What happens when it goes wrong?
Despite the vast amount of coverage of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, it is remarkable how little of it directs the finger of blame, moral, legal or otherwise, towards those who are ultimately responsible.
The extraordinary circumstances of that day are the single most important factor in this accidental killing of an entirely innocent man by armed police. This in itself goes a long way to explaining quite how unusual this event is in the history of the United Kingdom. There is simply no precedent for an unarmed man being deliberately killed by armed officers in a non-criminal situation.
Obviously, safe-guards must be in place for such a set of circumstances but, given that London is not Tel Aviv, any such set of controls will necessarily be insufficiently tried and tested. However, it does seem that there were certain failures of communication within the command structure of the security operation. The question which must be answered, and it is unclear from the open verdict given today whether or not it directly was, is whether these failures are tolerable, i.e. unavoidable, within the operational constraints of an emergency situation with high potential casualties.
This is the counterfactual which seems to have been ignored by media commentators. If you don’t make a snap-decision, if you don’t open fire, and twenty people die and forty are injured, and then the excuse you offer in the subsequent enquiry is that you only had one photo from a gym membership card and the lighting wasn’t at studio-level, would this not lead to immediate and justified calls for a complete revision of your operating protocols and the sacking of senior officers involved?
Equally, the so-called balanced reporting of this event is utterly compromised by the failure to entertain the counterfactuals which are the only possible justification for these sorts of actions. (Here we have a concrete example of just the sort of ‘ticking bomb’ scenario which has kept moral philosophers, lawyers, politicans and the intelligence services in debate for decades.) A witness pointing out that armed officers facing a man who may be strapped with explosives seemed so agitated to her that they were out of control may be newsworthy in a prurient sense, but how are security officers supposed to appear to the untrained eye? One wonders how the conduct of the special forces in the Iranian Embassy siege would have ‘appeared’ to the witnesses had that operation been a failure? Haphazard? Chaotic? As the jury returns its questionable open verdict today, a decision one cannot help but think was hugely influenced by the media atmosphere, it is remarkable how few people are vocally blaming the successful suicide bombers of 7/7 and the failed ones of 21/7 who put both the officers and an innocent man in this situation and bear the true responsibility for his tragic death.
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Two points:
First, while the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers doubtless contributed to the circumstances in which Menezes met his death, to blame them for the shooting is as silly as blaming US foreign policy for 9/11.
Also, it’s not the killing itself that reflects really badly on the Met. Collateral damage is inevitable in the best-run law enforcement system: wrongful imprisonments; innocent people hit by police cars and so on. Cases of mistaken identity are going to happen; little comfort for Menezes’ loved ones, but it’s true.
What really worries me is the shambolic buck-passing and denial that followed the incident. Any troubleshooter will tell you that when a cock-up occurs, the first thing to do is to acknowledge the fact. I suspect if senior Met officers had been more candid as soon as the truth emerged, the jury would have been better disposed towards them.
It is a disapointing view that has been returned by the inquest jury. I would have liked to have seen a verdict of Lawful Killing. It seems obvious to me that that campaign for Jean Charles who was a perfectly innnocent man has been high jacked by anarchists and liberal left campaigners who are anti government and anti Police. Throughout all the media coverage we have forgotten that 52 people were murdered just two weeks before by terrorists and almost the same again a week later if there devices hadnt failed. While there bombs didnt destroy us there actions have. We have turned on one another over Jean Charles and are destroying the very fabric of our existence. Our Government and Police and our attitudes to them. If we truly believe that the Police went out that day with the intention of murdering anyone on the Tube that took there fancy then they are guilty of murder. But that did not happen. These two officers were asked to make the ultimate decision on wether someone lived or died! And they had only a few seconds to decide. We ask these men to do the things that we cant and would’nt. To stand up when everyone else gets down and to do a difficult and dirty job with no support when it goes wrong. There were huge and catastrophic failings within the Police that day. Mainly as a result of the incidents that had happened in the two weeks previous. They need top be rectified, but the Police as a whole should not be vilified and certainly not those brave two officers. Jean Charles was an innocent man killed tragically by the Police in a genuine mistake. He is a victim of terrorism by those that killed 52 other innocent people two weeks before. It is truly a tragidy that he died and further more that his family and friends are now being manipulated for the gain of another form of extremist. I hope his family have closure soon and can begin to rebuild there lives. But we must come together as a country and rebuild ourselves so that we there are no more victims of home grown terror both innocent and guilty.
“What really worries me is the shambolic buck-passing and denial that followed the incident.”
This is quite true, although it has no bearing on whether the actions performed during the operation were right or not. However, there is no denying an unfortunate series of misinforming untruths – or out-and-out lies – were put into circulation once it was realised that an innocent man had been killed.
What makes the police and terrorists different if they both kill innocent men?
Is it really ‘OK’ to kill 1 man to save a thousand? Millions? What if that man is your friend? Brother? Sister? Would you?
The ‘ticking bomb scenario’ is a debate on the ethics of applying extreme interrogation techniques to a captive terrorist suspect in order to help track down others still at large. The moral dilemma of this theoretical scenario is not brought into concrete reality by shooting the potential interrogatee’s brains out.
The stated objective of the surveillance operation at Scotia Road on 22 July “was to detain one or all of the suspects and to establish the whereabouts of any others who posed a threat … Any stop, which involved someone other than a suspect, would have the potential to provide intelligence relating to the address.” “The overall aim was to establish whether the two suspects were present in the flat and if they came out to arrest them safely.” Therein lies the true counterfactual.
Why this objective was in no part achieved remains inexplicable.
Were these failures unavoidable? As the bus approached Stockwell station surveillance officers were in place and ready to detain Menezes in the normal way. Testifying at the Old Bailey trial the surveillance team leader said – “I came on the radio and asked them a question: ‘Do you want me to detain the subject before he goes down to the Tube?’ My instructions were to wait. I told them we had got to make a decision and we have probably about 20 seconds. I said again: ‘Do you want this man detained?’ I said ‘If you don’t give me any answer he is going to be down in the Tube and we will lose radio contact.’ I don’t know how many times I asked that question, it was at least three times. I just got, wait, wait, wait. I started to get tetchy and put down the telephone.”
There was clearly little or no thought and certainly no talk of the man being followed concealing a bomb before, as he entered the tube, the control room issued a panicky “state red” which became fatally misinterpreted by officers on the ground. It is simply not credible that a man who had just failed to kill himself with a crude homemade device, a device made of boiled down hair bleach mixed with flour packed in large plastic container stuffed into a bulky rucksack, would then somehow magically equip himself with an explosive vest or bomb belt of such advanced sophistication as to be undetectable beneath light summer clothing, literally overnight. If Hussain Osman or any of the failed suicide bombers had access to such a device then that is what they would have used on 21 July. In the history of the United Kingdom there is no precedent.
It is not lawful to shoot and kill a person, even someone who has attempted mass murder, unless that person is posing an immediate threat to life and limb. Firearms officers claimed they heard the subject had been positively identified, said they had (inexplicably) shouted a warning, said Menezes acted aggressively, advanced toward “closing us down”. The inquest jury unanimously decided they had lied, and lied again on oath.
The two officers who fired the fatal shots claim they “honestly believed†the man they were dealing with was about to detonate an explosive device. Is their claim at all credible? Were that question justly put to an unfettered jury, then, from a logical point of view, I think it most unlikely they would decide this was anything less than unlawful killing.