Man shot by mistake?

[Phi for All]

I don't think it's right for police personnel to have to wait to see a bomb before using lethal measures in cases where a bombing suspect runs from them.

 

However...

 

if they made the decision to kill the man once they wrestled him to the ground before they actually wrestled him to the ground, this was clearly excessive force.

 

Ultimately, there are so many factors we don't know about. When he was on the ground, did Jean Charles de Menezes try to reach in his pockets for his ID? This could easily be misconstrued as an attempt to reach a detonator. Did the officer who fired the shots receive an order from someone else, either from another officer present or perhaps from radio communication from a superior who felt he/she couldn't take chances with a packed train station?

[DQW]

Ophiolite,

 

I wonder what you'd say, if as the police were trying to cuff the guy (after subduing him), he had pushed a button and blew up everyone in that subway car.

[Aardvark]

The man is on his way home from the airport following a trip to the Scottish Highlands (I don't care' date=' just pick a freaking cold place somebody might be returning to nice warm England from in July, yeesh), and stops to watch his son play ball on the playground. He had just grabbed a newspaper from a stand nearby without paying, so when the policeman confronts him, he figures it's about that. He decides to make a run for it. [/quote']

 

This is still completely unrealistic.

 

A policeman would never point a gun on someone they merely suspected of stealing something. If a policeman points a gun at you, you know its nothing to do with any newspaper. Unless you are a suicide bomber you have no reason to run.

 

The policemen catches him and subdues him on the ground immediately, but because he's near the playground and the threat of terrorism has been high lately, he decides to plant five bullets in his brain, just to be sure.

 

All the hypothetical man had to do was stand still. Everyone is aware of the terrorist problem, running away from armed police is simply asking to be shot.

 

 

Are you sure that's what you want your policemen to go around doing?

 

Yes, yes, yes and a thousand times yes. I want to know that the police will not hesitate to kill if they suspect a suicide bomber is about to make an attack.

[Pangloss]

A policeman would never point a gun on someone they merely suspected of stealing something. If a policeman points a gun at you, you know its nothing to do with any newspaper. Unless you are a suicide bomber you have no reason to run.

 

In my example he wasn't suspected of theft, he was suspected of terrorism.

 

 

But this is the statement of yours that I really find interesting:

 

All the hypothetical man had to do was stand still. Everyone is aware of the terrorist problem, running away from armed police is simply asking to be shot.

 

Shot? SHOT?! Really? Well heck, somebody ought to tell the LAPD, so they can stop chasing and start shooting!

 

Surely what you MEANT to say there was "running away from the police when suspected of terrorism". But then, of course, that begs the question I raised above -- how the hell do you know what they suspect you of?

 

I agree that when someone is instructed by police they need to stand there and comply -- I'm not arguing otherwise. I'm saying that if they do not comply, the correct procedure is to find out why they're not complying. Not gun them down like dogs in the street just because the officer THINKS they MIGHT be a terrorist. Yeesh.

[Thomas Kirby]

The police who shot the Brazilian, according to this article , were plainclothes. Today, not only does a man not have the right to run away from police without being murdered, neither does he have the right to run away from what may look to him like a gang of thugs. I completely sympathize with him. I come from a small town in Kansas and I used to have to run from a gang of thugs all the time. He couldn't know that he was facing a shoot-to-kill policy. This doesn't even sound like anything he could have done would have stopped him from being killed. If he had not run, I think they would still have held him down and gunned him to death. Just to make it a little worse, Brazil is famous in very recent history for sending death squads into people's homes.

 

The ones who issued the orders and the policemen who actually performed the shootings should face the worst kinds of murder charges in this case. I don't care about the alleged extenuating circumstances in this case. In this case the police are the ones who should have known better. They need to be taught better.

[AzurePhoenix]

The police are taught to act on their instincts, and to make difficult choices in the time it would take most anyone else to register that there's even a problem. The circumstances led them to believe that they had only two choices. Take him out, or risk the possible deaths of dozens of bystanders.

 

Was it necessarily the right choice? Impossible to tell without actually having been there to witness exactly what occured (including every action made by the suspect, the initial reactions of the police, and the apparent possibility of a bomb or of accidently setting it off if it actually existed).

[Douglas]

And if the man did have a bomb, I would estimate about a 0.000 percent chance that he would not have detonated it while being chased.

