Boston Marathon: Is terrorism ever justified?

[amateur51]

From the first article, Menezes:-



For once Ken is talking sense. Didn't you read that far Flossie?

From the second article:-



So once again, they thought there was an imminent threat to life. Or should they wait until they get shot, just to be sure?

From the third:-



And Mark Duggan was a known criminal, who was brandishing an illegal firearm.

It is all too easy, with the benefit of hindsight, a hot cappuccino, soothing music in the background, and the luxury of hours to study every little piece of evidence, and every cirumstance, to say that police officers acted wrongly or unlawfully. But for the officers on the scene, who might have a split second to decide, it is not so easy. Make a wrong decision one way, and they or their colleagues could be killed. Make a wrong decision the other, and the massed ranks of Guardian readers will be down on them like a ton of bricks.

On second thoughts, maybe the first option isn't so bad after all......:erm:

If you remember Mr Pee Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, was in the unenviable position of knowing that the Met kept the reality of de Menezes' execution from the Met's Chief Commisioner for 24 hours. He chose to back Sir Ian Blair rather than throw further confusion on the Met's discredited reputation.

Why did they shoot de Menezes who was unarmed? Surely they'd want to interrogate him? Were they just trigger happy or were they acting on instructions?

The fact that Mark Duggan was a 'known criminal' is surely irrelevant. He was not brandishing a gun. If he was, why did it end up behind a wall, several yards away from the vehicle in which Duggan was executed.

I don't know the other case to which you refer.

Instead of making sarcastic remarks about Guardian readers, understand that some others of us take a keen interest in the activities of London's Police Force, which leads me to consider your swallowing the police narrative hook, line and sinker to be naive to say the least, and self-serving at worst.

[Mr Pee]

If you remember Mr Pee Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, was in the unenviable position of knowing that the Met kept the reality of de Menezes' execution from the Met's Chief Commisioner for 24 hours. He chose to back Sir Ian Blair rather than throw further confusion on the Met's discredited reputation.

Why did they shoot de Menezes who was unarmed? Surely they'd want to interrogate him? Were they just trigger happy or were they acting on instructions?

The point is that Ken said that the police acted in the interests of the public, believing that there was an imminent threat to life, and the responsibility for his death lay with the terrorists. And as for the point about him bering unarmed, he had just got onto an underground train, with a backpack, a short time after backpack bombs had exploded on the underground on 7/7. The police had to make a judgement. In a moment, he cound have detonated a bomb.

The fact that Mark Duggan was a 'known criminal' is surely irrelevant. He was not brandishing a gun. If he was, why did it end up behind a wall, several yards away from the vehicle in which Duggan was executed.

Nice use of the word "executed" there. ....:steam:

http://www.channel4.com/news/police-duggan-was-carrying-loaded-gun-when-killed

[amateur51]

The point is that Ken said that the police acted in the interests of the public, believing that there was an imminent threat to life, and the responsibility for his death lay with the terrorists. And as for the point about him bering unarmed, he had just got onto an underground train, with a backpack, a short time after backpack bombs had exploded on the underground on 7/7. The police had to make a judgement. In a moment, he cound have detonated a bomb.



Nice use of the word "executed" there. ....:steam:

http://www.channel4.com/news/police-...un-when-killed

You clearly have not followed or understood the de Menezes case, Mr Pee. He was a victim of Operation Kratos, the Met's shoot-to-kill policy as part of their anti-terrorism strategy.

Again, Livingstone was speaking as Mayor of London. What would the Rothermere/murdoch Press have said if he had instead said "It was a right royal muck-up, headless chicken time, which started when the police above ground mis-identified de Menezes, compounded by Cdr Cressida Dick's doing nothing to check out the ID which de Menezes was still above ground. These mistakes were further compounded by there being a shoot-to-kill policy in place and there was no way for the officers with those instructions underground to verify orders with their superiors on the surface. It is regrettable that after realising their string of errors resulting in de Menezes' death, officers at all levels sought to obscure, obfuscate and to change their versons of what had happened. And finally, senior officers at the Met kept their chief, Sir Ian Blair out of the loop for 24 hours. All I can say is, sorry it shouldn't have happened and I extend my sincere apologies to the de Menezes family for their loss. Oh and there'll be an inquiry of course"?

Re Mark Duggan, what you have pointed out is police evidence - of course they said that, they'd just murdered a citizen. But it is disputed and another version is that the gun was in a sock and was later found behind a wall several yards away. I'd say someone panicked but sadly it was certainly not Mark Duggan.

