Met anti-terror head for the chop...

[Ned Pointsman]

I can't see how you'd do it.

Defamation cases (libel/slander) die when the person allegedly defamed dies.

What other case could you bring?

Malicious falsehood ?

I think you have to take action inside a year of the act occurring anyway, the whole being dead thing aside.

 

[laptop]

Malicious falsehood ?

Oooh yes.

Unfortunately:

Unlike defamation, a claimant must prove malice, falsity and actual or likely financial loss.

some lawyer

That'd be loss from the statement, not the deed.

I think you have to take action inside a year of the act occurring anyway, the whole being dead thing aside.

Fraid so...

For libel, slander or malicious falsehood, there is a time limit of twelve months for taking legal action. The time runs from the date the defamatory statement was made.

Some other lawyer (not, I am aware, a specialist in defamation etc)

 

[detective-boy]

There would also be the issue of public interest to consider. As a matter of policy the Courts are loathe to do anything which would hinder people reporting crimes / being witnesses in good faith. I don't think that there has ever been any indication that the witness accounts were given maliciously in any way, simply that they were given (massive) publicity before they had been verified. And so it was assumed that the person running / vaulting the gates was the suspect when, it would appear, it was one of the police officers.

This is a danger of 24 hour rolling news - speculation by reporters / presenters and absolutely raw, vox pop style witness accounts put out live and entirely unchecked.

 

[Ned Pointsman]

There would also be the issue of public interest to consider. As a matter of policy the Courts are loathe to do anything which would hinder people reporting crimes / being witnesses in good faith. I don't think that there has ever been any indication that the witness accounts were given maliciously in any way, simply that they were given (massive) publicity before they had been verified. And so it was assumed that the person running / vaulting the gates was the suspect when, it would appear, it was one of the police officers.

This is a danger of 24 hour rolling news - speculation by reporters / presenters and absolutely raw, vox pop style witness accounts put out live and entirely unchecked.

Even if its civil action ?

"I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."

That's either malice or (and I think more likely,) a willingness to endorse/propagate the official/terrorist angle, larkin may have been under the impression that it was a nailed on cert that Menezes was 'guilty' (reinforced by the fact he'd just seen him summarily executed in front of his own eyes) and decided to egg the proverbial pudding thinking it would never come back on him.

A lot of the lies integrity were based on the 'independent' nature of these two, it seems very bizarre that one minute they're integral to the whole thing, being cited over and over, next they've just disappeared never to be heard from again, seems very strange.

That'd be loss from the statement, not the deed.

Suppose if he were still alive he may have lost a bit of business.

 

[laptop]

Suppose if he were still alive he may have lost a bit of business.

Sadly, he was incapable of losing any more business shortly before the statements by excitable commuters getting their 15s of fame.

So there could be no actual loss (that is, one an accountant could testify to) due to those statements.

 

[detective-boy]

Even if its civil action ?

Yes, public policy decisions impact on all types of law. They would be very likely to be reluctant to do anything which could cause people from coming forward and saying what they saw in case they later turned out to be wrong and got sued.

There is another motivation, which you have missed ... the desire for 15 mins (I think it's more resilient than laptop, clearly ... ) of fame in these days of reality TV ...

 

[butchersapron]

Sorry, that is not a factual post - it clearly contains subjective opinions and so, under the terms and conditions of your release, i have no option but to withdraw your licence.

 

[paolo]

Having read the timeline of events, the finger seems (to me) to point fairly conclusively at Hayman - at least in terms of actively misleading people. For example, the press briefing he gave ('it was an innocent bloke') was followed by a meeting with various senior bods, where he implied that the press were independently going to report this line, rather than admitting he'd briefed it in.

Blair doesn't exactly look like a great leader, but if he wastold, then Blair and whoever told him have colluded, in giving evidence to the IPCC. Whilst this is of course possible, I think it's unlikely.

What surprises me is why Blair (and perhaps, more so, Ken Livingstone) have backed Hayman? Maybe they believe he's such an amazing cop, with no obvious replacement in his role, they think it's better to keep him where he is?

 

[agricola]

What surprises me is why Blair (and perhaps, more so, Ken Livingstone) have backed Hayman? Maybe they believe he's such an amazing cop, with no obvious replacement in his role, they think it's better to keep him where he is?

Perhaps, though it would be rather bad form if the Commissioner and the Mayor didnt publicly back him. One wonders what will happen when the furore dies down.

One might also point to the relatively muted criticism contained within the report (as pointed out above, one could perhaps make the case that the only people the AC misled were his own bosses), when viewed against more damning reports from the IPCC (like the Dizaei investigation, for instance).

