Murderers In Our Midst

Bingo!

The police were instructed to challenge suspects as soon as they were sufficiently away from the house being watched to avoid the surveillance being disrupted. They could clearly have done this as soon as he got off the bus, if not before he got on it (I don't know how far the bus stop is from the house).

was there really juston surveillance guy? if they thought these flats housed suicide bombers, i think a two-man stakeout team might have been in order.

Yeah wtf was that about? They can manage something like 3 officers at each tube station, you'd think they could spare one or two for keeping an eye on the suspects themselves

And if it doesn't we'll find some reason to discredit it and hold another enquiry, and another one, and another one, until either we manage to find an enquiry that does what we want or we're forced to hold our own enquiry into ourselves, which we hold in secret.

Isn't this like saying "We'll have a fair and honest trial and then hang the bastard?"

Well, it is vitally important that we set the right example and do these things absolutely correctly after all - otherwise how would it look when we go 'round criticising the way Johnny Foreigner does things and telling them that they should behave in a more civilised manner like we do?

Don't forget that 'leaked information' often amounts to nothing more than journalistic speculation and lies. The press love a bit of sensationalism, even if it's all made up.

Police don't get to be in a specialist tactical firearms unit if they're likely to be trigger happy.

The officers involved in this situation will all have been immediately suspended from duty, and far from the police all 'closing ranks' to protect and support each other, they will be being treated like shit by their superior officers. Additionally, the investigation is being handled by the independent Police Complaints Authority, who love to make scapegoats out of police officers in order to satisfy the public baying for blood.

I hope the truth does come out, because it's not necessarily what it seems.

-heavy coat
-jumped barrier
-ran despite police saying 'stop'

are all untruths

Some of us have extremely good reason to.

"Don't forget that 'leaked information' often amounts to nothing more than journalistic speculation and lies. The press love a bit of sensationalism, even if it's all made up."

Oh please don't misunderstand - we hate journalists too, only maybe just not quite as much as we hate the police.

Only with a vengeance

The leaked information is comprised of witness statements, police statements and photographs. As the findings of the inquiry won't be made fully public, I think we're entitled to comment.

I agree that the firearms officers are highly trained and unlikely to be trigger happy, but given what I admit is a partial picture of the situation, I don't get how their actions square with what their training should have told them.

AFAIK the officers involved were taken off firearms duty but not suspended. They may well have been suspended since then, but I haven't heard that. I don't want scapegoats personally and I'm not baying for blood. I do want a full public inquiry to take a balanced, independent view. However, officers being shouted at by their seniors is hardly a reason for me to sympathise with them after they appear to have shot someone dead for no particular reason and after making some enormous mistakes.

I do know people who haven't been so lucky, including one who was assaulted by police after being arrested for no apparent reason after being chucked out of a bar for chatting up the manager's girlfriend. This was the same police force as the first of my drunken arrests (Thames Valley), although a different station. When he tried to complain they just threatened to charge him with assaulting a police officer (not true).

I think it's this lack of accountability that's the problem, and why I hope this investigation isn't swept under the carpet.

i do having read this report. but on july 22 i was vocal in my support for them. naively, i assumed they might have acted sensibly, strategically and in the public's best interests. i assumed the proper systems had been followed.

oh, how wrong i appear to have been.

Don't forget that 'leaked information' often amounts to nothing more than journalistic speculation and lies. The press love a bit of sensationalism, even if it's all made up.

i won't deny that many newspapers print nothing more than lies and speculation. the one for which i work, however, prides itself on not doing so. and in this instance we believe the information we have to be accurate and worthy of printing.

some of us hacks do have scruples, you know :)

Police don't get to be in a specialist tactical firearms unit if they're likely to be trigger happy.

mmm, and they don't get in the force if they're racist or thuggish either. come on: why else would a cop want to be in the firearms unit unless he had a hard-on for guns? what this sorry escapade suggests is that the vetting and training is woefully inadequate, and that - as we feared - armed cops in the UK are a danger to us all.

far from the police all 'closing ranks' to protect and support each other, they will be being treated like shit by their superior officers

hahahahahahahah ... wait, you really think this will happen? do you know any cops? 'cos i know a fair few, and believe me ... it'll be closed ranks all round.

like i say: this is very much not the position i'd taken on july 22. but, with hindsight, i should have known.

are all untruths"

And even if they were all true, as far as I'm aware:
- all the officers involved were in plain clothes;
- they had absolutely no idea whether the suspect they were after actually understood English or not;
- there are any number of reasons why: even if a challenge was issued; and even if the person who had been challenged actually understood the challenge; and even if they actually knew or believed that the people who were challenging him really were policemen; anyone might refuse to yield to that challenge, without that automatically making them guilty of a crime that warrants immediate summary public execution;
- the police were already holding the suspect down when they shot him;
- shooting him 7 times is just a little bit excessive don't you think? Especially when you hear that the first shot was fired directly at the victim's head from less that 12 inches away.

