these are the people the UK depends for safety) and presuming things, not a great example of individual police work, he must and conveyed that implication of counter surveillance techniques to his superiors,whether he said it explicitly they presummable thought the same, was there two way communication? (are the radio logs available?).

yes again apparently none of the police did anything wrong when actually they did get piles of things wrong, my choice punish the incompetent overwrought police and their commanders, I not concerned about making one or the other.

 

[detective-boy]

If he couldn't get back on the bus to avoid blowing his cover he had plenty of time to look around as well.

Once the suspect got back on the bus, and he didn't, he would be concentrating on getting into one of the surveillance vehicles.

You don't really think that surveillance teams have enough officers to just sort of leave them to find their own way back when this sort of thing happens do you?

 

[detective-boy]

mate, that's not what happened and you know it.

i don't know about individual officers, i don't necessarily believe that any idividual is responsible at ground level, but the person who killed JCDM was the one who should have crossed the ts and dotted the Is, and not vice versa.

That's exactly what happened - it's what someone suggested was evidence of incompetence ...

As for the individual officer - yes, they have an individual responsibility when they use force ... but they are entitled to rely on information that they had no reason to doubt at the time. They would be entirely unaware of the detail of exactly who said what to who in the chain of communication between the surveillance team and them and they would have no means of easily checking it as the usual way - a supervisor to supervisor briefing on arrival to join the surveillance team - was not possible due to the accident of timing.

Those who place firearms officers into situations DO have a responsibility for wat they are doing for this very reason (see the enquiry into the shooting of James Ashley in Hastings a few years ago which led to a number of very senior officers being disciplined for exactly that). The armed team supervisor could have arrived at the surveillance and said no, we're not deploying yet as the situation is too imprecise ... but they would not have any way of knowing exactly what the situation was at that moment (and it would be a split second decision as they actually arrived and found officers effectively pointing into the station) any more than the individual officer(s) who acually intercepted JCdM.

I am not sure yet, from the evidence we have had in the media, whether or not the armed team and the surveillance team had direct radio contact. I cannot believe that they did not but, if they did, no explanation has been provided as to why they didn't use it or, if they did, why this communication breakdown happened.

You are looking for the usual suspects (gun nut coppers) and, in doing so, you are missing far more important, deep-seated issues which arise from this case.

 

[detective-boy]

They certainly were all made in different places, and that's part of the point.

You make it sound like it's being used as an excuse. In operational situations you simply CANNOT have everyone in one place and you DON'T have time for a conference to ensure everyone knows everything and decide what to do. A committee tends to be a bit of a show out during surveillance ...

...but the correspondence between that and, say, Iraq war justification, is overwhelming and, as a practice, it is something that can't be allowed. If a system results in this sort of result it needs to be gutted and rebuilt.

You are making a ridiculous comparison. The Iraq war was a situation in which there were weeks / months / years to discuss what to do and how to do it. If you cannot see the difference between that and a fast-moving operational surveillance situation, with decisions being made as the surveillance is actually running (i.e. it's not at a static situation with the subject in a fixed location for a while) then, frankly, you need help.

 

[detective-boy]

But if he weren't, we'd have seen a much more thorough investigation into surveillance team members' inability to spot that a Tube station was closed, and so forth, wouldn't we?

No. Please explain which enquires were not pursued by the IPCC investigation that took place and that could have been pursued if an officer had been shot.

There would, of course have been a much closer legal duty of care between the MPS and one of it's own employees, but what additional evidence do you think exists which has not been found (and, more to the point, how do you know?).

 

[SpookyFrank]

You make it sound like the individual officers made individual choices to intervene at the moment they did.

Err, they did. Much as they'd have us believe otherwise whenever they fuck up, police officers are in fact possessed of as much control over their actions, and therefore are as responsible for their own actions, as anyone else.

You can never have "facts" available in any such sort of situation - there are always huge amounts of the unknown and unknowable.

I've yet to hear the argument against giving guns to police expressed more clearly. Oh hang on a minute, you were even using that to apologise for lethal incompetance. Jesus wept

 

[detective-boy]

seems like prime example of somebody overstepping their job, being gun ho,

As I have said before, you are simply targetting the "usual suspects" - the problem in this case is far more fundamental.

perhaps emotionally distracted by the previous weeks events

There is certainly scope for the officers to be somewhat more wary bearing in mind they are involved in an operation to find people who the day before set off IEDs on several trains (which, at that time, were believed to have been exactly the same as had gone bang on 7/7). That is being put before the jury - there has already been mention of what language was used in the briefings the officers received. Would you really expect anyone not to be on edge more than normal in those circumstances - you might as well ask for the moon on a fucking stick!

was there two way communication? (are the radio logs available?).