Oh, If I were a suicide bomber, with the promise of 70 dancing virgins, I'd like to maximize my kills, killing oneself without taking out a few infidels may nullify the dancing virgins.

[AzurePhoenix]

the initial reactions of the police).

By this I meant that once the suspect was in the tube station, the police were left with no other choice than the one they followed. Anything else would have been irresponsible. Any other course of action would have to have been acted upon prior to reaching this oh-so-critical point.

[Pangloss]

Here's something else I wonder: If we shoot first and ask questions later, haven't we LOST? Doesn't that mean that the terrorists have WON?

 

Isn't stopping first and figuring it out pretty much the hallmark of what it means to deny terror and elevate civilization above brutality?

 

Even if it means there's a chance people will die, isn't that preferable to letting fear change the way we live our lives in a substantial, fundamental way like this? Isn't it better to have a unknown chance that innocent people will die rather than a 100% chance that someone will die who may or may not be guilty?

[AzurePhoenix]

The answer to that question will differ based upon every indidviuals principles, theology, and value of social order in regards to human life. Me? I vote for the individuals, and I don't even like people!!!

[Thomas Kirby]

Once the suspect was in the tube station, there was no other course to follow? If he did not set off a bomb just before the police took him down, that is because he either had no bomb to set off or the bomb wasn't working. Either way, it was definitely safe to not shoot to kill a man who they had already restrained.

 

At a time when we most need our thinking abilities, those who are in power seem to have used the crisis as an excuse to abandon these abilities, as have a significant portion of the population. If one of my neighbors decided that I looked like the current type of demon who is in the news tonight and decided to blow me away because of that, it wouldn't be the first or last time humans have done this. Because we have used our brains just a little bit, a lot of the English-speaking world lives in a sort of island of stability that has at least a modicum of real civilization to it. Part of what makes this work is the somewhat lessoned influence of superstition and hatred. From what I've seen the last few years, a lot of us hunger for the good old days when it was acceptable to set old ladies and young women on fire for being a little different. A lot of us are addicted to the drumbeats of war. A lot of us approve of the idea of the police blowing through a lot of innocent lives just in case any of them might be a bomber, which some of us seem to literally be saying. If it looks like a bomber, kill it.

 

For some of us, this kind of life is not acceptable and is not worth living, whatever excuse people give for acting like this. My message is: Grow the hell up, people. This isn't playing cops and robbers with rubber darts. People get hurt and die when we get stupid, and in a lot greater numbers than the terrorists ever managed. Iraq didn't do 9/11, they hate the guts of the people who did. The U.S. got stupid and murdered tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis using 9/11 as a call to war, and those alleged weapons of mass destruction which George Bush II knew didn't exist, and I think a lot of us, even me, feel an urge to start lobbing atom bombs all over the Middle East, and I can't completely count on even myself not to get stupid and start writing the President asking him to please incinerate Iran and Syria before they do bad things to us.

 

I keep hoping that people will wake up and start to straighten out, even if I think we're dogmeat because of things like the shooting in London. Even if it seems rather immoral, selfish, and somehow against God, I'd kind of like a few decades or even centuries of us not killing each other a while, government not being corrupt, people having jobs and stuff, and for the psychopaths who seem to run the world to get some help.

[Thomas Kirby]

No, psychopathy led them to believe that they had only those choices. That, and stupidity. Anyone who was carrying a bomb and could trigger it would have triggered it while they were chasing him. And I am perfectly willing to "risk the possible deaths" to keep from committing murder myself, which is what the police did in this case. They just plain committed murder, and in a pretty bad way.

 

The police are taught to act on their instincts' date=' and to make difficult choices in the time it would take most anyone else to register that there's even a problem. The circumstances led them to believe that they had only two choices. Take him out, or risk the possible deaths of dozens of bystanders.

 

Was it necessarily the right choice? Impossible to tell without actually having been there to witness exactly what occured ([i']including every action made by the suspect, the initial reactions of the police, and the apparent possibility of a bomb or of accidently setting it off if it actually existed[/i]).

[AzurePhoenix]

Anyone who was carrying a bomb and could trigger it would have triggered it while they were chasing him.

Anyone who was carrying a bomb would realize they were going to die whether they detonated it or not. They might as well try to finish the job to the best of their ability and try to reach a crowded area to do as much damage as possible, or get shot trying.

[Evangelante]

Once they pinned him, they could have used a tranquilizer or put some sleeping technique on him. In my personal opinion, it was wrong for the cops to kill him. Either way you look at it, you could have put the dude to sleep instead of killing them.