The fact that THEY LIED THROUGH THEIR TEETH on July 22 and subsequently (including the UK's leading police officer) doesn't help matters much either

Was the station involved Reading by any chance?

In my experience the Thames Valley police force as a whole is the absolute pits (idle, arrogant, incompetent....); but even given the overall level of ineptitude, the Reading ones manage to stand head and shoulders below the rest.

(ok, I know he's not *real*)

Or, in the case of one of them, sent on a family holiday at my expense. Not exactly my idea of

being treated like shit by their superior officers

(x-post)

They treated me like an irritation and as if I was the one who had done something wrong; failed to grasp the basic facts even after I'd explained it to them 3 times; and showed absolutely no problem-solving skills whatsoever or indeed any the slightest interest in actualy catching the perpetrator.

(x-post)

1:40 PM, 17 Aug 05 Message 6125654 on "Murderers In Our Midst" deleted (trollspam, garu-g-esque but not funny, put me off my sandwich a bit)

aaw, i wish i'd seen it now. can anyone summarise?

A Levellers fan convention?

My gf once applied for a position on one of the Police Complaints Authority's disciplinary review panels.

She's previously worked as an A&E nurse and as a State Approved Social Worker with responsibilities that included having people sectioned under the Mental Health Act, so she has personal experience of exactly the sorts of stress and provocation that the police experience as well as a detailed working knowledge of the Police And Crimal Evidence Act.

We were also careful not to send the application in using my address, just in case...! ;~)

She was rejected in favour of some aging, rich, completely cossetted and totally unworldly, Tory councilor's wife who clearly had absolutely no relevant experience whatsoever.

Indeed. And rumours regarding his genetalia apparently preceed him.

are all untruths

I dunno if the police ever confirmed any of that, but those were all eyewitness statements, weren't they? I can't really recall. Remember that one bloke who described how Menezes ran down the escalators hotly pursued by the police who were just yards behind him? Menezes apparently trips as he gets to the carriage, the coppers immediately jump on him and 'unload into his head'... that story doesn't quite square either. Goes to show how adrenaline and paranoia and fear and shock and excitement all addle folks' perceptions though. You'd hope that armed officers weren't quite so prone to it, but it seems that they sort of got carried away by playing soldiers too.

Sir Ian Blair claimed this was true in front of the world's media

xpost!

If they're all working for the Queen, and they're all obviously useless, can we demand her resignation too?

Rot.

xxxpost

Wow, what a great Freudian slip, tho I say so myself!

In fairness, I would imagine that the thought process, such as it is, probably goes something like this*:

This is hard work.

I don't like it.

I'd rather be back at the station with the lads.

Why am I bothering to do this anyway?

Well, I'm supposed to do what HM The Queen wants.

But would HM The Queen actually give a fuck whether I appre... apri.... appry.... catch this suspect or not?

I don't think so.

So is there any reason why I should bother?

I don't think so.

I don't think I will then.

[* - only infinitely more slowly, obv.]

Well, there has been stranger said.

American cops agree to serve country and take an oath if religious and an affirmation if not. My uncle made it pretty clear that a good cop strikes the right balance on 'protect' and 'serve' but he was an extremely good cop who was unafraid to stand up to his bosses in the media if need be. Which is why dishonest or evasive cops really rankle me on top of the whole need for information which informs my carteer choices...

I had a very bad run-in with London police late last year (long story) and it took until just before bombs etc. for me to feel even remotely OK around them again.

(I'm extremely concerned that I may have seriously underestimated Mr. Weller's psychic powers)

(x-post)

Is it OK if I refer to you habitually as 'Nads Raggett from now on then?

I would have to look at you askance, but could not stop you.