There was between the surveillance team members. There was between the armed team members. Whether there was betweento two is not clear but it seems not - communication was passed via the control room. I don't understand why this should be - even ten years ago it was routine for armed officers to be able to link their radio channel with surveillance teams ... but that would normally be done on arrival to join the team (not least because they wouldn't know the exact channel numbers (and there are lots of possibles), callsigns, etc. unless the surveillance team told them). There would not normally be logs or recordings of surveillance team communications. Some other channels which may have been used are recorded. The surveillance team would routinely complete a log (and one exists in this case - it was alleged to have been altered) contemporaneously but there is rarely chance to use the radio to clarify things and transmissions can often be unclear (from body worn sets, where speaking has to be kept very low) so omissions and mistakes are pretty common. I don't think the firearms team routinely would.

yes again apparently none of the police did anything wrong when actually they did get piles of things wrong, my choice punish the incompetent overwrought police and their commanders, I not concerned about making one or the other.

So you woulod criminally punish someone who may, or may not be guilty of any offence, yes?

 

[SpookyFrank]

There would, of course have been a much closer legal duty of care between the MPS and one of it's own employees, but what additional evidence do you think exists which has not been found (and, more to the point, how do you know?).

I'd say it's more a question of how much of that evidence has been ignored. Why, for example, are the vast majority of the witnesses at the present inquiry officers of the met? These events took place in public places, I have little doubt that some ordinary people saw what happened; or is stockwell a 'coppers only' tube station?

 

[SpookyFrank]

So you woulod criminally punish someone who may, or may not be guilty of any offence, yes?

If I put seven bullets in a man's skull in front of dozens of witnesses nobody would have the tiniest sliver of doubt that I was guilty, what makes the police so fucking special?

 

[bluestreak]

bd, you said this:

Dragging other people (including unarmed officers) away from the suspect robustly is a pretty standard tactic until they are sure the threat has been stopped.

which would be fair enough, except that that wasn't what happened. i said this, you disagreed.

the bbc says:

A covert policeman told a court that he had two guns pointed at him by fellow officers after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead on a Tube train.

...

His superior officer, codenamed James, was worried that Ivor could have been shot as his attire was so similar to Mr de Menezes.

....

I shouted he's here and indicated to Mr de Menezes with my right hand," he told the court.

"I then heard shouting including the word 'police'."
...

"I grabbed Mr de Menezes by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms against his sides," he said.

"The right side of my head was against his torso, pushing him back into his seat. He appeared to stiffen up and he was not in a natural sitting position.

"I felt his head turn towards me and I was aware of a CO19 [firearms] officer kneeling on the seat to my left.

"I heard a gunshot very close to my left ear. I was hit by the shockwave of a firearm being discharged."

Ivor told the court how he was then dragged away by one of the armed officers.

Within seconds he had a long-barrelled gun "levelled against my chest" and a pistol against his head, he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7034430.stm
---------

it is clear that they weren't getting him to a positon of safety, they were treating one of their own men as a suspect because they didn't know who they were following.

 

[maximilian ping]

If the officer didn't know the station was closed, yes.

From the link you helpfully provided, it seems that is his evidence:



Getting off a bus or tube and immediately getting on it again is a pretty common anto-surveillance tactic ... for exactly the effect it had here - the surveillance officer on the bus got off with the suspect and then couldn't get back on again without showing out.

If Menezes saw the station was shut, why didnt this surveillance bloke see the same thing? If not couldn't he see it was shut when the bus went past it?

Bring back the Secret Seven

 

[jæd]

If I put seven bullets in a man's skull in front of dozens of witnesses nobody would have the tiniest sliver of doubt that I was guilty, what makes the police so fucking special?

You've been told the guy in front of you has a bomb, and he's walking towards a crowded train of commuters.

If you don't shoot all those commuters will be dead, and probably you as well.

If you do shoot all those commuters will be alive, and so will you.

Which is better...? (And you don't have time to think it through)

Umpteen dead commuters, or an enquiry into shooting the wrong person...?

 

[twistedAM]

You've been told the guy in front of you has a bomb, and he's walking towards a crowded train of commuters.

If you don't shoot all those commuters will be dead, and probably you as well.

If you do shoot all those commuters will be alive, and so will you.

Which is better...? (And you don't have time to think it through)

Umpteen dead commuters, or an enquiry into shooting the wrong person...?

That's a blunt way of putting it but it does raise a fundamental point about this case and that is JdeM sadly wouldn't be dead and we wouldn't be talking about this if some cunts hadn't killed a load of people a few days beforehand with a genuine fear in the city that it could happen again.

 

[bluestreak]

You've been told the guy in front of you has a bomb, and he's walking towards a crowded train of commuters.

If you don't shoot all those commuters will be dead, and probably you as well.

If you do shoot all those commuters will be alive, and so will you.

Which is better...? (And you don't have time to think it through)

Umpteen dead commuters, or an enquiry into shooting the wrong person...?

this is why it is not necessarily the guy who did the shooting who is in the wrong, but the organisation that allowed it to happen, the person who hadn't rigourously checked it out, the person who allowed the chain of information to break. you're looking at it from the wrong angle.

 

[detective-boy]

Err, they did.

