From The Hip

The suspected terrorist shot dead at Stockwell tube station last week was innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes. He was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder by armed plain clothed policemen. Seven times in the head seems like overkill to me and the whole event belongs in a Hollywood action flick. Sadly, it is rooted in reality and a man has lost his life because of mistake and terrible judgement.

The debate is raging now that an innocent man has died and the police have over-reacted in response to London's terrorist threats. It is undeniable that the police have a very difficult job to do in this current climate which may involve split second decisions when dealing with potential suicide bombers and terrorist situations. In this case they decided that this man posed sufficient threat after chasing him into a tube station and onto a train carriage, that they shot him in the head several times from close range in the mistaken belief that he had a bomb under his jacket, to safeguard the lives of members of the public.

Now, I can accept that in the critical moment the police had to make their decision and decided to take out the threat (although I'm not sure that it necessitated seven headshots), and that the armed police in the UK are acting on instinct under difficult circumstances. However, this innocent man died needlessly as the police had been trailing him from his house and so could have apprehended him in a less dangerous environment than the train carriage, given their belief that he was a suicide bomber. They even let him get on a bus, which begs the question as to the logic in the thinking that allowed a suspected suicide bomber to board a bus, yet when he got on a tube train they shot him in the head.

Those justifying the police action have commented that they were following procedure and acted to avert a perceived bomb strike, stating that had the police failed to stop him and he actually was a terrorist bomber, the results would have been catastrophic. The counter-argument to this is had the police acted with foresight and a policy of safely apprehending the suspect, events would not have escalated as they did.

An independent inquiry into the incident is underway and if reports are correct, the police acted as they believed they had to in the circumstances when shooting this man at Stockwell tube station. However, had they acted more appropriately when trailing him the ensuing events would not have necessitated their decision to shoot him dead. The full facts are yet to transpire and hindsight makes for easy answers to difficult questions. What is beyond doubt is that the British police face a hard task in terms of terrorist security and have made an unbelievable mistake in killing a totally innocent man; their reputation will suffer for the inept handling of this incident.