I think we could have stumbled on to something here

How do you actually look askance? Obviously I've read many times about people doing it, but I'm not sure I've ever actually seen anyone looking askance; and I long to be able to look askance myself - and indeed practice doing so until I have mastered it and am sufficiently confident in my ability to be able to add "askance" at will that I may add it to my repertoire of different available looks.

(x-post)

Surely that's "aloof" rather than "askance"?

.... suspect is understood to have a record in Japan....

(x-post)

The more time I spend in Dorset, the more aware I become of the huge, yearning gulf that exists between they way the police behave and perform down there and the way they do in the Thames Valley.

It's almost as if the police in Dorset actually want to do the job they're being extremely highly paid for!

my ex is a cop.

how it worked:

- she got a piss-poor degree in archaeology, thus fucking her chances of any serious archaeology job.

- she applied half-heartedly for a couple of graduate-type positions with MegaCorps and got nowhere.

- "hmm," she thought, "i'll become a cop. that might be fun."

i am not making any of this up.

she showed me her application form. (we'd long since split up by this point, but were still friends.) it was appalling: it basically admitted she was only doing it because she couldn't think of anything else to do, and liked the idea of playing with dogs. so i rewrote it for her and put in lots of stuff about having a sense of duty and wanting society to strike the right balance between freedom of choice and upholding the law, and a whole lot of other shit. (i was very pissed when i did it, i recall.)

she sailed in.

thinking about this, i now feel rather guilty for the sake of society. still: she's a nice enough girl, and i don't think they've given her a gun.

I'm surprised they let her in at all after she'd expressed dangerously intellectual and subversive ideas like "wanting society to strike the right balance between freedom of choice and upholding the law"!

I'm sure they'd have preferred someone who "couldn't think of anything else to do, and liked the idea of playing with dogs".

(x-post)

Tom of Finland lied to the world!

Dare I say that sounds like a fair reflection of society as a whole? Mostly nice people, but a rump of bigots and nutters?

- she got a piss-poor degree in archaeology, thus fucking her chances of any serious archaeology job.

She didn't go to the same university as you, did she?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15869223%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=exclusive--58--take-him-alive-name_page.html

Indeed, surely we should be positively applauding the police for having made such great efforts in recent years to ensure that their ranks include representatives from all the minority groups that currently exist within our community: including religious extremists; racists; drug addicts; drug dealers; thugs; bullies; petty criminals; fraudsters; con-men; extortionists; paedophiles; rapists; sociopaths; psychopaths; and indeed even gung-ho, gun-wielding, cold-blooded murderers...."?

I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make.

xpost!

....

Well, OK, maybe not in quite as real a sense as Mr. Menezes.

xpost again

Yes, but an essential part of a cop's job is to treat his "clients" equally reagrdless of their race, gender, sexual identity, or political stance. Since a policeman is a representative of the state judicial system, that shoud be obvious. If a cop fails to act like he should, he isn't qualified for his job, and should be dismissed. Unrfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case in real life.

mmm, i don't think this is quite accurate in descriptive terms, is it?

"mmm, i don't think this is quite accurate in descriptive terms, is it?"

POLICE OATH/SOLEMN AFFIRMATION REGULATION

I will faithfully, honestly and impartially perform my duties as....

Finally equalised to 16 in 2000.

D'OH!

Do you really think they need outside help to achieve this?

Me too: I was hoping that if we put them together long enough they'd either cancel eachother out or a single positive and balanced view might emerge

Jesus, I had to look at that twice to check it wasn't Gary Glitter posting!

http://afm.infinit.net/chro/queens/WEAVER019.JPG

Are you the Keymaster?

A television journalist who revealed police blunders leading up to the shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes, has been arrested on suspicion of theft by detectives investigating the leaking of statements from the official inquiry to the broadcaster, the Guardian has learned.

ITV News revealed in August that Mr de Menezes, who was killed after being mistaken for a terrorist, was being held down when shot by firearms officers after it was passed documents from the Independent Police Complaints Commission's investigation into the shooting.

Copies of documents are believed to have been obtained by the journalist, who is a news producer.

The story was hailed as one of the biggest scoops in the history of British television news and ITV has entered it for the Royal Television Society awards.

The leak from the IPCC's investigation included witness statements and photographs that undermined early accounts by the Metropolitan police of why Mr de Menezes was shot in a train carriage at Stockwell tube station on July 22 last year. The leak is being investigated by Leicestershire police who arrested the journalist in October and raided his home.

