London Subway shooting update

[Balta1701]

As a quick reminder...a couple weeks ago, right after one of the bombings/attempted bombings in the London Underground, an innocent man with no connection to terrorism (the guy was from Brazil) was shot and killed by London police in the Subway system.

 

After the guy was shot, a bunch of stories came out saying "The man was running from police, he was wearing a heavy jacket, etc."

 

It seems that those stories are completely falling apart thanks to some of the video cameras in London. Perhaps most importantly...he wasn't wearing a heavy coat, and he didn't jump any turnstiles.

 

Via the Guardian.

 

Now an Observer investigation has raised fresh questions about the death of de Menezes, whose killing is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The Observer has discovered that a key element of the investigation will be scrutiny of a delay in calling an armed team to arrest de Menezes, which meant he had already entered the station by the time the officers arrived.

 

That delay was crucial. If the police thought de Menezes was dangerous - perhaps a bomber - the fact that he was already in the station would have heightened tension and increased the chances of something going wrong.

 

Evidence of this hold-up should have been provided by CCTV footage from dozens of cameras covering the Stockwell ticket hall, escalators, platforms and train carriages.

 

However, police now say most of the cameras were not working. Yet pictures are available of a bombing suspect leaving another station nearby, and after the 7 July attacks tube boses could have been expected to make extra efforts to see that all their cameras were in action.

 

The questions are mounting. Initial claims that de Menezes was targeted because he was wearing a bulky coat, refused to stop when challenged and then vaulted the ticket barriers have all turned out to be false. He was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get into the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged.

 

It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves properly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head.

 

In the absence of CCTV footage the inquiry will have to rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, though many of those who claim to have seen the incident have provided contradictory accounts of what happened...

 

Hundreds of hours of CCTV were made available and sifted through in record time in order to release images to the public. CCTV footage had also proved crucial in identifying the suspects in the 7 July attacks. The Observer can reveal that police even found footage from train carriages showing the bombers at the moment of detonation.

 

After 21 July officers also examined information found within the unexploded device recovered from the top deck of the No 26 bus in Hackney. The Observer understands that, although information within the bag pointed to an address in Tulse Hill, it was not clear whether it had been placed there as a red herring or whether it was the address of one of the bombers.

 

The address was the same block of nine flats, spread over three stories, where de Menezes lived with his cousins. By that same evening, the block was under close surveillance by a specialist, unarmed police team.

 

Wary of the experience of officers in Madrid who, having tracked down bombers to an apartment block, burst in just as the terrorists blew themselves up, killing one policeman in the process, detectives began a race against time to obtain information about the layout of the block in an attempt to ascertain exactly where the bombers were likely to be. They then began drawing up a plan to assault the block.

 

At around 10am that Friday morning, officers watching the address saw a man, de Menezes, emerge from the communal entrance. He had received a phone call earlier asking him to fix a fire alarm at a property in Kilburn, north London. But the police thought they might, just, have someone important in their sights.

 

De Menezes was followed for five minutes as he walked to a bus stop, He then boarded a No 2 bus, along with several plainclothes officers who, again, were unarmed. The officers hoped de Menezes might lead them to some of the men pictured on the CCTV stills.

 

At some point de Menezes phoned a colleague saying he would be arriving late because tube services were disrupted as a result of the previous day's incidents. It is not clear whether members of the surveillance team heard this conversation. De Menezes was on the bus for a further 15 minutes until he reached Stockwell station.

 

The surveillance team were under strict instructions not to allow de Menezes to board a train and a rapid decision was made to arrest him using armed officers, a procedure known as a 'hard stop'. But because the officers in the surveillance team had no weapons, they had to change places with officers from SO19, the Metropolitan Police firearms unit.

 

By the time the armed officers arrived, De Menezes was already inside, using his Oyster card to enter the station and casually walking down the escalator towards the platform.

 

The number of armed officers in the Metropolitan Police had been increased last January in response to a potential terrorist threat as part of a revaluation of resources following 11 September. At the same time a number of officers were given specific training on how to deal with suicide bombers. The training was based on the experience of police and military units in countries such as Israel and Sri Lanka where similar attacks are common.

 

By studying footage of attacks and even interviewing failed bombers, senior Met officers drew up a list of 'precursor signals' that generally occur shortly before detonation of a device. Most have not been made public but include the potential bomber looking 'detached' from his or her surroundings and becoming introspective.