[Richard Barrett]

Mark Duggan was a known criminal

Mark Duggan had no criminal record. Therefore he was not a "known criminal". He was suspected of being involved in drug dealing. At the time of his killing he was suspected of planning a violent attack. In the course of the subsequent investigation the police account of what happened twisted and turned in many directions: a police officer had been shot at, then he hadn't been; Duggan hadn't drawn a handgun, then he had (no fingerprints or DNA from Duggan were found either on the weapon found near the scene or on the sock it was wrapped in); a policeman had been seen by other officers throwing the weapon over a fence, then he hadn't. I'm not suggesting that Duggan was as pure as the driven snow; but the claim that "the police service (...) know a hell of a lot more about what's going on out there than we do" doesn't hold much water I think.

[Flosshilde]

From the second article:-

Two Metropolitan police officers fired the shots after mistakenly being informed that Mr Stanley had a sawn-off shotgun.

So once again, they thought there was an imminent threat to life. Or should they wait until they get shot, just to be sure?

Someone telephoned the police & said they thought he had a gun - it was in fact a table leg wrapped in a plastic bag, so the 'suspicion' was based on very flimsy evidence. An inquest on the killing found that he was unlawfully killed, & subsequently the Met. Police said they would improve procedures - not that that helped in the other two cases.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

improving procedures after the fact does not help the innocent victim at all if they are dead ... i think Ams has a point abpout the readiness to use lethal force but is too unforgiving ... confronted with a suspect i am led to believe may have a 'waistcoat' within 24hrs of major bomb detonations i am sure that i would fail to complete a risk assessment and shoot .... in any case we do need people to stand in that spot holding the gun and making the choices .... second guessing them is not something i would favour ...but they do have to account for their actions and 'improve procedures'

it does not matter much what the training and procedures are, under the intensity of the situation, mistakes will happen ... especially when the policeman is concerned that he may be shot ... and Ams you may have to consider that if you were Met Commissioner, an Officer protective policy and stance was the only one you could actually implement eh?

as the Boston police Chief said the other night, it is our policy to try and bring all suspects before justice, and he did not mean shooting them to spare the trail costs, but he did mean shooting to save his own people's lives

in parts of London and many of our cities there are gangs with automatic weapons; kids everywhere with quite lethal knives and a culture of casual violence - i have never volunteered to patrol those streets ...

while i do think thta the met has a poor history of corruption, inertia, prejudice and incompetence our challenge is to encourage them to improve for fear of something worse ..

[Richard Barrett]

our challenge is to encourage them to improve for fear of something worse ..

... and we do that by scrutinising their activities at every turn, rather than looking the other way and assuming everything they do must be fine, which can only encourage the "corruption, inertia, prejudice and incompetence" you mention.

[amateur51]

improving procedures after the fact does not help the innocent victim at all if they are dead ... i think Ams has a point abpout the readiness to use lethal force but is too unforgiving ... confronted with a suspect i am led to believe may have a 'waistcoat' within 24hrs of major bomb detonations i am sure that i would fail to complete a risk assessment and shoot .... in any case we do need people to stand in that spot holding the gun and making the choices .... second guessing them is not something i would favour ...but they do have to account for their actions and 'improve procedures'

it does not matter much what the training and procedures are, under the intensity of the situation, mistakes will happen ... especially when the policeman is concerned that he may be shot ... and Ams you may have to consider that if you were Met Commissioner, an Officer protective policy and stance was the only one you could actually implement eh?

as the Boston police Chief said the other night, it is our policy to try and bring all suspects before justice, and he did not mean shooting them to spare the trail costs, but he did mean shooting to save his own people's lives

in parts of London and many of our cities there are gangs with automatic weapons; kids everywhere with quite lethal knives and a culture of casual violence - i have never volunteered to patrol those streets ...

while i do think thta the met has a poor history of corruption, inertia, prejudice and incompetence our challenge is to encourage them to improve for fear of something worse ..

I understand the points that you are making, Calum but the was never a chance that a police officer was going to be shot by de Menezes because he wasn't carrying a gun and if he was it was in his rucksack. A bullet in both feet would have secured his arrest so that he could later be interrogated about who his co-terrorists were.

In the case of Mark Duggan, he had been built up as a hate figure, a wide boy, a drug dealer, known to have secured a shooter. But again, aggressive force and lots of noise, a bullet in a limb would have secured his arrest. Even that might have been excessive force with hindsight but eben i would have been able to undwerstanmd and fiorgive that.

