h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

just bought the Evening Standard. Appararently there was some kind of multi faith thing in St Pauls cathedral today. Saw pics of a load of people holding up placards saying 'LONDON STANDS UNITED. London is the whole world in one city. We are united in the face of these attacks. Londoners will not let anyone divide them! .......Mayor Ken Livingstone

I like it!

Mmm, well, if Ken would only learn to keep his gob shut about Israel then he'd be in a far stronger position.

I'm afraid yes, it is possibly everyday life as we now know it in London. I'm not crying. Life really does go on.

In the balance of things, i think we're damn lucky that more of this type of thing hasn't happened.

And it's perhaps worth pointing out that the one man they have arrested from the 24/7 'bombings' first words to the Police were 'Back off or I take you with me.'

I'd have dropped him on the spot, no questions asked. The police didn't. If he had detonated a device on his person and 'taken them with him' then what would people have said? Would that have been the police's fault as well? Would you grieve for them and their families as much as you are for a lone Brazilian who ran because he didn't want to be deported?

I wonder.

....may I just take this oportunity to say thank you to the job the police are doing at moment and bomb disposal experts. The are continually going to houses where it is thought suicide bombers who could explode bombs at any moment are hiding...there could be booby traps and guns.

.....I myself am very aware when out shopping or on buses,the tube is not a pleasant place at best of times, breaking down for half an hour in a hot tube is a bit scary....add that to present situation and it must be terrifying.

...and yes the police arn't perfect, but at the moment when everyone is running away in panic, they are the ones heading towards terrorists....

Yeah, sure ... it has gotta be death-penalty-warranting to be dark-skinned, dumb and scared of the police all at the same time

Even though a lot of Londoners these days are willing to accept a fatal error on the part of the police, I think most of you would not support a policy that the police could shoot and kill anyone they think might be a suicide bomber. You or I might just happen to look suspect next tuesday on the tube. That shouldn't warrant six bullets in the brain ...

~^M^~

Most of what I want to say about this has already been said... but I'll go ahead anyway because I love the sound of my own voice

To all those people who think the killing was justified in the present conditions...

What would you think if your own son/daughter went on a student exchange visit to Brazil and got shot by the police mistakenly whilst they were peacefully going about their day to day existence... Just pause and think about it for a second - and I defy _any_ parent on this site to sit back calmly and say they'd accept it!

There are a thousand reasons why the guy could have run when he did - he might not have realised the armed heavies running towards him were police and just wanted to talk to him (as opposed to mugging him); he might have been worried about his immigration situation; he might have been guilty of shoplifting the day before... the list is endless...

However, it's pretty obvious that people can panic when faced with guns and shouting men running towards them - so I'd have thought that running away would have been a pretty poor justification for shooting someone.

Why do I think the polices' actions were triggered by the fact he ran?
If they were convinced the guy had a bomb beforehand, would they have let him board a bus?...

So, someone somewhere gave the order for him to be apprehended, he ran and was shot 7 (or 8) times - that's not the actions of a highly-trained marksman - that's the result of someone panicing and letting fly with a full magazine.

So in short... The failures...

Lousy intelligence work...
They didn't know who they were following or they were wrongly informed that the man was a terrorist

Lousy firearms training...
You don't stop someone by emptying your magazine into the back of their head (2 shots will do - if he wasn't alone and you've no bullets left then you're buggered)

Personally, I don't believe there's much purpose in hanging the guy who pulled the trigger - he's made a mistake and is going to have to live with that for the rest of his life... However, that mistake was prompted by bad intelligence and bad training... The people who _should_ be nailed to the nearest cross are those people who are responsible for his insufficient training and the people who led him to believe that the person he was following was a terrorist.

>Personally, I don't believe there's much purpose in hanging the guy who pulled the trigger - he's made a mistake and is going to have to live with that for the rest of his life... However, that mistake was prompted by bad intelligence and bad training... The people who _should_ be nailed to the nearest cross are those people who are responsible for his insufficient training and the people who led him to believe that the person he was following was a terrorist.<

Absolutely.

I think I heard on the radio yesterday that the train driver also panicked and ran and was pursued by police. I suppose it was his uniform that saved him.

<>

Yes, I would have. (grieved for them and their families). And in the circumstances "back off or I'll take you with me" would have justified shooting *unless* there were obvious reasons why it was an empty threat.

