Attack in London Today

Lash said:

"you'd have to believe they were a bumbling pile of testosterone-jazzed Keystone cops"

Well of course they were. Having been given the authorization to shoot to kill, doesn't take much to have go that extra step without hesitation.

Shoot now, ask questions later.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

I'll find info on the Beeb's website, I assume? 'Tis general knowledge?

It is general knowledge and here's a link to the BBC.

sumac wrote:

I'm mystified about the authority to shoot to kill. English law doesn't allow it, well not for police anyway.

Who gave this alleged authorisation? Where is the evidence of this alleged authorisation?

Quote:

The Met's shoot-to-kill policy has been operating secretly for two years.

source:Times online

Quote:

Police have been given secret new shoot-to-kill guidelines in recent weeks, it emerged yesterday after officers shot a man dead on an Underground train at Stockwell, south London.

The new guidelines for armed police and surveillance officers confronting suspected suicide terrorists advise them to shoot to the head and not the body in case the suspect has a bomb.

[...]

The guidelines were secretly developed in consultation with police forces including Israel, Russia and the US.

source: Financial Times

Met chief defends bid to block shooting inquiry

By Jason Bennetto and Nigel Morris
Published: 19 August 2005

Scotland Yard was at the centre of a dispute with independent police investigators last night after the Metropolitan Police was revealed to have "initially resisted" an independent inquiry into the bungled killing of a Brazilian man.

The Met Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, responded to growing controversy over his force's handling of the shooting of the electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, by dismissing allegations of a police "cover-up".

MPs said they would interrogate the Metropolitan Police Commissioner about his handling of the crisis at an emergency session of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on the London bombings next month.

The family and lawyers of the dead man continued to call for a public inquiry into the case and criticised the Met for delaying an independent inquiry.

John Wadham, deputy chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating the shooting on a train at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July, stoked the row yesterday when he disclosed that police had resisted the setting up of the inquiry. He said the fledgling commission had won an "important victory" for its independence in overcoming the Met's opposition.

Sir Ian had written to the Home Office in the hours after the shooting inquiring about having an internal police rather than an IPCC inquiry, because he was concerned that secrets about anti-terrorist tactics could be made public. At the time the Met wrongly believed that officers had shot dead a suicide bomber.

Mr Wadham said: "The Metropolitan Police Service initially resisted us taking on the investigation but we overcame that. It was an important victory for our independence. This dispute has caused delay in us taking over the investigation but we have worked hard to recover the lost ground."

Mr Wadham disclosed that he hoped to complete the inquiry in between three and six months.

Sir Ian denied that he had tried to block an independent inquiry to protect his officers. He told the Evening Standard: "These allegations strike to the heart of the integrity of the police and integrity of the Met and I fundamentally reject them. There is no cover-up."

He said: "I and everyone who advised me believed that the man we had shot was a suicide bomber and therefore one of the four people who we were looking for, or someone else.

"It seemed to be utterly vital that the counter terrorism investigation took precedence - the forensics, the ballistics, the explosives."

Scotland Yard said Sir Ian had written to the Home Office, when Mr de Menezes was still believed to be a bomber, because it believed it was "crucial" that the terrorist investigation took precedence over any IPCC investigation.

Sir Ian also said he did not agree that the death of Me de Menezes would define his period as commissioner. "I think what will define that in the eyes of the public is our response to the two bomb attacks and our ability to prevent and detect others," he said.

However, lawyers for the De Menezes family said that by failing to invite the IPCC to start its investigation immediately, police had breached their statutory duty. This "fatal delay of several days" meant vital evidence in the case could have been lost, they said.

Sir Ian will almost certainly have to defend his actions and those of his force when he comes before a special session of the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee on 13 September. Senior Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs have expressed concern at Sir Ian's handling of the affair.

The Home Office yesterday refused to comment on the issue - two days after Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, was arguing that the public should be "very proud" of the way the police handled last month's bombings.

Gwyn Prosser, Labour MP for Dover, said the gap between early accounts by the police of the death and the actual facts "beggared belief". He said: "Once the full facts started to appear I believe there was a duty on the Metropolitan Police to stop the speculation."

The revelations about the shooting came after documents from the IPCC inquiry were leaked to ITV News. They contained detailed accounts of the shooting of Mr de Menezes which indicated that he had done little to arouse suspicion other than to emerge from a block of flats in south London which had been under surveillance.

