Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Leak disputes Menezes death story

After seeing this new stuff yesterday, I was too disgusted to comment much on it. The whole story makes me sick from beginnning to end. But something that now bothers me about it is that now that it seems the poor guy wasn't actually acting suspiciously, wasn't wearing a bulky coat and wasn't carrying any kind of bag, the people who thought this was acceptable at first will now say it's ok to shoot the next guy who actually does wear a big jacket, or who does run from the police. So I just wanted to reiterate my original thoughts, even though the new information makes them moot in this particular case. But it is still not acceptable to shoot people in the head because they run from police or because they wear a bulky jacket. These may be reasons to be suspicious of them, but it's not enough to kill them for. Suspicious behavior does not equal guilt, and we shouldn't pretend that it does just because we're afraid.

Anyway, in this case, now all I can wonder is why was this man shot in the head? There doesn't seem to be any reason (even a bad one like they tried to give before) for why this would have happened. The only reason I can find in the new stuff is this:

Simply because it would appear that they were acting on information that this was a positive identification of Osman [Hussain], one of the suspect bombers.

And that just doesn't cut it. Obviously it wasn't a positive identification, since it wasn't him, but even if it was, since when did we start executing people without any trial or anything? The whole thing makes me want to puke.

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4 comments:

Bob Mottram said...

I was also horrified by the Menezes murder. I didn't think we were living in that kind of country.

I think the whole policy of "shoot to kill to protect" needs to be reviewed. You just can't have police going around shooting people on the mere suspicion that they might be a terrorist. If that sort of policy is allowed to continue we may as well slap a swastika on whitehall and all start goose-stepping.

John Howard said...

I agree, Bob, it makes no sense.

Scott G said...

Isn't it also overkill if you are holding the guy when you shoot him. What kind of policy is a gangland style execution?

not in use said...

I am pretty sure we will see murder investigation and probably murder charges.

Half of the 2,000 polce (out of 30,000+) in London who are licenced to carry a weapon will probably refuse to do so .. again (they already did that earlier this year when two officers were chraged with murder for a shooting in 1999 (when they mistook a table leg for a shotgun).

It will be interesting to see how this mess works out.