The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes

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.

in urine but not blood = lab fuck-up

but hang on also: totally irrelevant and transparent attempt to smear a guy who was murdered by the cops. fuck you, britain.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/11/stockwell_one_systems_failures/print.html

The report notes that the ground surveillance team all appeared to believe that they did not have a positive sighting, while the control room believed that they did. It looks very much as if faulty filtering and Chinese whispers effectively manufactured this situation, helped along by individual officer's fears of the consequences of making a mistake. This would tend to make them extremely cautious of saying that it definitely wasn't Nettletip, meaning the possibility that it was him was pretty well embedded in the system. These doubts would be filtered upwards, and the same fears would lead superior officers to give undue weight to a single claim of 'might be' over half a dozen of 'probably isn't'. The claims of CO19 that they heard "definitely" illustrate that direct monitoring in the control room isn't the answer either - nobody admits to saying that, and they may simply have missed the word "not".

...She was presiding over a system that was - as we've seen - incapable of passing timely, accurate and undistorted information to the control room, and which also failed in the other direction, over the interpretation of her 'stop' command to CO19, who claim to have thought it was a shoot to kill order. The initial deployment plan called for surveillance, CO12, to monitor those coming out of the building and for CO19 to detain them at a safe distance. CO19 wasn't however in place (as detailed by Lewis Page (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/ipcc_report_stockwell_one/)), so neither de Menezes nor any of the other people coming out of the building were stopped and questioned according to plan.

More autonomy on the ground, or better, command authority there, would quite possibly have resulted in a contingency plan kicking in. The other people leaving the building were presumably left alone because they were identified as definitely not Nettletip, and de Menezes would probably have been stopped and questioned (stop and question was the plan), rather than shot a short time later.

De Menezes was neither stopped nor ruled out as Nettletip because initially the officer watching the exit was unable to get a clear look at him (because he was having a pee). Arguably de Menezes' chances might have been better if at this juncture he'd been misidentified as Nettletip. Would they have let an identified terror suspect get on a bus, or would CO12 have intervened? It's a possibility - but he boarded the bus, his identity shrouded by doubt. The capability to make decisions on the ground was also decreased because the ground commander was with CO19, not in the vicinity of the monitored block of flats.

A tightly coupled operation with no slack for error (in a situation where error is practically inescapable) welded to a strict hierarchy that drove all decisions to a noisy dispatchers' desk where information could scarcely be called reliable. To consider that the shipping industry loses a boat a day to similar problem sets, it's absolutely amazing more people weren't killed.

cover-your-ass fear-driven risk-averse organizational idiocy.

I almost liked it better when it was just assumed the cops on the train were just gun-crazy murderous xenophobes

This is basically the sort of balls-up you just admitted to lecturing about at length IRL! I agree with you, btw. Mismanaged idiocy from start to finish.

some things I don't really get into detail about on ILX but that I will seriously talk your head off about IRL esp inebriated:

- systems engineering practices and management of complex organizations especially of the technical variety
- risk communication, risk management, and the role of insurers
- all of the above tied together in a vague cloudy shape of an unwritable thesis on why "operator error" is a lame copout when investigating or discussing accidents/system failures
- two-factor authentication: why it is stupid and useless

-- El Tomboto, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 00:44 (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

these ones especially

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/stockwell_one.pdf

haven't read it yet, anyone? Ed?

i printed out the reg report and read it on the tube coming home today (not on the victoria or northern line, btw)

i haven't read the ipcc report

it's not an exact fit for pretty obvious reasons, but the parallels between this and the faulty intelligence that led the US to "pull the trigger" on iraq seem more than coincidental

and yeah this is a rare case where something already of interest to some folks on ILX has come up as a massive organizational cock-up with all the ingredients that fascinate me vis a vis "system of sytems" failure and communications problems as a root cause

I can see yr point Tracer but I think the fallacy of how we got into Iraq is rather too obvious. The way this happened, at least in the reg version, appears to be a much more complex question about autonomy on the ground, hierarchy, information flow and allowing professionals to make their own assessment and take responsibility for it. the "production pressure" at the top manifested in shoot-to-kill at the bottom in this case, but in any situation like this (as Schneier has written about at length for the past six years) the most effective means time after time is to put well-trained people out there and let them make their own decisions. The false alarms in Boston and subsequent mishandling by the government bear more of a resemblance, in my mind

i realize it's a total overreach but still:

autonomy on the ground --> for this read unhindered palette of all relevant agencies, including autonomous UN weapons inspectors

hierarchy --> who is the arbiter of intel re: iraqi WMD? who gets to define what WMD is? who reports to whom?