Scotland Yard was at the centre of a dispute with independent police investigators last night after the Metropolitan Police was revealed to have "initially resisted" an independent inquiry into the bungled killing of a Brazilian man.

The Met Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, responded to growing controversy over his force's handling of the shooting of the electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, by dismissing allegations of a police "cover-up".

MPs said they would interrogate the Metropolitan Police Commissioner about his handling of the crisis at an emergency session of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on the London bombings next month.

The family and lawyers of the dead man continued to call for a public inquiry into the case and criticised the Met for delaying an independent inquiry.

John Wadham, deputy chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating the shooting on a train at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July, stoked the row yesterday when he disclosed that police had resisted the setting up of the inquiry. He said the fledgling commission had won an "important victory" for its independence in overcoming the Met's opposition.

Sir Ian had written to the Home Office in the hours after the shooting inquiring about having an internal police rather than an IPCC inquiry, because he was concerned that secrets about anti-terrorist tactics could be made public. At the time the Met wrongly believed that officers had shot dead a suicide bomber.

Mr Wadham said: "The Metropolitan Police Service initially resisted us taking on the investigation but we overcame that. It was an important victory for our independence. This dispute has caused delay in us taking over the investigation but we have worked hard to recover the lost ground."

Mr Wadham disclosed that he hoped to complete the inquiry in between three and six months.

Sir Ian denied that he had tried to block an independent inquiry to protect his officers. He told the Evening Standard: "These allegations strike to the heart of the integrity of the police and integrity of the Met and I fundamentally reject them. There is no cover-up."
He said: "I and everyone who advised me believed that the man we had shot was a suicide bomber and therefore one of the four people who we were looking for, or someone else.

"It seemed to be utterly vital that the counter terrorism investigation took precedence - the forensics, the ballistics, the explosives."

Scotland Yard said Sir Ian had written to the Home Office, when Mr de Menezes was still believed to be a bomber, because it believed it was "crucial" that the terrorist investigation took precedence over any IPCC investigation.

Sir Ian also said he did not agree that the death of Me de Menezes would define his period as commissioner. "I think what will define that in the eyes of the public is our response to the two bomb attacks and our ability to prevent and detect others," he said.

However, lawyers for the De Menezes family said that by failing to invite the IPCC to start its investigation immediately, police had breached their statutory duty. This "fatal delay of several days" meant vital evidence in the case could have been lost, they said.

Sir Ian will almost certainly have to defend his actions and those of his force when he comes before a special session of the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee on 13 September. Senior Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs have expressed concern at Sir Ian's handling of the affair.

The Home Office yesterday refused to comment on the issue - two days after Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, was arguing that the public should be "very proud" of the way the police handled last month's bombings.

Gwyn Prosser, Labour MP for Dover, said the gap between early accounts by the police of the death and the actual facts "beggared belief". He said: "Once the full facts started to appear I believe there was a duty on the Metropolitan Police to stop the speculation."

The revelations about the shooting came after documents from the IPCC inquiry were leaked to ITV News. They contained detailed accounts of the shooting of Mr de Menezes which indicated that he had done little to arouse suspicion other than to emerge from a block of flats in south London which had been under surveillance.

Unanswered questions continue to mount for beleaguered Met chief

By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
Published: 19 August 2005

As the row over the handling of the death of Mr de Menezes intensified yesterday, there remained a series of questions about whether the Metropolitan Police and Sir Ian Blair tried to mislead the public.

Hours after the shooting, the Commissioner said: "As I understand the situation, the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions."

Statements from police officers involved in the shooting incident, contained in leaked documents, have disclosed that one officer had pinned the Brazilian down on to a seat on the Tube while surrounded by at least two other surveillance officers. It was at that point, according to the witness statement, that he was shot eight times, by members of a four-strong firearms unit. The suggestions that he was properly challenged and had refused to obey do not tally with the statement.

Sir Ian later gave an even more detailed statement that read: "The man who was shot was under police observation because he had emerged from a house which was under observation because it was linked to the investigations. He was followed by surveillance officers to the station. His clothing and behaviour added to officers' suspicions."

This now appears at odds with the disclosure that Mr de Menezes was wearing a light denim jacket and was innocent so had no reason to be acting "suspiciously".

