Man shot dead by police on Tube

[bishop]

no, it's not acceptable, but at the same time i also think they had a legitimate reason to be worried about him. for all they knew, he could've had bombs strapped to his person. what if he did have bombs strapped on himself? would your position be the same then?

if the cops really were as close as the eye witness account alleges, then they should not have killed him - unless his hands began to move towards his body in a way that would suggest that he was either pulling out a weapon or attempting to detonate some explosives.

it's definitely a tragedy, but it most likely wouldn't have happened if he simply didn't run away. i doubt anything would've happened to him if he just stopped when the cops told him to.

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: bishop it most likely wouldn't have happened if he simply

...shoulda, coulda, woulda...

We are talking about a police execution in public. They chased him down, cornered him, pressed a gun barrel to his head and shot five times. This isn't police work, it's tyranny. He was a suspect, not a defendant or a convict. Anyone can be a suspect for various reasons and many are cleared. Fear of the police and an attempt to flee do not authorize police executions. At least not in the US, maybe in UK...

[oranged]

Quote by: Trotsky http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4706787.stm Man shot dead on Tube, from eye-witness reports it sounds like an execution....there is speculation that the guy was a suicide bomber and was attempting to detonate while the two officers had him on the floor.

I think he was an innocent foreigner.

[Osborn F Enready]

Great replies Pat, I couldn't agree more.

[Chalk]

Quote by: PatrickHenry He had no visible weapons. He was executed at close range by five shots to the head. Is this acceptable to you people?

No I find it disturbing, and I dislike the fact my gut reaction was right. The situation is ridiculous, and I can only hope that the police LEARN from this and don't do it again. In my opinion, if he was white, they'd have left him alone, and what the hell is that saying about the UK right now?

[Chris]

Quote by: bishop he should've stopped when they told him to stopped. if he did, he'd definitely still be alive and most likely they wouldn't have even discovered that he was an illegal alien. to play devil's advocate - what if this guy did have bombs on him? after all, does anyone here think that a terrorist would stop for the police? i ask this particularly of the "anti-police-state" crowd in the interest of seeing if they can offer a solution to that scenario.. (what if the guy did have bombs on him - what should they have done differently?)

Right.

Another point is, in the UK not all cops carry guns. Even if he doesn't speak the language, he should have at least known about the Terrorist bombings going on in London from 7.7 and known that the police would have stepped up their security in the Underground. Whatever his business brought him to Stockwell (a high crime and high drug area), he should have assumed that cops would have been carrying guns because of the stepped up security more so in the underground. We don't know enough yet to argue whether or not he was trying to fake out the police into thinking he was trying to detonate a device (whilst they were on top of him) For all we know he just used this tactic to try and escape. If that was the case (again, we don't know yet) lets just call him very very stupid. Darwin awards.

Apologies if I may seem disrespectful, we don't really have all the details yet.

[RickSp]

His name was Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian mechanic going to work. He ran away from men in plain clothes with guns who threatened him. His crime was having darker skin and wearing a baggy coat. Blaming him for his own execution strikes me as pretty reprehensible.

[Chris]

Quote by: Chalk No I find it disturbing, and I dislike the fact my gut reaction was right. The situation is ridiculous, and I can only hope that the police LEARN from this and don't do it again. In my opinion, if he was white, they'd have left him alone, and what the hell is that saying about the UK right now?

Bullshit. What if the police "learn" from it next time but the next guy actually has explosives. They take him down and the try to handcuff him. But wait a minute, they dont get the chance cause the cops are killed along with 15-30 other people cause he detonated his explosives.

Bottom line is, if you want to kill yourself, go to London and act like a terrorist, and try to detonate imaginary bombs on your body.

[Chris]

Quote by: RickSp His name was Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian mechanic going to work. He ran away from men in plain clothes with guns who threatened him. His crime was having darker skin and wearing a baggy coat. Blaming him for his own execution strikes me as pretty reprehensible.

I am sure the plain clothes officers weren't silent when chasing him. I am sure they said something like "Stop Police!" Maybe -I am only guessing. I am also assuming they might have had badges out. Also I don't know about you, but in order to be chased you have to start out somewhere, so how did it start? I am sure as the investigation rolls on they will find that the plain clothes cops tried to stop him upon entry or something. They might have already identified themselves as police -then.

[RickSp]

Quote by: |Chris| Bottom line is, if you want to kill yourself, go to London and act like a terrorist, and try to detonate imaginary bombs on your body.

Excuse me, who is acting like a terrorist? The plain clothes policeman who shoots a guy trying to go to work, five times at point blank range, or the victim who made a bad choice in which coat he should wear that morning? Why you feel compelled to defend police incompetence is beyond me.

[RickSp]

Quote by: |Chris| I am sure the plain clothes officers weren't silent when chasing him. I am sure they said something like "Stop Police!" Maybe -I am only guessing. I am also assuming they might have had badges out. Also I don't know about you, but in order to be chased you have to start out somewhere, so how did it start? I am sure as the investigation rolls on they will find that the plain clothes cops tried to stop him upon entry or something. They might have already identified themselves as police -then.

You seem "sure" of so much. You are guessing. You comment of what the police "might" have done. Bottom line, the police killed a brown skinned man with a baggy coat and you want to blame the victim.

"They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him," witness Mark Whitby told the BBC. "He looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified."

Shooting rattles Britons

[Chris]

A heavy coat on 22 JUL?

Also I am not defending anyone. I am just going by the news stories of what we have so far. Assuming there is incompetence before knowing all the facts is just as bad. There are some people out there who will assume this at all times. Is there police corruption? Yes. Is there police incompetance? Yes. Was that the case here? We don't know yet.

Quote by: Chalk In my opinion, if he was white, they'd have left him alone, and what the hell is that saying about the UK right now?

