I dunno about you, but I find something deeply troubling about the whole sorry Jean Charles de Menezes saga, least of all that an innocent man on his way to work was executed by armed British police officers.The cover-ups, untruths and blatant lies that have followed the incident at Stockwell tube station on the 22nd of July 2005 make me extremely angry and disappointed at the conduct of people that we rely on for our own freedom and safety, but what makes me livid is that it seems that nobody will ever be brought to book for the fundamental errors that led to Jean Charles taking 8 'hollow point' bullets to his body, 7 in his head and one in his shoulder, that left him "unrecognisable".
Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner at the time of the incident, initially blocked the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) from investigating the shooting and wrote a letter to the home office saying:
"the shooting that has just occurred at Stockwell is not to be referred to the IPCC and that they will be given no access to the scene at the present time."
A week after the shooting he rejected a vote of no confidence in his leadership by the London Assembly, an elected body, part of the Greater London Authority, that scrutinises the activities of the Mayor Of London, but thankfully Boris Johnson has finally seen sense and booted him out.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, the officer in command of the operation that led to the shooting of the Brazilian electrician, told the inquest into his death:
"If you are asking me did we do anything wrong or unreasonable then I don’t think we did".Oh really?
None of her officers either positively or negatively identified an innocent man who was behaving completely normally, yet she still gave them the go ahead to, quite literally, blow his head off.
That could quite easily have been you or me on the floor of that subway train.
I'd say that FUBAR is probably the best way to describe how that operation turned out.Someone better fucking end up behind bars over this.
8 comments:
From your link it appears to be a case of mistaken identity.
Anyway, it was a really horrible tragedy.
Wow... y'all sure have a strict immigration policy.
This is so scary not only because they seemed to go right color = close enough, but that people in power more or less shrugged it off as collateral damage.
The most galling thing is that nobody will held to account and no one will end up behind bars. All those involved will end up with rather nice pensions and, one would hope, an uncomfortable itch on their consciences...
Zen, Eostre - I can understand the mistaken identity argument, accidents happen after all, but the fact that he wasn't positively or negatively identified is what troubles me. That, and the fact that 'the power that be' have fought tooth and nail to sweep this whole sorry event under the carpet.
"It might be him" is not good enough.
Steve - Call me a cynic if you will, but I suspect you're exactly right.
The mistaken identity thing I admit is faulted--
Let's suppose this guy WOULD HAVE BEEN the target terrorist.
Don't we want to, um, TALK TO HIM??
God damn it, Zen!
We need you in charge!
That's the kind of lateral thinking that gets things done.
Apparently they considered him to be wearing explosives strapped to his torso, and the only way to stop him activating the imaginary C4 was to turn his brain stem into mush.
Hence the 'shoot to kill' policy.
I think it's criminal that no-one is facing a manslaughter charge. somebody somewhere wasn't sure, but still sentenced a man to death. maybe they'll toss a coin to decide whether to shoot people in the face from now on?
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