 

[detective-boy]

A lot of the lies integrity were based on the 'independent' nature of these two, it seems very bizarre that one minute they're integral to the whole thing, being cited over and over, next they've just disappeared never to be heard from again, seems very strange.

I think you need to ask who was making so much of their account. The media? The police generally? The investigators specifically?

The Mirror today mixes up these aspects and creates a very misleading impression, comparing what WITNESSES said then, with what the IPCC report (Stockwell 2) says now and, sometimes, what the MPS said in between.

 

[Ned Pointsman]

I think you need to ask who was making so much of their account. The media? The police generally? The investigators specifically?

The Mirror today mixes up these aspects and creates a very misleading impression, comparing what WITNESSES said then, with what the IPCC report (Stockwell 2) says now and, sometimes, what the MPS said in between.

In my experience, the public (and perhaps the media, I couldn't say) who at the time were pretty desperate for him to be guilty against the backdrop of what had happened a few weeks prior.

The sentiment I encountered was; the police might lie, but why would these two apparently random witnesses ? Ergo he must have done something.

Vaguely tempted to go and by the mirror now.

 

[laptop]

What surprises me is why Blair (and perhaps, more so, Ken Livingstone) have backed Hayman? Maybe they believe he's such an amazing cop, with no obvious replacement in his role, they think it's better to keep him where he is?

* cough *

* original post *

BBC ticker: Anti-terror chief has my full support - Met Police head Sir Ian Blair.




When did that phrase ever mean anything other than "your P45 is in the post"?

 

[detective-boy]

The sentiment I encountered was; the police might lie, but why would these two apparently random witnesses ? Ergo he must have done something.

There is a shed load of difference between:

(a) lying (which I doubt the witnesses were, but they may have been) and
(b) being mistaken (which these witnesses clearly were at least to some extent, with the benefit of hindsight, and which many witnesses often are) and
(c) having their (genuine or mistaken) accounts used as the basis for conclusions which are not merited (e.g. they saw someone jump the barrier - did they say it was the suspect as oppsed to an officer, or did the media or someone else draw that conclusion).

(ETA: Differentiating between these is what a professional investigator does, and it takes time. That is why the police are usually slow to release details - they won't until they have checked that they are reliable. It is the core danger of the media putting out raw, unchecked / unevaluated witness accounts live ...)

 

[Ned Pointsman]

There is a shed load of difference between:

(a) lying (which I doubt the witnesses were, but they may have been) and
(b) being mistaken (which these witnesses clearly were at least to some extent, with the benefit of hindsight, and which many witnesses often are) and
(c) having their (genuine or mistaken) accounts used as the basis for conclusions which are not merited (e.g. they saw someone jump the barrier - did they say it was the suspect as oppsed to an officer, or did the media or someone else draw that conclusion).

I accept the barrier business as being mistaken, I'll even accept the 'bulky jacket' which according to the Guardian was repeated officially by the police after being claimed by whitby (as he put it;
"He [the suspect] had a baseball cap on and quite a sort of thickish coat - it was a coat you'd wear in winter, sort of like a padded jacket, ian blair capitalised on this claiming his 'clothing added to suspicion') as being down to the stress of the occasion.

But you just don't 'mistake' a bomb belt or wires out of nowhere. According to the bbc, the report says "One account given to the media wrongly described Mr Menezes as wearing a bomb belt with wires coming from it. This witness has not come forward to the IPCC."

Why not ?

 

[butchersapron]

Because they didn't exist and they were actually a copper briefing hungry journos?

 

[paolo]

* cough *

* original post *

Heh heh! Yep, point taken!

 

[paolo]

Because they didn't exist and they were actually a copper briefing hungry journos?

I don't believe that at all.

If you wanted to create a fake witness, you would pick a far more generic. Pete Smith. Accountant, IT, bank employee.

There's probably not many 47 year old water hygiene surveyors called Mark Whitby, living in Brixton. Easily verifiable I would think, if anyone seriously thought it was a stooge.

 

[butchersapron]

Did Mark Whitby give the info about the belt? We're talking about 'sources' and witnesses who 'dissapeared'. Not named witnesses.

 

[paolo]

Did Mark Whitby give the info about the belt?

Actually good point, I'll retract for the moment, no it wasn't Mark Whitby... It was Anthony Larkin. I'll do some more reading and post again.

 

[laptop]

There's probably not many 47 year old water hygiene surveyors called Mark Whitby, living in Brixton. Easily verifiable I would think, if anyone seriously thought it was a stooge.