An ITV News insider said police seemed to be looking for evidence that money was paid for the statements. The source said no money was paid as ITV News did not have large sums of money available to offer for scoops, and if the IPCC source who leaked the documents had been motivated by money then they would have gone to a tabloid newspaper.

A 43-year-old IPCC employee was also arrested and has now resigned from the commission. Leicestershire police said that a 30-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to steal. All three people who have been arrested remain on police bail.

David Mannion, ITV News's editor in chief, told the Guardian: "We absolutely stand by the story, the way we covered it and the way we got the story; it was to our usual high editorial standards."

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1694222,00.html

Ha ha, you can always expect a fair, balanced and level-headed approach to issues when I post a thread

The Brazilian, wrongly suspected as a suicide bomber, left a bus and then got back on minutes before being killed in a London Tube station on 22 July 2005.

Counsel for the Met Police told the Old Bailey surveillance teams could regard those movements as a criminal tactic.

Did he not pay to get back on or something?

The Met says that while Mr Menezes's death was a tragic mistake, it was not a crime because officers thought they were dealing with a suicide bomber.

Nothing is a crime as long as you THINK the suspect did it!

De Menezes still updates his "Church of Me" blog, though, so at least he's keeping busy.

They are just trying to create 'reasonable doubt'. It is also feasible that the man had an Oystercard snafu and/or a change crisis, just like thousands of other Londoners do every day.

Oh sorry, I put this on the wrong thread, could someone please delete the other one?

From the news wires:

Evening Standard Cocaine Shock Horror!

It can be exclusively revealed by this correspondent that at least 85% of the staff of the London newspaper the 'Evening Standard' are regular users of the killer drug Cocaine.

From the junior staff to the upper reaches of management, use of the deadly narcotic is said to be widespread particularly among the editorial staff, with many prominent journalists 'high as a kite' during substantial periods of the working day. Traces of white powder, believed to be cocaine, have been discovered in the staff toilets as well as in the former smoking room, now openly referred to as the 'Gak Chamber'. A routine inspection found substantial amounts of cocaine on 'very nearly' 100% of notes passed in the staff canteen - many of the staff are now obliged to pay in cash, owing to the fact that their credit cards have become damaged beyond use by constant hammering out of lines on every available surface throughout working hours. A source also revealed that keyboards are continually having to be replaced owing to the build-up of cocaine residue between the keys. On some days the fog of white dust in the air of the newsroom is reportedly so hazy it 'looks like Beijing on a particularly misty morning', making it difficult for journalists to actually see their screens and file their stories.

The influence of the evil drug is also to be observed in the often unorthodox behaviour of the paper's journalists. One of the showbiz staff, sent on a high-profile assignment to interview Janet Jackson, returned with a tape which editors regarded as unusable, given that it consisted of the said journalist talking incessantly about himself and his car for over an hour, pausing only to ask Ms. Jackson if she 'fancied a toot'. The use of cocaine is also said to have strongly influenced the paper's coverage of the current Rugby World Cup.

Investigations into the source of all this 'charlie', as the highly dangerous drug is known amongst dealers and addicts, tend to point the finger in the direction of one individual: Paul Cheston - author, coincidentally, of the daring, acclaimed, hard-hitting, ground-breaking, Pulitzer Prize-nominated expose of the suspected Brazilian terrorist Jean-Charles Menezes's own alleged drug use. Mr Cheston is said to 'knock out so much of the stuff so he sometimes forgets to pick up his paycheck at the end of the month'. From his ideally-placed Docklands apartment he is reported to oversee the delivery of three barges a month shipped directly from Colombia, an amount which is still believed to be barely enough to satisfy the cocaine mania of the E.S. newsroom.

At the time of writing the editor of the Evening Standard, a man who has been widely praised for his couragousness and integrity for giving front-page prominence to the Jean-Charles Menezes cocaine story, was unavailable for comment. He was said to be in a meeting with a 'very important secret source', and could not be disturbed. The identity of this source remains a mystery, but it is rumoured to be a somewhat infamous underworld figure, widely believed to have been killed by police in a gun battle in Medellin in 1993, although for substantially different reasons than those that led to the death of Mr. Menezes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/menezes/story/0,,2207413,00.html

jol out