No-one responsible for De Menezes shooting. Apparently.

Big Les

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I find this result truly unbelievable. No individual police officer is to face disciplinary action over the shooting of this innocent, legally-resident, employed foreign national.

The Metropolitan Police were found guilty of breaches of Health and Safety legislation. Health and Safety. For the love of god. We didn't even have that legislation say 20 years ago - would a police shooting have attracted no punishment at all then? Why should it now?

How can this happen? Is life really this cheap today?

I have to resort to gallows humour to even begin to get my head around this;

"Police Threaten to Stop Shooting Brazilians in the Face".
 
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From all the reports I've read (so far...) it really does seem to be the case that no one nor even a group of people (beyond "the police") were directly responsible for the terrible and tragic killing.

What makes you think that an individual or a group were directly responsible?
 
Take your pick, Darat. The shooters, who opened fire with no order to do so and no "Kratos" operation declaration? The "gold commander" who had direct responsibility for the operation? The policeman or woman who changed the log after the fact?

Or the chief of the Met, Sir Ian Blair, who has ultimate responsibility for the actions of his officers and men?

And, for whatever reason, if it's none of these, then there's the "group" you mention - the Metropolitan Police Service, which has escaped any charges connected with killing a member of the public. All they apparently did wrong was to endanger the public by breaching Health and Safety laws. Well, big effing whoop. I could be prosecuted to just as grave an extent for failing to provide someone with a hardhat on a construction site.

In the commercial world and elsewhere in public service, a director at least resigns when something goes badly wrong. Hell, football coaches even do it. Blair won't do that, because he doesn't want the rest of us to be deprived of his massive counter-terrorist brain. You know what? I think we could do without it. Plenty more fish in the sea. Ones that haven't had innocent people killed.

At the very least, it seriously undermines public confidence in the service and the government. At worst, it's getting away with accidentally executing a man because of his skin colour.
 
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Don't get me wrong I think the failures in the police and their operating procedures were terrible and inexcusable it's just that I sincerely, from what I know so far, don't think one person can or even should be held responsible.

As regards the health and safety compliant - no you couldn't have been prosecuted to the same extent for "no hard hat", the police were rightfully found guilty of endangering the public - a much graver offence (and if memory serves me a right a few other offences).
 
Well, OK, I guess. Bit of hyperbole on my part there with the rubbish example. Perhaps the H&S case is enough censure for the "group" aspect of things (i.e. the MPS).

I simply don't understand why none of the individuals I listed can be seen as responsible. All are victims of much larger institutional failures, but the buck really ought to stop somewhere. I didn't expect the shooters to cop it (pun intended) because there's a big worry about undermining firearms officers by blaming them for pulling the trigger in difficult circumstances. Nonetheless, they did the killing, with no sanction to do so. The Op commander again, I can sort of understand, and criminalising any of the people involved is apparently difficult to achieve, counter-productive to national security, blah blah.

But at the very least I really think Ian Blair should have been booted out. Preferably with the use of a real boot, and from great altitude. "Oops, sorry about that, won't happen again", doesn't really cut it.
 
It does feel wrong that no one was sacked or held responsible, but that is sometimes just the facts of the case.

What I did think Blair should have been held responsible for was the decision to fight the prosecution as they did. The police should have in effect plead guilty, to not do so and then be found guilty is something that he has to take responsibility for.
 
I think this is a case of blame the system rather than any one person. I think everyone was trying to do their job. It is just that several things went wrong and as a result a person was killed. The police force was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 costs. Total £560,000.
 
rjh01 said:
I think this is a case of blame the system rather than any one person. I think everyone was trying to do their job. It is just that several things went wrong and as a result a person was killed. The police force was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 costs. Total £560,000.
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I agree. It is very easy to be wise after the event and start blaming people who thought they were protecting the public.
 
Ah yes, the "you don't know man, you weren't there" defence. Well, it's not as though it was all going swimmingly until one little thing went awry, beyond their control. I expect Darat has read the full report, but anyone who hasn't, please do. There were individual failures of duty all the way along the line. I suppose the problem is you would either have to bust everyone (instilling a climate of fear in the services protecting us all) or (as has happened) nobody (making the general public feel that justice has not been done and risking future cockups also).

As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A driver who accidentally kills someone whilst, say, driving disabled children to a swimming pool, will still be prosecuted for it.

I'm not saying it's easy to apportion blame in this case, but what does it mean to have individual responsibilities if there are no consequences for failing in them?

I suppose nobody wins whatever happens. I just hope there is some serious institutional reform and that other forces (sorry, "services") take lessons from the whole pathetic exercise.
 
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Only serfs should be held responsible for their actions. Law enforcement are lords and therefore above peasants. Different set of rules for different classes of people.
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:
And who is responsible for the system?
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I think that is what at the nub of this - we all seem to feel that someone should be responsible but in large organisations with plenty of autonomy throughout it is often the case that no one person is responsible.
 
Darat said:
I think that is what at the nub of this - we all seem to feel that someone should be responsible but in large organisations with plenty of autonomy throughout it is often the case that no one person is responsible.
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It is someone's job to make sure the system is adequate - in this case that probably means Ian Blair. He failed.
 
If the system is faulty a question needs to be asked by the minister to the police commissioner - what have you done to fix the system? The minister needs to be asked this question without notice in parliament. If he cannot answer it then he should go.
 
I remember the solicitor (Harriet Wistrich?) saying, soon afterwards, what did they think they were doing, even if it had been Osmin they were following? He was lightly clad and not carrying anything. No way did that person have the wherewithal to blow anyone up, and that was obvious. Did they think they were justified in shooting Hussain Osmin just because he was a suspect? Have we really come to that?

