It's blatantly obvious how fanatical these bombers are. What's to suggest one them gets a job on London Underground and uses their position for alternative means. I think the police were simply taking precautions.
Or rather - is there anything to stop a terrorist getting hold of a LUL uniform and posing as staff? Who would ever suspect a staff member of being a bomber. Sure the train driver was a driver but since he wasnt in his train at the time that may not have been immediately obvious.
I hope my argument makes sense!
Yes. But perhaps we could demand a certain amount of caution on the part of the police too? The cowboy attitude to policing looks great in films, but I'd prefer the police asked questions first, and pulled out the guns second, myself.
I am still somewhat surprised by one aspect of this story: the police seem to have pulled the man to the ground, and then shot him.
Now, if they believed he really was a suicide bomber, surely they would not have approached? But if they didn't, why the five shots? More to this story than meets the eye, I suspect.
>I'd prefer the police asked questions first<
I don't think I'd want the police to just be asking questions of a bloke who might have a bomb, LU uniform or otherwise.
Nice attitude, V & AB. Wish you were here.
Thanks for all of the work you have done posting info about this horrible thing that has happened. Being in america i wondered what everyday people are going thru. i have only seen photos of prince charles in hospitals from mass media and that type of thing. great blog. thank you
Well, now Scotland Yard have admitted that the man killed was not linked to the terrorist activity.
Probably sensible policing. If they guy had been a bomber he'd have killed and we'd have been pillaring the police for not acting. The difference between the tube driver and the dead man is the tube driver co-operated with the police where as the other guy ran along the platform onto a train. In the current situation if you ignore the police then run onto a train your not going to get a medal are you? If you've not got anything to hide you've not got anything to fear.
The "if you've not got anything to hide" thing is OK, but a little black & white. Suppose he did have something to hide, like perhaps a collection of fake Rolex watches, or stolen goods that he has been selling on street corners. Did he deserve to be shot for that?
Of course, in the climate of this week, you could argue that he must have been a little stupid to use a tube station as his getaway path. And I think there is a valid point that we would have blamed the police if they'd let him get away and he was carrying a bomb. We are going to have to wait for the police to explain their actions, and hope that if somebody did something wrong then they will face the consequences of those actions.
Overall though, it is much more reminiscent of the way the police behave out here in the US, and all it has done is lead to an arms race and more killings. Oakland, just one relatively small city, probably had more people killed by shootings last year than the whole of the UK (it was well over 100).
Judge Dredd is now riding the Tube.
Summary executions of random riders every hour, for looking askance or not conforming the New Britain standards.
Collateral damage to bystanders will be unavoidable.
(How will they prevent bullets going through the 'victims' in an enclosed area like the Tube?)
Indeed.
I used to know a Transport Policeman and was always fascinated to hear about how they were often quite cautious about pulling out a truncheon in crowded tube carriages for fear of hurting people nearby. How times have changed.
Can we have a comment from Anthony "Justice has been odne. May it continue." please?
I wonder whether this gun-ho behaviour has something to with UK police officers not being used to fire arms. I mean, shooting a suspect is one thing, pinning him to the floor first and then perforating him is quite something different...
All I know is that I will never try and fare dodge at Stockwell station again...
The man was approached by officers in plain clothes. He had a lot of reason to be scared. They had no reason to kill him unless they thought that he was going to pose a danger to others. Did he have a rucksack or anything else that looked dangerous on him?
How about having X-ray machines and metal detectors in front of ticket barriers from now on? That seems to be the only way we will be able to tell for sure whether someone is dangerous or not.
Let's get this straight - the guy RAN from armed officers after being challenged, vaulted the ticket barriers, ran down the stairs and then ran onto a tube train - sorry this is a bit facile given the guy is dead but he is definately a Darwin Awards nominee....
I don't think that X Ray machines and metal detectors are going to work if someone is going to vault over them.
It's all very easy to say you shouldn't run from the police if you're innocent. He probably felt guilty about something . What that something was, we'll never know now.
But no one thinks sensibly when they're panicking. And if you know you're not a terrorist you certainly wouldn't assume you were going to be shot and killed.
It's all a horrible, horrible situation riddled with moral dilemmas. If the guy had been a terrorist, by now we'd all be applauding the police for killing one of the bastards.
If excited plain clothes policemen could discharge five shots on a grounded white man, in his head no less, then I wonder how they would treat people who looked Asian or Muslim.
This is all so confusing and disturbing.
I back the police action 100% in this case. A sad as it is, if the chap was innocent the fact remains that the day after 4 terrorists tried to massacre another group of innocent people, he ignored the challenges of 3 armed officers and ran straight down into the tube and onto a train. What were they to think he was up to and what would people say if he had detonated a device and killed people? Hindsight is wonderful; it’s just a pity that we don’t have it at the crucial moment.
He ran from a group (read gang) of armed men chasing him. Would you really stop just because they claimed to be the police?
NB: not uniformed police. Plain clothes.
Simply, yes. If someone points a gun at me, then it is very likely that I would stop.
I used to live in Stockwell, and for the time being I am living in Tel Aviv; the thought of such an attack is always at the back of my mind. I have not been in or even close to such an attack, but a few friends been minutes away from being involved.