 

Cops are such freaking idiots, i hate cops. They usually have tazers or stun guns on them. They could have just used a tazer on the dude once they caught up. Those things are so strong they'll expand your muscles so you can't move and you end up in the fetal position.

 

You could shoot him, freeze him, and then revive him once you realize he's not a bad guy......

[AzurePhoenix]

As it was said earlier, a Tazer, if they had one, could have posed a risk by way of causing a detonation. Whether it's likely or not, I don't know, and it's likely the cops wouldn't have know the risk either, in which case, not tazing the suspect was the responsible thing to do. And cops (at least around here) neither carry tranqs (which are generally too slow-acting to be useful, even not work at all, or might cause adverse reactions in certain people for whatever reason, metabolism included) nor are they taught techniques to put out criminals (both because in the case of this leading to the suspects death, the cops would then be accused of being too aggressive and of utilizing potentially lethal and unproven techniques yadayadayada, as well as the fact that it's far easier to just break the jerk's arms)

 

The only logical and responsible course of action was to kill the suspect.

[Pangloss]

And if the cop looks up and there's a guy pointing at another guy saying he's got wires sticking out his coat, best to shoot him too. Better safe than sorry. And if another cop shows up and sees a non-uniformed individual shooting people, well he probably needs to be dropped on the spot as well, just to be on the safe side. And if the new cop hears someone behind him muttering about bombs in subways, well, both of those people probably should be taken down as well, because they could be talking about bombs THEY want to plant on subways, rather than the daily news, and it's better to be safe than sorry.

 

 

By the way, the above paragraph is not a straw man argument, because we've seen no standards whatsoever for this judgement to be made by -- we've only talked about the reasons for suspicion in this case. In other words, under this new policy an officer is judge, jury and executioner, and can make that decision based on any indications he feels appropriate at the time. Any.

 

Any suspicion is 100% sufficient to summarily execute any individual the officer believes may be a terrorist.

[Skye]

I have read that the police in this situation were required to get permission to use deadly force by radio. I'm not sure whether this occured or not, but it does add another level of responsibility.

 

Beyond which, this wasn't a case of the police pulling some random guy out of a crowd and nailing him. His block of flats was under surveillence and he was followed to the train station by the police officers, I imagine because he was considered a possible bombing suspect.

[atinymonkey]

Frankly I am appalled at the bulk of the responses from individuals whose input I had previously come to respect. Unless you all have some miraculous high level contacts then you, like me, do not [/b']know what happened.

 

Indeed. If we cannot discuss this rationally, we should not discuss it at all.

 

Even with limited information, the smartest thing to do at this point is to wait for the inquest to finish. The world is not black and white, it has wide stripes of grey. The difference between good and bad actions change, according to your perspective. Right now, none of us have the perspective.

[Thomas Kirby]

If the terrorist was already prepared to die by detonating a bomb that he was carrying, he wasn't going to hold off just because the police nabbed him before he reached his destination.

[Pangloss]

I have read that the police in this situation were required to get permission to use deadly force by radio. I'm not sure whether this occured or not, but it does add another level of responsibility.

 

I agree that would change things considerably.

 

Presumably one of the questions they would ask, which clearly did not get asked in this case, is whether they have actually seen evidence of a bomb on the guy.

[Aardvark]

In my example he wasn't suspected of theft, he was suspected of terrorism.

 

In your example the suspect believed he was suspected of theft.

 

 

But this is the statement of yours that I really find interesting:

 

Quote:

All the hypothetical man had to do was stand still. Everyone is aware of the terrorist problem' date=' running away from armed police is simply asking to be shot.

 

Shot? SHOT?! Really? Well heck, somebody ought to tell the LAPD, so they can stop chasing and start shooting! [/quote']

 

You don't seem to understand the situation here. Police in England do not point guns at people suspected of theft. They only point guns at people suspected of carrying and being prepared to use deadly weapons. This is London we are talking about not LA. The police do not routinely use guns at all. If a policeman points a gun at you you know it is extremely serious and you stop, otherwise you are asking to be shot.

 

Surely what you MEANT to say there was "running away from the police when suspected of terrorism[/i']". But then, of course, that begs the question I raised above -- how the hell do you know what they suspect you of?

 

The question is very easy to asnwer, if a gun is pointing at you then you are suspected of having a deadly weapon on your person.