I gather there was a line of reasoning put forward that someone wearing only a t-shirt and jeans with a skimpy denim jacket flapping open could still be a suicide bomber. This sounds pretty specious to me. On the face of it, even without the mistaken identification, it was a judicial murder.

One thing that really angered me was that blue-pencilled bastard Blair standing smugly in front of the camera saying well, look, all those years everything goes fine and nobody complains, then we have this one isolated failure, and everybody wants heads on platters.

Mr. Blair, I have one thing to say to that. Harry Stanley. Who was shot by police because he was carrying a table leg in a Tesco carrier bag, and someone mistook his Scottish accent for an Irish one. This was nobody's fault also, because the police "genuinely believed" this innocent, harmless man who was recovering from a heart attack was about to shoot them. They even swore he "whirled round" on them or something like that, when in fact he was so unsteady on his feet that would have been impossible.

And that's just the closest analogy. There gave been other cases - a man in Sussex who jumped naked out of bed when police stormed his door was killed, and in fact they had the wrong address.

The police seem to think they have total impunity, and even want that formalised, and killing anyone is OK so long as they swear they truly believed even the most blatantly improbable or even impossible things. Someone needs to be brought to justice in at least one of these cases, to restore public confidence in the trustworthiness of our police.

Rolfe.
 
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Damn right Rolfe, thank you for that.

Rolfe said:
I gather there was a line of reasoning put forward that someone wearing only a t-shirt and jeans with a skimpy denim jacket flapping open could still be a suicide bomber. This sounds pretty specious to me. On the face of it, even without the mistaken identification, it was a judicial murder.
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The CO19 officers were briefed (arguably, needlessly psyched up) with the information that "devices could be concealed on the body and triggered easily".

The whole thing was an abject lesson in communal reinforcement, wishful thinking, and the careless wielding of life-and-death executive power. IMO, the scenario laid out for the shooters sealed the fate of whomever the intelligence team "fingered" (though the fact remains that they fired without orders to do so and without threat action from the suspect). And so the De Menezes shooting ended up being the training for counter-suicide-bomber operations in the urban UK that should have been provided well before an actual attack was implemented.
 
When a man puts a gun to another man's head and repeatedly pulls the trigger, I fail to see how he is not responsible.
If he is not responsible, then the bloody fool who gave him the gun is.

I confess to finding this the most open and shut, black and white (Sillitoe tartan) case of murder I ever heard of. (Or at least manslaughter).

I don't give a tinker's curse what the police thought. You don't go to jail for what you think in Britain, but for what you do. The police are not paid to do summary executions.

Responsibility is not the same thing as blame. The police shooters may not be "to blame". Maybe It's Tony Blair , not Ian Blair who is "to blame".
But the man who pulls the trigger is responsible. Or he shouldn't have the gun in the first place.
 
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There seems to be a terrible fear of convicting firearms officers of any sort of killing-related crime, because they might hesitate to pull the trigger when it is needed, or even stop doing the job entirely.

Witness the advice given by one policeman to a witness in the Stockwell shooting case;

The witness YD is also critical of the officer who obtained her
statement. While her statement was being taken a witness appeared
on the television screen and the officer commented “You have to be
careful what you say in this sort of situation, or it will be just one more
copper with a family losing his job or worse”. Witness YD was also
unsure about where the male person she was describing got onto the
train. She could not recall if it was CLAPHAM NORTH or
STOCKWELL. She states the officer said “Let’s just say CLAPHAM
NORTH” and this is what was recorded in her statement

[footnote] - The officer concerned has received advice in respect of this issue.
[source - Stockwell One report by the IPCC
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It's possible some of us (me for one) just hate the idea of police with guns to start with.
Any public servant issued a gun has been given a heavy responsibility.
But so has someone in control of a bus. Or anyone in charge of any potentially dangerous equipment. We expect a certain behaviour from them. If a bus driver smears a bus queue, he will be prosecuted for - at the very least- dangerous driving and more likely manslaughter through criminal negligence.
Yet if a policeman shoots someone , that's OK?

If I drive at 90mph through a town centre I'll lose my licence and probably go to jail, but a policeman doing 140 on a motorway is OK? (Actually I think it probably was OK, but that reasoning wouldn't get me far if I was pulled over).

No. This case is very bad news for the public and for the police.
People who are not responsible begin to look irresponsible. And an irresponsible cop with a gun is not good news for anyone.
 
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Well, I'm not about to suggest that we shouldn't have selectively armed police, now more than ever. But otherwise I absolutely agree - anyone else in any even vaguely comparable situation would face very serious consequences. The police have managed to cultivate an untouchable position, whereas even soldiers are not so protected from the consequences of their actions.

Look at Pte Lee Clegg, convicted of murder (as in, deliberate unlawful killing) for opening fire on a car that refused to stop at a checkpoint in Northern Ireland. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have faced charges, quite the opposite. Just that the result in that case is inconsistent with cases like Stockwell and Harry Stanley. The test case for the police seems to have been the Constable Hodgson case back in 1995 - a conviction could not be secured (please be aware that the linked article is highly biased and error-strewn!).

I don't like to concetrate too much on the shooters, because in this case the intelligence officers and the op commander are at least as culpable as the CO19 officers. You can't throw the book at everybody, and the shooters are going to be more affected by what they've done than anyone, and they received seriously duff info from their colleagues meaning that they had to make a life or death (multiple civilians vs one civilian) decision in an impossible situation. Which is why I think the buck needed to stop with either Cressida Dick, as Gold Commander, or Ian Blair himself.

Somebody needed to take responsibility for this killing, and nobody did. It took a criminal investigation to get anywhere at all, and even then the Met resisted.
 
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