Let's see...

I'm not prepared to pay money, but I think I've guessed his girlfriend's name...

 

[paolo]

(c) having their (genuine or mistaken) accounts used as the basis for conclusions which are not merited (e.g. they saw someone jump the barrier - did they say it was the suspect as oppsed to an officer, or did the media or someone else draw that conclusion).

Although I don't think you are saying it definitely wasn't the witness that drew that conclusion, I would assume they probably did. Most people - I think - would assume that "the first man running" is the one being persued.

(The met themselves even used this construct in a billboard campaign some decades ago, but that's another whole can of worms )

 

[TAE]

I'd still like to know - why did the Met Police never retract their claim that the brazillian had refused to obey police orders?

 

[detective-boy]

Although I don't think you are saying it definitely wasn't the witness that drew that conclusion, I would assume they probably did.

It doesn't really affect my point - a witness knows what they SAW and what they HEARD. They get that wrong (genuinely) ofetn enough. They are NOT used to give an opinion as to WHY something was being done or said, or (usually) WHO the person was, certainly when it is a peripheral part of the incident (people going towards the central bit, or away from it).

An investigator does not take the witnesses word for it - they note what is allegedly seen and heard and then see how that fits with everything else, giving things more or less weight dependant upon reliability.

The MEDIA, in allowing witnesses to report LIVE and wth reporters using leading questions and actually encouraging speculation do exactly the WRONG thing and, once a story is out there, it gets a life of it's own. It is a very real problem which has got significantly worse over the last ten or fifteen years.

 

[ramjamclub]

You can be mistaken

As a witness to a crime which was perpetrated upon myself, I gave a first class
description of one person (according to the police) and almost of the second person. Apart from one big mistake, I could have sworn the 2nd person had a dark jacket on but as it happened so fast I was mistaken. They had a white jacket with a black shirt.
Luckily there were good cctv images and it resulted in a conviction.
I consider myself pretty good at describing people and have a few tricks to help me, such as noting where the top of the head comes to against a doorway.

 

[fat Andy]

I'd still like to know - why did the Met Police never retract their claim that the brazillian had refused to obey police orders?

Whenever the IPCC take over an investigation the Police are not permitted to make public statements. It's the responsibility of the IPCC who IMO sometimes appear to hide behind the fact that no-one seems to know

 

[paolo]

It doesn't really affect my point - a witness knows what they SAW and what they HEARD. They get that wrong (genuinely) ofetn enough. They are NOT used to give an opinion as to WHY something was being done or said, or (usually) WHO the person was, certainly when it is a peripheral part of the incident (people going towards the central bit, or away from it).

An investigator does not take the witnesses word for it - they note what is allegedly seen and heard and then see how that fits with everything else, giving things more or less weight dependant upon reliability.

The MEDIA, in allowing witnesses to report LIVE and wth reporters using leading questions and actually encouraging speculation do exactly the WRONG thing and, once a story is out there, it gets a life of it's own. It is a very real problem which has got significantly worse over the last ten or fifteen years.

Agree.

I thought about my post afterwards and thought hmm, would have been better phrased as "This doesn't affect your point, but...".

 

[paolo]

Did Mark Whitby give the info about the belt? We're talking about 'sources' and witnesses who 'dissapeared'. Not named witnesses.

You're losing me a bit here butchers... If these were unnamed secret people that only you know about and won't discuss, then it's totally intangible.

I assume you don't actually mean that.

Can you explain? Or offer a link?

 

[paolo]

Let's see...

I'm not prepared to pay money, but I think I've guessed his girlfriend's name...

laptop you're losing me aswell. I assume there's some meaning to your guess?

 

[TAE]

Whenever the IPCC take over an investigation the Police are not permitted to make public statements. It's the responsibility of the IPCC who IMO sometimes appear to hide behind the fact that no-one seems to know

Excuse me? The police seemed more than happy to continue making statements.

 

[butchersapron]

You're losing me a bit here butchers... If these were unnamed secret people that only you know about and won't discuss, then it's totally intangible.

I assume you don't actually mean that.

Can you explain? Or offer a link?

Ned posted in post#44
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=6305993&postcount=44

According to the bbc, the report says "One account given to the media wrongly described Mr Menezes as wearing a bomb belt with wires coming from it. This witness has not come forward to the IPCC."

I was suggesting that this may have come from a police source to justify the killing in the immdiate aftermath of the incident, or from a coppere who had heard it from another police source at the time, and that it was only passed on with the understanding that it was reported as a coming from a witness not OB. Hence their total dissapearance -they didn't exist so couldn't come forward.