Quote by: RickSp His crime was having darker skin and wearing a baggy coat.

Quote by: RickSp Bottom line, the police killed a brown skinned man with a baggy coat and you want to blame the victim.

There are two sides to racial profiling, one, a bad side, is what we all hear about -the cop pulling over black people and sometimes -harassing them. The other part, is a police tool. If someone robs a bank who is black -having been caught on camera, Would it make any sense for the police to look for a white 47 year old male with long grey hair worn in the fashion of Willie Nelson?
In modern society today without the police, it would be chaos & anarchy. We need to cooperate with law enforcement. They protect us while we sleep.

[Chris]

We get the police side of the story. I am sure it will be verified/proven false in the coming days thanks to CCTV and an investigation.

According to police sources, the man who was shot dead had been observed leaving a house in London that was being watched in connection with bomb incidents earlier in the day. He was followed by a police surveillance team backed by armed officers, none of whom are thought to have been carrying photographs identifying the suspect. He was followed on to the Underground system where exactly what happened remained unclear last night. The police version is that when the man reached Stockwell station, he began to act suspiciously and broke into a run, at which point the armed unit challenged him to stop.

link

The victim had been followed from an address in Stockwell, London, by police on Friday. Two suspects were arrested on the same day - one from the same Dorset Road address. Police claim the shot man failed to respond to warnings and leapt a ticket barrier. Eyewitnesses described how plain clothes police fired five shots in the man's head as he fell into a tube carriage.

link

[RickSp]

The man was pinned to the ground before he was shot point blank in the head, so spare me your ludicrous "without the police, it would be chaos & anarchy". If it is OK for the police to shoot anyone five times in the head after he has been pinned to the floor because he has committed a fashion faux pas and has the wrong color skin, then "chaos and anarchy" is precisely what the police are providing.

It is insulting to the police who are doing their job to defend the incompetence of those who are gunning down innocent men just trying to go to work.

[bishop]

Quote by: PatrickHenry ...shoulda, coulda, woulda... We are talking about a police execution in public. They chased him down, cornered him, pressed a gun barrel to his head and shot five times. This isn't police work, it's tyranny. He was a suspect, not a defendant or a convict. Anyone can be a suspect for various reasons and many are cleared. Fear of the police and an attempt to flee do not authorize police executions. At least not in the US, maybe in UK...

don't forget my previous statements where i said to "play the devil's advocate"..

clearly the guy shouldn't have been killed, but there still seem to be suspicious elements to the case.. on one hand, you have a dark-skinned guy wearing a big coat in the middle of the summer running from the police a couple days after a major terrorist attack and a failed terrorist attack.. on the other hand, you have plain clothes cops who, for whatever reason (maybe they thought he had something strapped to himself?), decided to shoot when they could've just tackled him to the ground. someone who doesn't know the language and is illegal would rightly be afraid if they saw some random looking person chasing after him with a gun.


normally, i hate everything the cops do, but in this case, it's not as one-sided as some seem to suggest. i can see both sides and understand what may have caused them to react the way they did.. it's not apologizing for anyone's actions, it's trying to understand the situation...

[Chris]

Quote by: RickSp The man was pinned to the ground before he was shot point blank in the head, so spare me your ludicrous "without the police, it would be chaos & anarchy". If it is OK for the police to shoot anyone five times in the head after he has been pinned to the floor because he has committed a fashion faux pas and has the wrong color skin, then "chaos and anarchy" is precisely what the police are providing. It is insulting to the police who are doing their job to defend the incompetence of those who are gunning down innocent men just trying to go to work.

Spare me "the brown skin" bullshit as well. I used to live in Boston. I had a neighbor that was from Brazil. He looked very white. And judging from the many photos (pictured at the right) of the victim he did not really have brown skin. According to police, he was followed from a house being watched -where two suspects had already been arrested. (Don't know if they were connected to the bombings).You assuming one side of the story is just as bad as someone assuming the other side (the police's side).

Give it time.

[Chris]

Were all 20 police officers plain clothes?

The man vaulted the ticket barrier and ran onto the platform at the Stockwell underground station, pursued by up to 20 police officers who had ordered him to stop. Wearing a heavy coat — odd, on a hot summer day — the man stumbled onto a waiting Northern Line train and was tackled. As he sprawled on the floor, one of the officers — following previously secret "shoot to kill" guidelines covering possible suicide bombers — unloaded five bullets into his head. Was the dead man one of the four conspirators who had tried to bomb London the day before? He was not. He was a Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27...

[Chris]

Sorry... but I am admittedly learing more and more myself...

link

"He speak English very well," said friend Aline Fernandes, "It doesn't make sense if the police were talking to him."

[RickSp]

If you want to ignore key elements of the story and create rhetorical pretzels to justify police incompetence, that is your problem not mine.

Menezes was described by witnessess as looking "Asian" or Pakistani, so your dismissal of his race as being a factor in his death is precisely "bullshit", to use your own language.

And while you may choose to ignore it, the police story continues to change. On Friday, police had insisted de Menezes was "directly linked" to the transit attacks on Thursday. Now the police themselves have admitted that the shooting was "a tragic mistake".

But all you seem to do is to insult and blame the victim, who you have never even referred to by name.

Franklin's observation "any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" was clearly demonstrated in the execution of an innocent man in a London tube.

[bishop]

i tried to get an answer to a hypothetical situation before and nobody gave me an answer.. here's another try...

being that it isn't debateable that this guy was wrongly killed - hypothetically, what if the cops had killed a terrorist - i.e. someone with real connections to other terrorists, bombs on himself or in his domicile, etc? if the person killed was a terrorist rather than a poor, unlucky illegal immigrant - would your position remain the same?