But we know that de Menezes as killed as part of a shoot-to-kill policy which has since been unnamed but I don't know if it has been abandoned. Duggan's family were treated so contemptuously by the Met, and the later confusion with the IPCC over who was doing what meant that a local outburst was inevitable. There has still not been a successful conclusion to the investigation of Duggan's execution, nearly two years on. The Met appears to be beyond the rule of law when it comes to proper accountability.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well we had a toy dachshund that my sister thwacked every time he pooed the carpet; what this taught him to do was to poo, run and hide .... if you want the police to improve they need a fair and open hearing too ... i am unsure whether the present procedures are fair and open and certainly not to all sides .... but my point remains valid i think ... it can be far too easy to demand fair procedures for the accused, and innocent victims and bystanders but instant justice for the forces of law and order ...this is not to say that i think that suspected police officers [several imv in the Met or recently retired] should be given an easy out by going away to the Gulf region or retirement ...

[amateur51]

well we had a toy dachshund that my sister thwacked every time he pooed the carpet; what this taught him to do was to poo, run and hide .... if you want the police to improve they need a fair and open hearing too ... i am unsure whether the present procedures are fair and open and certainly not to all sides .... but my point remains valid i think ... it can be far too easy to demand fair procedures for the accused, and innocent victims and bystanders but instant justice for the forces of law and order ...this is not to say that i think that suspected police officers [several imv in the Met or recently retired] should be given an easy out by going away to the Gulf region or retirement ...

Have there been any police convictions over any police high-profile misdeeds (Jean Charles de Menezes, Mark Duggan, Ian Tomlinson, Stephen Lawrence)?

And of course Blair Peach

[Richard Barrett]

I was just looking at a 2009 page on the BBC news site about police officers with criminal convictions, which contains among other information the figure of 77 officers who had been convicted of "violent offences such as assault, battery and wounding" but had nevertheless kept their jobs. What did attract my attention in the article, however, going offtopic for a moment, was:

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said it was "worrying" that so many police officers with serious convictions had been allowed to keep their jobs. (...) He added that those convicted of dishonesty could not perform their duties effectively, as they could not be relied upon as a witness. "Police forces should get tough on bad apples," he added.

:whistle:

[amateur51]

I was just looking at a 2009 page on the BBC news site about police officers with criminal convictions, which contains among other information the figure of 77 officers who had been convicted of "violent offences such as assault, battery and wounding" but had nevertheless kept their jobs. What did attract my attention in the article, however, going offtopic for a moment, was:

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said it was "worrying" that so many police officers with serious convictions had been allowed to keep their jobs. (...) He added that those convicted of dishonesty could not perform their duties effectively, as they could not be relied upon as a witness. "Police forces should get tough on bad apples," he added.

:whistle:

Oh dear, hubris thy name is Huhne :erm::winkeye:

[Anna]

I remember, 3 or 4 years ago, landing up at Manchester Piccadilly and getting off the train to be greetng by armed police. I cannot remerber the year, was it the annivsersay of the bombing in Manchester or another: Anyway. seeing armed police. for the first time in my life,. I was so frightened, I dived into the Ladies toilet and stood, shaking! Blow me. what a wimp! was I :biggrin: I recovered and took the Metro to Bury!

[amateur51]

I remember, 3 or 4 years ago, landing up at Manchester Piccadilly and getting off the train to be greetng by armed police. I cannot remerber the year, was it the annivsersay of the bombing in Manchester or another: Anyway. seeing armed police. for the first time in my life,. I was so frightened, I dived into the Ladies toilet and stood, shaking! Blow me. what a wimp! was I :biggrin: I recovered and took the Metro to Bury!

In the early 1980s when London Met's notorious Special Patrol Group (SPG) were at the height of their 'powers', I was toddling homewards towards Charing Cross Station and at Cranbourn Street saw an SPG van draw up swiftlyto the kerb and officers piled out holding pistols. I noted that one still had the issue ticket hanging from the loop in the butt of the gun. Like you, I froze & then panicked and walked well out of my way to get to the station :yikes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Patrol_Group

[Simon]

1). Menezes shouldn't even have been in the country, so if he'd obeyed the law in the first place and got out when he should have done he wouldn't have been shot.

2). That apart, if an armed police officer believes that there is the slightest risk that a person is about to detonate a bomb in a crowded place, s/he has a duty to shoot to kill. Or is it better to wait for the detonation and then decide what you should have done? No doubt someone here will think that is right...

3). The chap in the taxi was believed to have had a gun. In fact he did have a gun, although he managed to get rid of it just before he was stopped, presumably to try to convince some gulllible yooman rites lawyer that he was actually a rather nice, gentle chap. Why did he have a gun? Do innocent civilians have guns?

QED. No amount of naive, woolly anti-police stuff can hide the facts.