Jean Charles de Menezes verdict

The Metropolitan (London) Police was yesterday found guilty and fined 175,000 for breaking Health and Safety laws over the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly identified as a suicide bomber.For those not familiar with the case: in summer 2005 Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes was going about his business in London unaware that he was being tracked by police after having been mistakenly identified as a member of a suicide bomber terrorist cell. After boarding a London Underground train he was approached by armed police officers, held down and shot 7 times in the face.What I find shocking about the case is the following:1) Despite the brutal execution of an innocent civilian there was no criminal prosecution brought against the police officers involved. Instead, a Health & Safety case was brought forward, safely in the knowledge that such cases don't carry prison sentences. The fine will simply be taken out of a pot of public money and put into another pot of public money.A brilliant article on the Health & Safety implications can be found here.2) The police initially lied about the circumstances surrounding the case, alleging that Mr de Menezes ran from the police and that he was wearing a suspiciously thick jacket, amongst others. During the course of the investigation, these claims were shown to be untrue. Furthermore, during the case the police produced a photograph showing the face of Mr de Menezes and the actual bombing suspect side-by-side in order to justify their mis-identification. However, this photo was shown to have been altered, thereby attempting to mislead the jury.No charges of 'attempting to pervert the course of justice' have been brought, nor are they likely to.3) The sheer incompetence of the police. Even believing that he was a carrying sucide bomber, they still alowed him to board a bus and a train before finally deciding to stop him.Overall, the whole debacle has been highly disturbing. I find that it sets a precedence for absolving the police of responsibility and following of due process and, in conjunction with the abolition of Habeas Corpus, post 9/11, brings us one step closer to a police state.I also find it deeply hypocritical that the same justice system that sentences people to years in jail for killing an intruder in their own home, justifies people who hold a stranger down and turn his face into a bloody pulp.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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And in a society where the cops have all the guns...

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not true: criminals have guns too. The only people who don't have guns are the ones who really need them, i.e. the general public who find themselves the victims of both criminals and police. it's a wonderful world...

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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Unfortunately, ordinary folks like us who actually care about what's right and wrong and what's just and unjust can't do a damn thing about it.

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yes, we can. We can take action and say enough is enough. They can't jail (or shoot) everyone. Or can they?.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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I'm sure a lone man would have been able to defend himself against the police by shooting at them in the London Underground. That would have saved his life and have cost no other lives. Shooting at a group of armed and trained marksmen is a wonderful way to calm any situation down and ensure the safety of the public.

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Next time you're on the Tube and two people with guns run screaming at you, how long will you spend thinking about 'calming the situation down and ensuring the safety of the public' ?You'll just wish you had a gun in the fleeting instance before your face is turned to tomato puree.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

I take your point, but at the same time can't help but find a bit hypocritical that we're willing, from the comfort of our armchair, to deprive someone else from a chance that we'd want ourselves -or our family- to have in a similar situation.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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Do you realise how unlikely a situation that is in a generally gun free culture compared with say, the US?

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I do, I was just making a point.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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The biggest problem is the majority, if not overwhelming majority, who claim to be moral aren't really moral at all. In a democracy, the majority always wins.

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Not true. We live in a republic, not a democracy in the true sense of the word. Decisions are made on our behalf by elected (and often un-elected) representatives. That doesn't mean they represent the majority opinion. If that was the case, Britain would never have participated in the Iraq invasion, for one.Today we have the technology that allows us to practice democracy, as it was meant to be, i.e. the public voting on all public matters. I somehow doubt that I'll live to see it, though.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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Martin was a psycho...

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That's irrelevant. He's a householder who was confronted in the middle of the night by intruders.

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he's not someone I'd hold up as a good example of citizens holding licenses for firearms.

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I'm not holding him up as an example, I'm mentioning him as a well-known case in point.

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He shoot a young boy in the back while he was running away.

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To you and I reading the newspapers, yes he did. To him, in the middle of the night in his remote farmhouse: he shot an intruder who was going to /pick up his weapon /call his accomplice / return the next night / etc.

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His own brother had to leave the country due to harassment from Martin, who went around and shoot out his windows - the guy is a nutcase.

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He's also quite ugly - so what? All this is irrelevant to his right to self-defense in his own house.

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And he wasn't locked up by the justice system - he was locked up by a jury of his peers who found that he was guilty of murder rather than manslaughter.

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The justice system prosecuted Martin for killing someone who was committing an act of aggression towards him and his property. The same justice system absolved highly-trained police officers who repeatedly shot an innocent man in the head in a public place.Or is it that if the policeman responsible was a middle-aged, solitary farmer with mental problems he would have been criminally prosecuted too?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

Really? I don't recall any Iraqi armies on British / US soil, do you ?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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At the risk of taking the analogy far beyond its utilities to make a specific point, that is exactly what the Bush administration did: they claimed that Iraq and Al Qaeda was in cahoots, and that sleeper cells existed in the U.S. and other countries, and, in fact, Iraq did invade its neighbors and posed a constant threat to other nations.

