Devices go off in London again

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I have read a few articles about the issue from the local media plus a few on bbc so I do think I'm informed enough to form an opinion. I had no idea about how he spoke english and I doubt the police had either, but thanks for clearing that one out anyway.

Stupidity is not a crime last time I checked. I'm not sure about his motives for running, he might have been guilty of something but it's been made pretty clear that it had nothing to do with the london bombings.

The police were doing their job and probably following order, but that does not make the order right. I can accept shoot to kill orders for soldiers at war but never for police officers, atleast without a warning shot and/or a shot directed to the legs. The policy of the police force was wrong for the situation in my opinion and we can see the results.

 

Someone shot in the legs can still detonate a bomb.
I'll not post here anymore, it's obvious we will not agree on this so I won't waste my time.

Hard times call to hard measures IMO. If someone was potentially strapped up with bombs and willing to blow himself to kingdom come, you'd better believe I'd make sure he was dead.

 

In New Zealand, most police are not even allowed to carry guns.

 

They are not usually allowed here, Harbs. But they were in this kind of situation, I'm sure you will appreciate.

 

While I agree that when there is no reasonable doubt that the guy is a terrorist he should be shot dead asap I do not agree with shooting dead people who just might be terrorists. You have to be certain before you use deadly force.

 

Yeah, they should have asked him if he was carrying any bombs before they shot him

 

A couple of points made by my father, who was an bomb disposal expert in the Irish Defence forces (and since he used to liase with the British army I think his expertise is a given) Mind you suicice bombing (with one or two exceptions where people were forced into it) was not really an issue in Ireland. However the technical points bear noting.

1. There is no straight answer, if you shoot someone who is wired with explosives there is still no guarantee of the bomb not going off. We may see the bombers start to use more sophisticated equipment like dead man type switches yet. Or worse still, if they get very sophisticated bombs that explode when pulse rates etc. are no longer detected.

2. Shooting them may actually make the bomb go off, although you may be forced to take the risk.
of course. Most officers are of course aware of that are trained to aim for the head, but a handgun is only so accurate after all and situations like the one in question are noisy and messy. You are not firing at targets on a range after all.

3. If the suspect runs into a crowd your options are to put it politetly screwed. If you don't shoot him he wins, if you shoot him he may still win.

4. And then of course there is the timed suicide bomb, you shoot the bugger and you still get killed if you are stupid enough to get too close and it was timed to go of after death say.

My father pointed out that any reasonably sophisiticated group of operatives could move to this level of ability with building bombs in a relatively short time. The IRA moved from blowing themselves up more than half the time to been lethally effective in a very short period and Al-Queda and co have far bigger resources to draw on.

Now I happen to agree with Morgoroth that once normal procedures go out the window you are indeed on a slope coated in purest refined olive oil leading straight downwards at a high velocity as the above show that simply shooting the suspect is not a guaranteed solution. However, I also can't say I wouldn't have done it if I was the officers in question as it's an extremely stressful situation to be stuck in.

 

Yeah, well I guess they know the answer to that question now.

 

The worst thing about all this, other than one man's tragic death, is the heightened sense of paranoia that the terrorist actions have created. Effectively, the terrorists have forced people into being so scared that they are turning on themselves. This innocent man's death is but one example. The terrorists are winning, in that they ARE having an effect on the way people live their lives.

 

HB - Great point!

 

I can't believe some of what I'm reading! Yes, in hindsight, the amount of force used was excessive. Yes, the person shot probably shouldn't have been, and certainly not five times while being held down. But for a second, put yourself in the shoes of one of the officers:

1. There have been two attacks in less than a month in the London Underground.

2. They were surveilling a person suspected of involvement in the most recent attacks, whose behaviour did nothing to allay their suspicions.

3. When challenged, the guy bolted to the tube station and onto a packed tube train.

4. You don't know whether he is armed or carrying explosives.

Stupidity is not a crime, certainly. If it was, a lot of the world would be incarcerated. But you should never, ever give someone a situationally-reasonable ground to open fire on you. Police officers who have grown up either in an era of IRA attacks or who remember them would be all too conscious of how easily bombs can be detonated. Unless they are of the most sophisticated kind, a bomb can't be set off by a dead person (and revelations about the most recent attempted attacks indicates that group of bombers are not so proficient as that).

Yes, this is a slippery slope. No, this should not be a matter of course for police officers. Yes, hindsight is perfect. No, this is not a national outrage and neither should it be. In that situation, I don't think that police should have shot the guy that many times; he should have been restrained and I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that breaking a few bones would have been acceptable. If you know how many ways there are to rig up a bomb to explode or detonate (I do not), then you have to make sure that none of those (or the lowest number of those) are possible. You can push a button or engage a dead-man's switch very, very quickly.

Was it excessive force? Well, that is highly debatable. I think that shooting a pinned man five times is excessive. Whether he had explosives on him at the time is immaterial since it would not be possible to know this. Police aren't omniscient; they have to make discretionary actions all the time. As a matter of course in this type of case, I think police are absolutely justified in shooting to kill. The risk of not doing it is just too great, even if the last set of bombs were poorly manufactured and did not indicate a high level of expertise. It's a bad situation with a bad ending, no matter how you approach it or deal with it, simply because you cannot afford to assume that they are not able to cause significant damage. Five bullets in the back of the head is going too far, but without being in the situation, I don't think I could bring myself to call it murder.