These officers were faced with someone acting (to them) suspciously, wearing bulky, thick clothes in the middle of summer. They had to make what might be the toughest judgement in their lives, and not only ask a potential bomber to stop, but then to chase and incapacitate him so that there was no possibility of him harming others.
We have already had demonstrated to us that there are people in the UK that no longer value their own lives, and are prepared to use them solely to kill and injure innocent civilians.
With that in mind, what are the police supposed to do? Let the person go? Ask him again to stop? At what point should the police be allowed to take action against a potential attacker?
I am so glad that my career is unlikely to involve me making a split second decision of this nature.
I sympathise with the victim, the police on the ground, and the senior officer at Operation Kratos control room who would have had to approve the action.
Sorry to break in here but just like to know where i can get one of those great fuzzy jumpers with large bulls -eyes, makes you look like walking dart boards.
BTW I"m deaf and Irish, shoildn't be a problem.
Amazing that some are happy to "blame the victim" in this case. I thought that wasn't allowed? Anyways, this is war. Or so we are told. In a war it is usually the case that most countries involved suffer home casualties. Think the London in WW2. OK, this isn't bombs from on high, it's unknown people blowing up whatever they can. And civilians will die as police try to stop bombers. It happens every day in Iraq and we don't get all hot under the collar about Iraqis dying because they "look suspicious". But what the hell, they don't matter enough to count, so why bother even reporting their deaths. War is hell. We have forgotten that - probably because since WW2 wars have been fought against countries that couldn't strike us. This time we are fighting people, not countries. And they fight back any way they can.
"It happens every day in Iraq and we don't get all hot under the collar about Iraqis dying because they "look suspicious"."
I bloody do! We need to remember that killing is wrong, whoever is doing it, and for whatever reason.
This whole thing stinks and I want to see a proper investigation.
Seconded.
Its just all so damned sad.. so damned sad
It has been a few hours and I have already seen people wearing the 'DON'T SHOOT I AM NOT A TERRORIST" T-Shirt on the subway, and I started thinking, if the brazilian boy had been wearing one of this, he probably would still be alive...a shirt that can actualyy save your life.
The shirt can be found here if you are interested: http://www.cafepress.com/00ps.26920531
Although I imagine loads of terrorists will be bulk buying them too!!!!
I sympatise. I really, really do. But there's no reason to beat up on the police for doing their job in this instance. There *are* a lot of police fuck-ups out there that you can focus on, but I don't see this as one of them. And you can take that as coming from someone who's certainly not their biggest fan.
There seems to be an awful lot of disinformation floating around in relation to this incident, and sadly some of it has surfaced here. Slowly details are coming out that - to put it mildly - cast more and more doubt on the actions of the "police." It was a three mile journey between the man's flat and the Tube station, part of which he travelled on a bus. He did not run into the Tube station, he was actually buying a ticket when a group of armed men came running towards him. Today's Metro quotes a witness who says that none of them identified themselves as police, and some of them only put on their identifying baseball caps after he was already running. Now the BBC News website is reporting that the cousin with whom he shared the flat in Tulse Hill, "said she did not remember him wearing a padded jacket." More and more one has to ask on exactly what grounds was Menenzes judged to be a target, let alone why he wasn't apprehended alive at some other point during him apparently sedate amble across South London....
As a geneticist I must say that the young Brasilian gentleman was obviously shot by the Darwin Police. That is correct. The Darwin Police are tasked with the duty of eliminating people who are too idiotic to breed before they have the chance to reproduce. Sadly this entails sting operations that sometimes get confused with other operations, such as anti muslim terrorist operations.
Fear not, the Darwin Police are just getting started. They are perfecting their methods, sworn to eliminate stupidity before it breeds. Magnificent.
Professor
I know you're joking with the comment you've just made, but it would be great if people could stop blaming the victim here. I'd mentioned it before and have also felt inclined to leave messages on a variety of other blogs that are calling the guy stupid for wearing a padded jacket and for vaulting the turnstile.
There's so many rumours going round as to whether or not he did vault the turnstile, whether he was about to pay for his ticket or not.
But the facts are certainly emerging that the police officers were certainly in plain clothes, that they only put on Police baseball hats quite late in the day, that we currently have no idea - what - if any warning the police had shouted or given.
Given all the circumstances, I don't think he was stupid and even if he was stupid - his stupidity wasn't at Darwin levels (ie people who do something so stupid, that's it's highly likely to lead to death, like cleaning their ears out with a power drill).
Running from a group of guys with guns and (with as yet) little outside evidence that they were police sounds quite sensible to me.
I don't know.
Annie, you say we should not blame the victim, but he should at least have some of the blame IMO.
He acted suspiciously. The police overreacted, but had he obeyed their orders this would not have happened.
Neither side has acted 100% correct but I think an investigation into the police is wrong too. They have enormous pressure already.
I for one, if the police have reason to believe someone is a terrorist, would rather they acted rather than approached him with gloves.
I suppose if the police want to be sure of killing all the terrorists in London, a nuclear bomb at Trafalgar square should do the trick. Sure, there might be a few more innocent victims, but they're doing a difficult job, and we should just accept that.
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