The question remains as to who provided the source material and then briefed the Commissioner with the apparently false information - no one has suggested that he deliberately put out a false account - and why did no one correct it when fuller details emerged?

Lawyers for the dead man's family have argued that it suited the police for the media to portray the electrician in a negative way.

Witnesses to the shooting told reporters Mr de Menezes had leapt over the ticket barriers, that he had wires sticking out of a belt, and had run into the Tube train where he tripped and was shot. All these accounts now appear to be inaccurate. Witnesses are notoriously unreliable, which is why it is crucial to get their observations collaborated with other evidence such as CCTV. Unfortunately only one camera appears to have been working. It may be because police had removed the camera hard drives the day before in the afthermath of the attempted bombings.

Sir Ian insisted there had been no attempt to "cover-up" the details of the shooting. His defence follows criticism of his attempts in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to write to the Home Office and ask for the inquiry to be held as an internal police matter rather than by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

As the row over the handling of the death of Mr de Menezes intensified yesterday, there remained a series of questions about whether the Metropolitan Police and Sir Ian Blair tried to mislead the public.

Hours after the shooting, the Commissioner said: "As I understand the situation, the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions."

Statements from police officers involved in the shooting incident, contained in leaked documents, have disclosed that one officer had pinned the Brazilian down on to a seat on the Tube while surrounded by at least two other surveillance officers. It was at that point, according to the witness statement, that he was shot eight times, by members of a four-strong firearms unit. The suggestions that he was properly challenged and had refused to obey do not tally with the statement.

Sir Ian later gave an even more detailed statement that read: "The man who was shot was under police observation because he had emerged from a house which was under observation because it was linked to the investigations. He was followed by surveillance officers to the station. His clothing and behaviour added to officers' suspicions."

This now appears at odds with the disclosure that Mr de Menezes was wearing a light denim jacket and was innocent so had no reason to be acting "suspiciously".
The question remains as to who provided the source material and then briefed the Commissioner with the apparently false information - no one has suggested that he deliberately put out a false account - and why did no one correct it when fuller details emerged?

Lawyers for the dead man's family have argued that it suited the police for the media to portray the electrician in a negative way.

Witnesses to the shooting told reporters Mr de Menezes had leapt over the ticket barriers, that he had wires sticking out of a belt, and had run into the Tube train where he tripped and was shot. All these accounts now appear to be inaccurate. Witnesses are notoriously unreliable, which is why it is crucial to get their observations collaborated with other evidence such as CCTV. Unfortunately only one camera appears to have been working. It may be because police had removed the camera hard drives the day before in the afthermath of the attempted bombings.

Sir Ian insisted there had been no attempt to "cover-up" the details of the shooting. His defence follows criticism of his attempts in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to write to the Home Office and ask for the inquiry to be held as an internal police matter rather than by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Comment

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There's no such thing as total security

A third terrorist attack on London may be 'inevitable' but draconian new laws will do little to solve the problem

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday August 19, 2005
The Guardian


Charles Clarke, the home secretary, says it is absolutely foolish to assume there will not be a third terrorist attack in London. James Hart, the City of London police commissioner, says an attack on Britain's main financial centre is inevitable, echoing remarks made by the former Met commissioner Lord Stevens. For years Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, has been warning of the near-certainty that London would be bombed. Late last year she said: "The terrorists are inventive, adaptable and patient. Their planning includes a wide range of methods to attack us."
Scarcely a day goes by without reports of a new terrorist attack being planned and hyped-up claims about the bombings in London last month. Yet there is no evidence of a "mastermind" behind the July 7 suicide bombings and no evidence of any link between those attacks and the attempted bombings of July 21. There is certainly no evidence of any link between the attacks and the nonviolent Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which Tony Blair now wants to proscribe, or to the cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, now banned from returning to Britain.

No, what evidence there is existed already. Whatever one's view about these and other organisations and individuals, there was no new intelligence to trigger new action against them.

But Blair needed to be seen to be doing something. Thus on August 5 he told journalists that "the rules of the game are changing". He then announced 12 "security measures" including deportation, extending the use of control orders, and refusing asylum automatically to "anyone who has participated in terrorism or has anything to do with it anywhere".

However, there is no evidence that any of these measures would have caught the "home-grown" July 7 bombers or the alleged July 21 bombers. It is not the lack of anti-terrorist legislation or gaps in the criminal law that is the problem; it is the lack of intelligence. Clarke appears to recognise that, as do the security and intelligence agencies. Blair, apparently, does not.