Put simply - in that situation, with that knowledge, would you put the life of one guy who is suspected of being involved in suicide bombings (and had bolted when confronted) over the people on the train? If you wouldn't, then I'm very glad you aren't responsible for security anywhere near me.

To the credit of the Met police, they seem to be taking it on the chin. This shouldn't be repeated, and it's going to be tough for those involved in the shooting (on both sides). However, to suggest that you should need to be 100% certain before firing is ludicrous - that is almost never possible and has to be based off a discretionary judgement. Put "never fired unless fired upon" in standing police orders and you will have a walk-out. British metropolitan police do not have a history of being trigger-happy with citizens (unlike my home state of Victoria, but that's another story), and I do not believe that this will happen again.

EDIT: HB, I agree. The rules have changed, though; people are fundamentally concerned for their survival and benefit, and after the last three weeks, some may feel they have a reason for it. It's even sadder when there have been no attacks and people are getting paranoid, as they are in Australia.

 

It must be quite a feeling to live in London - you can get killed by either terrorsts, or your own government. And I thought things were rotten here....

What a sorry statement for a government to make so boldly that is charged with protecting the lives of its citizens.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20050725/ts_nm/security_britain_dc

 

Urban terrorists are not so easy to defeat and using lethal force will only encourage moderate people to join up.

Bombs are easily made and most ingrediants you can purchase at any local store! As for bomb making materials (and firearms), these are not stored at terrorist homes, but their peaceful neighbours. After all if your family are threatened by terrorists, you *will* do as they say and keep your mouthshut.

Panacking will just makes things worse, the people of N.Ireland got on with their lives ans were much better off for it. Living in fear of the un-known is admitting defeat.

As for that Brasilian guy being shot, well it was excessive, especially if you consider British tactics in N.Ireland - you have to give 3 warnings, even if you were being shot at. These were not N.Irish rules, but orders straight from England, so what makes Muslim terrorists worse than Irish terrorists? Sounds like plain old racism to me!

 

Here's a fragment of an article that doesn't quite fit here as a whole, but it fits well as far as judging and condemning the police is concerned

Mind that a fragmentation handgrenade contains something like 100g high explosives and has a lethal splinter radius of some 20 metres in open terrain. Now, how much danger poses a 4kg bomb of the type used in the tube on a platform full of commuters? We still have the pictures in mind.

If you're a cop, what to do when you believe someone you suspect being a suicide bomber is about to blow up the bomb in his rucksack in an underground station?

You aim for the head, not only for your life but also for the lives of the bystanders around you.

This guy wasn't a bomber, so it's a case of putative self-defense and putative prevention on the side of the British police. That doesn't make the death of that brazilian less tragic, however.

Given the facts: Excessive use of force? Yes. Over-reaction? Certainly.

Considering what the police knew or believed to know when shooting: Comprehensible? Clearly.

Saddening? Very much so.

 

Did those BBC and ITV news reports make anyone else think of those Zombie movies?

"...you have a split second to shoot them in the head"!

 

If you dont respect the fact that were in a time of hightened secrity and run off (into a f**king tube station of all places) after asked to "stop" by 'armed' police then what do you expect to happen?

SO19 in the UK are NOT there to wave guns around like an average police officer, they are there to use them when necassary, SO19 are like the UK's version of S.W.A.T and in a situation where there is a man suspected of baggin explosives then all I can say is they did an excelent job, although the outcome was terrible they did no wrong considering the circumstances.

Word to the wise, if an armed police officer says somthing along the lines of "STOP! Armed police! GET DOWN!"... please do as they say...

 

picture this situation if you will:

your brazilian, living in london. london has recently been terrorised by bombers and the police have warned that terrorists are active in london and planning more attacks.
on this day, your running late, your about to miss your train, so your sprinting to catch it.

three armed men, in casual cloths start brandishing weapons, shouting at you - you cant clearly understand them because your brazilian and you dont speak particularly good english, add to that these mens accents are really weird as britain has some of the most incomprehendable accents in the world. theyre shouting and balling at you, pointing guns at you and running for you.

what do you do?

 

I would stop.

EDIT: From what I have read he understood english, so that part of the question isn't correct. However, it doesn't change my answer. If I was in a subway in Moscow and people were yelling at me and I was in a very public place (the subway) I wouldn't run away.

[ July 25, 2005, 20:53: Message edited by: The Great Snook ]

 

You know what though? There seems to be a bit of a double standard here. I remember LOTS of people on these boards (including many from Britain) getting really angry when a U.S. soldier shot at point-blank range an injured Iraqi during combat operations in Falluja. It was determined that the Iraqi was unarmed, and didn't have a grenade or anything in his hand that he was attempting to kill the U.S. soldiers with. Many on this board with screaming bloody murder (literally) over this.

Now, the British police hold down a guy and shoot him five times in the head and that's OK? I clearly don't see the logic here. Why was in necessary to shoot him five times in the head if he was held down? If he's held down and restrained is it not possible to determine with certainty that he is not carrying explosives without actually killing him? Keep in mind that I think it was sadly necessary for the police officers to kill this person. However, if you condemned the U.S. soldiers in Falluja, then you have to codemn this as well. I think an injured insurgent has to be considered at least as big of a threat as a scared-as-hell Brazilian.