 

In such situations new guidance suggested the officers shoot the suspect in the head rather than the torso as the latter would not stop a detonation and might even ignite the explosive.

 

Officers are also warned that potential bombers will detonate at the slightest inkling that they have been identified. This means they will not identify themselves until absolutely necessary.

 

One witness, Chris Wells, 28, a company manager, said he saw about 20 police officers, some armed, rushing into the station before a man jumped over the barriers with police giving chase.

 

In fact, by the time the armed officers arrived de Menezes was already heading down towards the train. It now seems certain that the man seen vaulting the barrier was one of the armed officers in hot pursuit. Another witness interviewed by the inquiry puts officers on the train before the shooting, glancing around the carriage and apparently searching for their suspect.

 

Once they were underground the officers were out of radio contact with colleagues and in a race against time to find de Menezes. When they did, the decision on what to do could not be referred to a senior officer. It was theirs alone.

 

In Israel, security forces try to isolate suicide bombers from the public so that, even if they do detonate their bombs, the human damage is minimal. But from the moment de Menezes entered the station, his fate was sealed.

 

Another witness, Mark Whitby, told of hearing people shouting, 'Get down, get own,' and then seeing de Menezes run onto the train 'looking like a cornered fox'. Three plainclothes police followed, one holding a black automatic pistol. De Menezes was tripped, pushed to the floor of the carriage and shot in the head seven times.

 

No one knows what went through the young man's mind in the last moments of his life. Having been attacked just weeks earlier, he may have believed the casually dressed white men chasing him were part of the same gang. He may have been thinking of the experience of his cousin who was caught by immigration officers in America and deported before he had the chance to finish saving for his dream home. Now de Menenzes is dead and no one will ever know.

[KipWellsFan]

Collateral damage in the worldwide war on terrorism

[KipWellsFan]

An innocent Brazilian man shot dead by British police who mistook him for a London bombing suspect had taken a seat on a subway train and was tackled by a police surveillance officer before being shot, according to an account of events broadcast Tuesday.

 

British police had claimed that 27-year old electrician Jean Charles de Menezes didn't obey an order to stop as they tailed him into London's Stockwell underground train station a day after a series of bombs planted on London's transit system failed to fully detonate.

 

Menezes had emerged from a house that police had under surveillance, believing it was linked to the bombings.

 

On Tuesday, Britain's ITV news, citing security footage, said that Menezes entered the station at a normal walking pace, stopping to pick up a newspaper.

 

The television station claimed that witness accounts, included in an investigation report into the shooting, said Menezes was seated on the train before being shot.

 

A man sitting opposite Menezes is quoted as saying: "Within a few seconds I saw a man coming into the double doors to my left. "He was pointing a small black handgun towards a person sitting opposite me. He pointed the gun at the right hand side of the man's head. The gun was within 12 inches (30 centimetres) of the man's head when the first shot was fired."

 

A police surveillance officer described how he wrapped his arms around Menezes and pushed him down into a seat. "I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side. "I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting . . . I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage."

 

The report obtained by ITV said while Menezes was shot eight times, a further three bullets were fired but missed. ITV said the documents came from an official investigation into his death.

 

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, who have been charged with investigating the shooting, refused Tuesday to comment on the veracity of the documents. The IPCC said it would not speculate or release partial information about the investigation, and that others should not do so.

 

London Metropolitan Police said they could not make any comment while the police complaints commission investigation was ongoing.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...in20050816.html

[southsider2k5]

Soon enough the story will be the police didn't do enough to prevent an attack, and so many people died because the police didn't do enough. The interesting thing is even in this story one of the first paragraphs was

 

In the absence of CCTV footage the inquiry will have to rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, though many of those who claim to have seen the incident have provided contradictory accounts of what happened...

[Texsox]

Soon enough the story will be the police didn't do enough to prevent an attack, and so many people died because the police didn't do enough.  The interesting thing is even in this story one of the first paragraphs was

 

Later one of the contradictions was explained by the person jumping the turnstile was a policeman, not the victim.

 

Put yourself in the minds of the police. Mass hysteria caused them to all believe this was a suicide bomber. Think his color had anything to do with it? Where he lived? This should be a textbook example of profiling gone terribly wrong.

 

Cue the music:

 

But it was just my imagination

running away with me.

It was just my imagination

running away with me...