Were the police at first ordered just to follow Menendez because he was leaving a building under surveillance? Did something happen after that that appeared to change the situation? Were their orders changed from above or was the decision made on the spot?

Noggin

........not sure that bad training comes into it...for all we know he may have been shot by more that one policeman, and for the life of me I can't understand why it matters how many times he was shot...if you are shooting to kill, you are shooting to kill.

........and that fact that he came from the block of flats that was suspected of being involved in the bombings seems to have been forgoten...certainly there was human error...but it is easy to stand in judment after, but we could be here now saying why didn't they shoot a man before a bomb went off...a bomb that could have killed many people from where the man came from, and women and children.

...the real people to blame for this are the terrorists who planted the bombs on a tube/bus.

.......and I say this again, I would have shot the man.....the policemen are feeling terrible now..how much worse would they feel if they had done nothing and 30 people were killed?

>Did something happen after that that appeared to change the situation?<

Umm, yeah, he jumped the barrier and ran when told to stop.

One of his family members yesterday said that witnesses reported that he just used his travelcard to get through the barrier. Think we'll have to wait until the inquiry before we can make *any* judgements about this.

I meant before that - why and when and by who was the decision to approach him made?

Noggin

Which is reasonable enough.

But I do think there is a basic point here about 'responsibilities' as opposed to 'rights' here.

It's your right not to do what armed police tell you to do. It's your right to be angry and annoyed when an innocent man gets shot on the tube.

It's also everybodies *responsibility* to behave in ways that don't make the police jumpy at the moment. It really *is* that simple. Co-operate with their requests or commands when asked. If that means learning the language of the country you have *chosen* to live in then I don't think that's unreasonable either.

.......I agree, we wil have to wait for enquiry, actually it wasn't witnesses..they said one person said that, BUT the family said, just after they asked for compensation, day after shooting, that the shot man was playing a tag game with a friend and that is why he was running......I have every sympathy with family, but a shocked family are likely to say many things that may later be not accurate.

"not sure that bad training comes into it...for all we know he may have been shot by more that one policeman, and for the life of me I can't understand why it matters how many times he was shot."

From the initial reports that one person pumped five shots into his head it looks like one person was responsible - however, I'd accept that there could be a second shooter involved.

Why the number of times he was shot could be significant is that it does show bad training... As I said earlier - putting two shots into someone to stop them would have been the result of training - you don't risk missing by using a single shot and you don't waste ammunition - pumping a magazine full of ammunition into someone smacks of panic and lack of control - therefore bad training.

-----

">Did something happen after that that appeared to change the situation?<
Umm, yeah, he jumped the barrier and ran when told to stop."

I think something must have changed the situation before that...

After all, initially they were quite happy to follow him onto a bus - so at that stage they must have simply been under orders to follow and were not expecting him to have a bomb on him...
At some stage they must have been told to arrest the man - the question is, were they also told he could have been carrying a bomb or was that idea simply another moment of panic-induced logic by someone with insufficient information.

I just can't think of a reason why a suicide bomber would run away from the police. To save his life?

After 9/11 me and my friends were making jokes about what courage would mean in those days...to get dressed as an arab, go to an airport with a suitcase, leave the suitcase in the hall and run away...

I'm really sad about all that has happened because some stupid people in very high places aren't aware to what their policies will lead to.

And another stupid anecdote for you: last week in our capital city one yournalist had put a suitcase on the street to see the people reactions and the police preparations. That suitcase was blown up with a water cannon. I didn't quite understand what was the real purpuse of that act. Maybe because we're far far away from real danger ( I really hope so)and we can afford playing with peoples fears...
Anyway... I hope that all of thif s**t will stop some day.

<>

That was what I was getting at Whisky.

Noggin

This post has been removed.

If the threat by Yasin Hassan Omar when arrested is true it raises a couple of issues. One the policeman who used the Tasar was either incredibly brave to take him without killing him so he could be questioned or:
incredibly stupid to be going against police guidlines to shoot for the head to stop him exploding a bomb.

I'd prefare to believe the former but it's more material for the IPCC. Either you have operational guidlines or you don't.

Well, WA, I guess that would depend on the circumstances. I don't suppose these guys wear there bombs all the time, and circumstances may have been such that the threat did not appear realistic.

Noggin