There is a real danger that the prime minister's 12-point outburst will be counterproductive, alienating the very people that the government - and not least these agencies - need on their side.

The domestic security service, MI5, has recognised for years that it needs the help of ethnic minorities, notably Muslims, and now the secret intelligence service, MI6, whose spies operate abroad, has come to understand that too. MI6 wants to recruit what counterterrorist sources call a "different kind of person", a reference to people who understand the causes as well as the symptoms of the problem.

The most senior ministerial advisers appear to have identified the problem more than a year ago. Internal Whitehall correspondence leaked earlier this year shows that in April 2004 Sir Andrew Turnbull, the cabinet secretary, wrote a letter marked "restricted policy" to the top official at the Home Office, Sir John Gieve.

"Are we listening enough to the Muslim communities (here and overseas) and understanding what we hear (even where we do not agree with it)?" he asked. "Are we communicating the right messages to the right parts of the Muslim community effectively?"

Sir Andrew did not shy away from addressing the government's foreign policy. "Should our stance (eg on the Middle East peace process or Kashmir) be influenced more by these concerns?" he asked. "How do we communicate our foreign policy to the Muslim community? Where are they getting their information and opinion from?"

Sir John wrote back to the cabinet secretary a month later. It was a long letter identifying the problems, including issues of identity, the threat of terrorism, and how to overcome disaffection, of which "extremism" was a symptom. He also referred to "anger" - a word he emphasised - among many young British Muslims borne out of a perception of double standards in British foreign policy, where democracy is preached but oppression of the Ummah (one nation of believers) is practised or tolerated.

Sir John described a "perceived western bias in Israel's favour over the Israel/Palestine conflict" as a "key long-term grievance of the international Muslim community which probably influences British Muslims". That perception, he added, seems to have become more acute since the 9/11 attacks.

"The perception is," wrote the permanent secretary at the Home Office, "that passive 'oppression', as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to 'active oppression' - the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seen by a section of the British Muslims as having been acts against Islam."

Sir John referred to the lack of any tangible "pressure valve" to vent frustrations or dissent - leading to a desire for what he called a simple "Islamic" solution to the perceived oppression.

We do not know how much, if any, of this influenced the July 7 suicide bombers. We cannot take comfort from the likelihood that they and the alleged July 21 bombers took orders from an al-Qaida hierarchy. Indeed, freelancers are more dangerous to track than fully paid-up members of terrorist, extremist or militant groups.

There is no such thing as total security. But at least the Whitehall mandarins and the security agencies are asking the right questions - rather more fertile ground than Blair's rhetoric about a war on terror that the most draconian of laws and the most authoritarian of ministers could never win.

Ministers, if not mandarins, are in danger of being chased by a mixture of fear and tabloid headlines up a spiral staircase, with each step representing a new law. At the top there will be an empty room; at the bottom, a land of unsolved problems made worse by racial and religious tensions.

· Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor

According to a post of yours in Cjhsa's thread about unarmed police in England, certain counter-terrorism and armed-crime units are armed precisely to deal with such matters.

goodfielder wrote:

sumac wrote:

I'm mystified about the authority to shoot to kill. English law doesn't allow it, well not for police anyway.

Who gave this alleged authorisation? Where is the evidence of this alleged authorisation?

Quote:

The Met's shoot-to-kill policy has been operating secretly for two years.

source:Times online

Quote:

Police have been given secret new shoot-to-kill guidelines in recent weeks, it emerged yesterday after officers shot a man dead on an Underground train at Stockwell, south London.

The new guidelines for armed police and surveillance officers confronting suspected suicide terrorists advise them to shoot to the head and not the body in case the suspect has a bomb.

[...]

The guidelines were secretly developed in consultation with police forces including Israel, Russia and the US.

source: Financial Times

Thanks Walter - fair references. I am bedevilled in my professional life with this idea of "guidelines". The Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales and Northern Ireland have their policy on this posted on their website. It is very long. I'll save you having to plough through the guff - it means nothing. The "guidelines" are senior police officers basically coverning their collective arse. The law in England says the decision is that of the individual police officer and the chief officer has two fifths of bugger-all to do with it.

But would it ever have been publicly acknowledged iof there had been no leak?