 

That is how the hell you know what you are suspected of. Simple. Normal criminals do not get guns pointed at them.

 

 

I

agree that when someone is instructed by police they need to stand there and comply -- I'm not arguing otherwise. I'm saying that if they do not comply, the correct procedure is to find out why they're not complying[/i']. Not gun them down like dogs in the street just because the officer THINKS they MIGHT be a terrorist. Yeesh.

 

'Find out why they're not complying'? The only way to do that would be to wait and see if they explode.

 

Again, to clarify for you. In England if a police officer points a gun at you it is already a last resort as that officer has good reason to think that you are carrying a deadly weapon. If you aren't, then all you have to do is stop. The only reason to run would be if you really were carrying a deadly weapon.

 

Try and understand that this isn't the USA we are talking about. Guns are not routinely used by police, suspects of normal crimes do not have guns pointed at them.

 

When dealing with suicide bombers the only way to stop them is to kill them. That means that police officers have to take decisions based on how a suspect is behaving and if a challenged suspect, instead of surrendering, runs into a crowded Tube station then that suspect has to be shot.

[Pangloss]

In your example the suspect believed he was suspected of theft.

 

(This is regarding my example, not the real-life case.) Right, which is why he ran. But what the cop actually suspected him of was being a suicide bomber, so he killed him. Exactly like what happened.

 

 

The only reason to run would be if you really were carrying a deadly weapon.

 

Well we already know THAT's not true, because in the real-life case in question the man did NOT have a deadly weapon, and he ran. So clearly the only reason to run is not because you're carrying a deadly weapon. Are you going to educate everyone on the proper procedure, including tourists and other visitors, or are you just going to continue to SHOOT them?

 

 

Try and understand that this isn't the USA we are talking about. Guns are not routinely used by police, suspects of normal crimes do not have guns pointed at them.

 

No, you don't shoot robbery suspects. You shoot innocent people who act in unexpected ways. I can't imagine why you would think that's *better*, but that's an interesting attempt at deflection, sliding America into the discussion like that. Nothing like a popular target to take the eye off the ball. Keep spinning, I'm sure you'll work out the verbiage to rationalize no-evidence, no-trial killing eventually.

 

But since you brought up American law enforcement, let's talk about that. In America, law enforcement cannot shoot someone based on mere suspicion. There has to be actual evidence of some kind of immediate threat. A gun pointed at someone. A car being driven at someone. That sort of thing. When an officer does break those rules (and it does happen), the officer is arrested and put on trial.

 

But not in England (at the moment). Remember, there are NO stated guidelines for this. What they're saying is that ANY UK cop feels your a terrorist, for ANY reason, and you're DEAD. In the US, get pulled over for a traffic ticket and mutter about Al Qaida cops and you might get tasered. Pull that in England now and you might DIE. Late for a court hearing and you run breathless into the courthouse? DEAD. Quip to a security guard at the airport about that shoe bomber case? DEAD. Not "facing federal charges" like in the states, just plain old DEAD. No trial. No discussion. No debate. DEAD.

 

 

I'm sure you think I'm exaggerating or carried away, but remember, my contention and prediction is that this is in fact NOT how British law enforcement is going to operate. They WILL institute guidelines, and it will NOT be how you think it's going to be -- an open ability by local law to shoot down anyone they think might be a terrorist. It will NOT be that way. It simply isn't conceivable that an approach like that could possibly work. There have to be guidelines.

[atinymonkey]

But not in England (at the moment). Remember' date=' there are NO stated guidelines for this. What they're saying is that ANY UK cop feels your a terrorist, for ANY reason, and you're DEAD.

[/quote']

Of course England has laws about this sort of affair. They are on trial in the inquest right now. Stop lecturing the forum on renagade cops, get off your high horse, and wait for the results of the investigation like everyone else.

[Sayonara]

What they're saying is that ANY UK cop feels your a terrorist, for ANY reason, and you're DEAD.

The vast majority of "cops" in the UK will find it difficult and time consuming to kill suspects using the plastic wrist ties and notebooks they are armed with.

 

You are being somewhat alarmist today.

[Pangloss]

Don't shoot, I'm unarmed!!!! ;-)

 

Yeah ok, I dipped rather heavily into the hypothetical for this stage of the discussion. Like I said above, I don't think it'll turn out that way. (shrug) I don't mean to sound so "alarmist" about it.