information flow --> stovepiping

allowing professionals to make their own assessment and take responsibility for it --> whitewashing of doubts in favor of extremely low-percentage maybes

i don't think it's like iraq. there was an agenda to invade iraq. there was not an agenda to kill this guy.

part of the problem with JCdM is that -- apart from the amazing amount of ball-dropping between him leaving his flat and arriving at the tube -- apparently no-one wanted to be specific in briefing the gun team, as to what they were meant to do. they seem to have used euphemisms over giving orders.

yes, that's why i said "it's not an exact fit for pretty obvious reasons"

what strikes me as extremely similar, though, is how tiny fears become amplified and reasonable doubts about a positive ID get quashed - there is a connecting strand here of terror, fear, and how bureacracies deal with their responsibility to protect the public

but yes in general this analogy perhaps not helpful to truly understanding all the other facets of what happened either in iraq or with de menezes

the actual voice communication about what the triggermen were supposed to be doing -- even after the failure to apprehend and question the guy when he was coming out of his building, and even after they were so slow getting into position to stop him going down into the tube -- is almost comically bad. "when i said 'stop' they thought that meant to kill him, when actually i meant they should just stop him" -- ????!!! are people at this level actually this incompetent??

it is just incredibly difficult to believe that there are not hard and fast code words for describing this stuff

jol out.

but seriously fuck this.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/oopsie.jpg

maracas.jpg

bad

Haha what fucking idiot decided it would be a good idea to put that up there?

loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

That is class

OMG WTF etc x 100000

righteous

http://www.markmcgowan.org/

inappropriate imo

Someone set up a Facebook group, quick.

It's the on;y way my outrage at the injustice can be properly expressed.

only!

Seriously, though, the jury delivered the correct verdict given its options.

no, no, you don't understand: the police set out to kill an innocent plumber in cold blood.

Who was this "john clarkson"?

Seriously, though, the jury delivered the correct verdict given its options.

does anyone know to what extent inquest juries can tell coroners to go fuck themselves and return verdicts of unlawful killing even if told not to? My understanding is that trial juries are not actually bound to follow judicial direction, but I am often wrong about things.

they (or a portion of them) should issue an actual minority report.

I don't understand why a coroner's case should use a jury at all. If the point is finding out what happened as a matter of fact, I don't think juries are a particularly good way of doing so. It's not like a criminal trial where trial by one's peers safeguards against the misapplication of punishment

I think the idea is that it is less likely that a jury will take backhanders and return a verdict of misadventure when someone has been murdered by Crown agents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7786462.stm

"We considered that most people were likely to understand that the poster reflected the content of the film and the quote was intended to be wryly humorous," it added.

Oh I see...wait...what?

what's the problem?

Whichever media buyer approved that should be shot.

A Finnish thrash metal band Stam1na recorded a song called "Viisi laukausta päähän" (lit. "Five shots to the head") on their second album, Uudet kymmenen käskyä. The song interprets de Menezes being "a beast", hunted by authorities due to the misidentification of him being a terrorist. It also describes a "need" to cut the evil by its roots and track down everything associated with terrorism etc.

Deeply sus

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgejnypwv0ro

A senior firearms officer who shot a man wrongly suspected of being a terrorist 19 years ago is to speak publicly for the first time in a new documentary.

Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, died after he was pinned down and shot in the head by officers in Stockwell station in south London on 22 July 2005, following the 7 July bombings.

The police marksman is to appear on Channel 4's Shoot To Kill: Terror On The Tube after remaining anonymous since the killing.

Alisa Pomeroy, head of documentaries at the channel, said she hoped his personal testimony would "help the British public understand... what became one of the biggest crises in British policing history".

She added that the interview would also help people to understand "the complexity of the atmosphere in London that summer".

It shouldn't have surprised me tbh but the idea that you can shoot someone in the head while he's sat on the tube because of botched surveillance/intelligence and there are ZERO consequences criminal or professional for anyone involved was indeed incredible to me.

Alisa Pomeroy, head of documentaries at the channel, said she hoped his personal testimony would "help the British public understand... in the wake of the chris kaba trial, why the police summarily executing unarmed people is good, actually, why they should be more fully protected from potential consequences, and indeed encouraged to do it more often".

Fuck her.

(xps) Oh there were consequences, Cressida Dick ended up as head of the Met and a Dame.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/08/met-officer-who-killed-jean-charles-de-menezes-on-tube-defends-his-actions