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No, this is a false analogy, the equivalent of making a false accusation about someone and then going to their house and beating them up. The US had no reason to feel threatened, they just claimed they did.Martin's case is the total opposite: two intruders broke into his house at night. He shot them and killed one of them as he was running away.If you want to use the Iraq case, a more appropriate analogy would be: Iraq army invades Britain / US, they're pushed back and we nuke them as they're retreating, but still within our soil.And if you want to look at a real life case of such a scenario just look at the Falklands war, the Belgrano incident. The Argentinian battleship was sunk while it was outside the exclusion zone and heading away. Noone was ever charged with anything, on the contrary the incident was justified by the British PM at the time. Again, two standards here, one for the government, another for the common pleb.

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CK claimed the shooter was a psycho. That wasn't disputed in the response.

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No, because it's irrelevant WRT his right to self-defense. Are you suggesting that mentally-ill people shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves if they're threatened?

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In response, it was claimed there was some vague possibility that the trespasser would pose a threat in the future.

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No. I said that in such a situation one might interpret someone's moving away in different ways, one of which might be that he's just manoeuvring for another attack (see Belgrano incident). That's precisely the point: you don't know what he's going to do, so it should be well within your rights -as the victim of the intrusion- to respond pro-actively in order to safeguard your person/family/home.

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But it does seem warranted to question whether a psycho's claim of being threatened really excuses his use of violence;.

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His use of violence should be excused by the simple fact that he was confronted by two intruders in the middle of the night in his own home. His right to defend himself against this real and present threat should be taken as granted regardless of whether he's a psycho, a Catholic, gay, illiterate, or whatever.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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That he only served three years seems perfectly consonant with the police shooting an innocent man 7 times in the face.

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sorry, I'm not following. Could you make this point clearer for me please?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

Yes, with the difference being that Martin had an even more legitimate reason to respond pro-actively, as the intrusion occured in his own home and not some disputed backwater 3000 miles away. Also, the intruder (Belgrano) was already outside the exclusion zone (home) so our forces should have even less reason than Martin to fear it. I think they were both valid and legitimate acts of self-defense. If anything, Martin's act was even more legitimate as he was a lone, middle-aged man in his own home and not a higly-trained task force sent to defend a disputed territory on the other side of the world.I'm pointing out the hypocricy of a society and justice system that tolerates, even glorifies, the one while vilifing and punishing the other. I never disputed its legitimacy. The only better analogy I can find would be the one I mentioned in an earlier post, i.e. Iraqi army invades Britain and is nuked while retreating. And Martin was confronted by two strangers in his house the middle of the night. Are you suggesting that two strangers breaking into your house at night do NOT present an imminent threat?! So, the police kill someone after wrongly establishing that he's an imminent threat, they get a slap on the wrist. Tony Martin kills someone after -rightly or wrongly, and common sense suggests rightly - establishing that he's an imminent threat, he gets five years in jail!Can you see where I'm coming from? I'm appalled that the police involved in the De Menezea case weren't criminally prosecuted. The Daily Mash got the tragic irony spot on though!

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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But you don't find it disturbing that a bus was bombed, killing many innocent people?

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ofcourse I do. What makes you think I don't ?!

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Why not start a thread on that?

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Go for it!

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I suspect you don't really care one whit about Menezes.

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And you base you suspicions on...?

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I suspect he's just a stepping stone to furthering your cause so you can justify your paranoid delusions about police state's.

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You suspect too much. I suspect it's you who's harbouring delusional suspicions about me being paranoid.

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An innocent man tragically died. The police involved should be held accountable and liable for that life. That's all that needs to be discussed.

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Since when are you the arbiter of what needs to be discussed here and what not?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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The Constitution doesn't defend itself, NJ, not even in the UK;

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we don't even have one!

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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Well, to be fair, the two young thieves would at best pose a risk to a few lives. A battleship in a time of war poses a greater risk, and it had been heading in a threatening direction until it was chased away.

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But we're not talking about who poses the gratest risk to the gteatest number of people, we're talking about what's perceived as a clear and present threat to an individual or an army. In both cases, the aggressors in question did pose a risk to the defending parties and I'm arguing that in Martin's case the risk was even greater as he was in his own house, middle-aged and far from outside assistance, unlike our task force in the Falklands.

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I suggest that two strangers that had broken into your house that are now fleeing from you do not pose an imminent threat.

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But Martin didn't know they were fleeing! As far as he was concerned they were looking for cover so that they can shoot back, or going to get a weapon from the car, or call for reinforcements. I've been in a situation myself when my friend and I chased someone off (ahh...those were the days) only for him to come back two minutes later with his mate and a golf club. We ran away like Ben Johnson on speed. Ofcourse if this incident had happened in my house I'd have nowhere to run to. Why are you assuming that the intruders were fleeing and how was the victim supposed to know they were?

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I am not arguing that the police have been adequately punished, I was arguing that the officers on the ground should not be prosecuted.

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I'm arguing that if they're not then it smacks of hypocricy , as well as setting a dangerous precedent.

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You cannot prosecute all of them, some of them made no mistakes based on the information they had been given...it was the information that they were given that was erroneous. Maybe there is one person, or group of people who should bare the ultimate responsibility for the mess.

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I agree that the executing officer isn't to blame, he was just told to shoot someone, though I'm unimpressed by his lack of composure at having to shoot seven times to the head, even yardie hitmen can do the job with two or three shots. I'd have thought the culpable party would be whoever mis-identified the suspect in the first place.Alternatively, they can just leave everyone alone but for justice's sake grant the rest of us the same treatment when we have to take action in self-defense.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."