No, they didn't. The decision to intercept the subject was made by the control room commander, who then despatched the armed unit, who arrived at an entirely random moment in a moving surveillance. They themselves did not think "Oh, let's wait a bit ... right, let's intercept him now".

If you persist in ignoring the actual facts it is a waste of time trying to communicate with you. To be honest, I don't know why I expected otherwise.

 

[detective-boy]

I've yet to hear the argument against giving guns to police expressed more clearly.

The real world does not come in neatly packaged little boxes. You are demanding a situation in which police officers are able to see into the future. They can't, anymore than you could. ALL police operations will inevitably be based on information which is imperfect.

 

[detective-boy]

If I put seven bullets in a man's skull in front of dozens of witnesses nobody would have the tiniest sliver of doubt that I was guilty, what makes the police so fucking special?

If you were claiming (a) you lawfully had the gun and (b) that you honestly believed what the officers believed and (c) that the use of force was reasonable and necessary to prevent a bomb being detonated you would be entitled to exactly the same defence.

In fact, even if your gun was unlawful you'd stand a reasonable chance.

 

[detective-boy]

it is clear that they weren't getting him to a positon of safety, they were treating one of their own men as a suspect because they didn't know who they were following.

It is actually entirely consistent - until you are sure you are right about a person being uninvolved you still cover them, just in case you are wrong. I have had police guns pointed at me during ambush situations which have got a bit messy - it's what happens.

And the armed officers DIDN'T know who they were following. That is one of the most central points I am trying to get across and which answers many of the questions people repeatedly ask. THEY HADN'T BEEN PART OF THE FOLLOW. What you had was:


JCdM
and ------------------> Stockwell <-------------- Armed Team
Surveillance team

 

[detective-boy]

If Menezes saw the station was shut, why didnt this surveillance bloke see the same thing?

Read the thread.

 

[detective-boy]

but the organisation that allowed it to happen, the person who hadn't rigourously checked it out, the person who allowed the chain of information to break. you're looking at it from the wrong angle.

Correct - though I'm not sure there was any failure in "rigourously checking it out" - it was an absolute decision to put surveillance on the address (and, presumably, dozens of others) as soon as they became known from the scene examinations from the previous days and initial enquiries. "Rigorous" checking takes days and days (and may include static surveillance). I don't think that that was an option in the situation on 22 July - get the surveillance on, update us with any movements and we'll keep doing the "rigorous" checking in the meantime was, I would suggest, a perfectly reasonable decision to make.

Communication was definitely an issue. Command of a moving armed / surveillance operation was definitely an issue. Briefing may have been. Deployment decisions certainly were (this would NOT have happened had an armed team been deployed with the surveillance team from the outset - they would have known what the surveillance team knew in detail and would have chosen an appropriate spot for a "hard stop", something done without incident dozens of times a week.

 

[maximilian ping]

Read the thread.

err, yes, and?

 

[detective-boy]

err, yes, and?

Everyone else has managed to notice that I have suggested why it may not be quite so clear that the surveillance officer was negligent in not noticing the station was closed.

As YOU haven't, does that mean that YOU are being negligent? Or was it just that your attention wasn't focused on exactly the same bit of the thread as others ...

 

[Wookster]

You've been told the guy in front of you has a bomb, and he's walking towards a crowded train of commuters.

If you don't shoot all those commuters will be dead, and probably you as well.

If you do shoot all those commuters will be alive, and so will you.

Which is better...? (And you don't have time to think it through)

Umpteen dead commuters, or an enquiry into shooting the wrong person...?

Did Jean Charles even have a bag which could have contained a bomb? My understanding is he was lightly dressed and it is impossible he could have concealed any sort of explosive in his attire.

The whole tragic situation reeks of incompetence and cover up. How Ian Blair still has his job is beyond me, how Cressida Dick was promoted is incomprehensible, and why the two officers haven't been charged with at least manslaughter is incompatible with a western democracy.

 

[bluestreak]

And the armed officers DIDN'T know who they were following. That is one of the most central points I am trying to get across and which answers many of the questions people repeatedly ask. THEY HADN'T BEEN PART OF THE FOLLOW.

do you not think they should have known? that perhaps our friend Ivor and the armed guys could have been aware of each others presences?

 

[Jazzz]

You've been told the guy in front of you has a bomb, and he's walking towards a crowded train of commuters.

If you don't shoot all those commuters will be dead, and probably you as well.

If you do shoot all those commuters will be alive, and so will you.

Which is better...? (And you don't have time to think it through)

Umpteen dead commuters, or an enquiry into shooting the wrong person...?

This is a key point, and one little mentioned:

Even if the suspect was the right guy, there was no reason to suspect he was about to blow himself up.

At least, none that I am aware of.

The argument that it might be worth letting the police kill the odd wrong guy if they think it might save a few more lives doesn't work. The 7/7 bombers, for all their mayhem, did not stop Britain from being a democracy. Allowing the police summary executions will.