Police Shootings

If he’s going to detonate the vest, I don’t see that the police have much to lose by shooting. As I understand it the officer who fired was standing over him, so little risk of hitting the vest anyway.

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A few things. First, that the suspect was lying on the ground goes back to questioning the need to murder him.

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I don’t see how lying on the ground prevents him from detonating a suicide vest.

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Second, I don't think anyone who pulled he trigger was standing over him. A man sitting on the suspect was pulled off him so that a police officer could shoot him from about ten feet away

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I don’t think it was that far, and you could see that the most likely shooter is lined up to take the shot - and not with a handgun either. Probably a semi-automatic carbine.

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Third, there's the possibility of a dead man's switch.

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Which would already have gone off.

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Fourth, suicide vests loaded with shrapnel can kill and maim over great distances. Any risk that the vest might go off doesn't seem acceptable

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Then shooting him was the best option.

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It doesn't, but the video has all the look of an execution.

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You can’t have it both ways. This can’t be both an execution and a panicked response. Either the shooter was in a good position for a kill shot - with minimal risk of detonating the vest - or he wasn’t.If they suspected a suicidal vest I think they did the right thing. The question is whether he was reaching for the detonator, and I don’t think that the video helps much there.

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I did say "about ten feet away" and wasn't trying to be exact, but whatever the actual distance, it doesn't change what the video shows. They weren't "standing over him," which is what you said that I was responding to.

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I think it is well under ten feet and with a weapon more accurate than a handgun. I do not see a significant risk of hitting the suicide vest, which is the real issue.

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How do you know that? There could have been no dead man's switch, or there could have been a simple dead man's switch that he managed to keep closed during the struggle, or there could have been a more sophisticated dead man switch.

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Because he wouldn’t have to reach for the detonator in that case. The whole point of a dead man switch is that it doesn’t require any conscious decision to detonate.

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Risking setting off a suicide vest possibly of the type that can kill and maim over a great distance seems the worst option.

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Compared with the certainty of it going off, a tiny risk of detonating it seems obviously preferable.

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I wasn't having it both ways. I never called it a "panicked response." Earlier I said that it reflected badly on British police training regarding bombs and guns, and later I called it an execution

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How else could there be a significant risk of hitting the vest?

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I'm still wondering about the suicide vest. Is a suicide vest in the shape of an actual vest in that it covers the trunk of the body where a "kill shot" would be aimed?

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It does cover the body, but in an execution style shooting the target would be the head. And that’s what it looked like to me in the video.

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I don't understand the source of your certainty about "minimal risk of detonating the vest."

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A head shot isn’t at all likely to hit the vest.

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I'm probably not following you. Why do you keep mentioning a detonator? Did you read somewhere that the suspect reached for a detonator? Where, because I couldn't find a mention of that at Google News?

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Because that would be the usual way of setting it off. And for this particular point it doesn’t matter. If he was holding a dead man switch all he had to do was let go. If he had to reach for the detonator it would take more time.

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Yes, of course, but I must be missing your point because this sentence seems as if you intended it to support your point about reaching for a detonator. What were you actually trying to say?

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No, it’s to support the point that if he was using a dead man switch the vest would have already gone off.

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• ...your certainty that the suicide vest would be detonated if the suspect wasn't killed?
• ...your confidence that the risk of a bullet detonating the vest (had it been real) was minimal?
• ...your opinion about a possible dead man's switch?

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Reason.He had a suicide vest, he was down and surrounded by armed police. He’d been stabbing people. If he had a real suicide vest what else was he going to do ?A head shot is not likely to detonate the vest. The police shooter had aimed and was using a carbine, not a handgunIf he had a dead man’s switch he had the opportunity to detonate the vest, and why wouldn’t he?So what is the source of your certainty that the vest could not have been detonated, if he hadn’t been shot? Even if he had a dead man switch? Because without that certainty your arguments don’t make sense.

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It was argued upthread that the fact the suicide vest hadn't already been detonated argued against a dead man's switch. But that same fact, that the suicide vest hadn't already been detonated, also argues against a detonation switch. What kind of suicide vest has no switch? A fake one.

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That’s a distortion of the argument. The argument relied on the fact that a dead man switch should be easier to operate than a manual detonator. Given the situation it is entirely possible that he could not have triggered a manual detonator.

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The video shows he was already being held on the ground by someone who was pulled off him so a police officer could kill him. Probably the vest was fake, but the possibility it was real means that calling the bomb squad was the best option. Continuing to hold him on the ground until the bomb squad arrived is all that needed to be done. There was no need to kill him.

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The suicide vest wasn’t noticed until they were pulling people off him. By that time it was too late to maintain the pile-on.

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Oh, geez, what was I thinking. When people don't panic nothing ever goes wrong. Doh!

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Because things are always likely to go catastrophically wrong when a skilled professional is doing his job properly,

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So we agree that it was an execution?

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Of course not. The fact that it was done in much the same way does not touch on the central question. That is whether there was a perceived threat that justified the action.

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This comes back to a point I made upthread. What kind of suicide vest has no dead man's switch and no detonator switch? A fake one

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If you can think of a way that the police could know that there was no detonator switch - not just a convenient possibility but a reliable way of telling - then let’s hear it.

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Not if he was still holding the button/switch/whatever in the "activate" position.

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Which would have been noticed. Besides he would have had to arm it first. And why would he when he could cause maximum carnage by releasing it?

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We can only speculate and enumerate the possibilities of what the suspect was thinking.

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He wasn’t getting out of that. And the nature of his attack and the wearing of a suicide vest suggest that he never intended to.

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I'd previously heard that police aim for the center of mass. Looking this up I found nothing about aiming for the head, but I of course accept that a trained marksman can hit the head from seven feet or so.

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Which shows that a little knowledge without understanding leads to error. Generally a body shot is better. In this case a head shot is far better.

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There are enumerable reasons why he wouldn't detonate the vest, and the type of switch (detonator switch versus dead man's switch) makes no difference to this aspect of the discussion. Maybe he thought a better opportunity might present itself. Maybe he decided he wanted to live. Maybe he didn't have the courage to kill himself. Maybe something else. How could we possibly know what was going through his head?

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But he clearly planned to die. Taking the chance that he changed his mind doesn’t seem to be a good risk.

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I have expressed no certainty at all. I described a range of possibilities and concluded that the best solution, given all the many possibilities, was to keep the man pinned on the ground and call the bomb squad.

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Which means that you DO think that there was very little chance of him being able to detonate the vest. Even if it was real. But you’ve given no reason to think so, and your ability to think of possibilities seems curiously one-sided - failing to consider the possibility of a head shot being the most obvious.

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Of course it's possible. I've been pointing out that there were many possibilities all along.

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But funnily enough you seemed to miss that one, even though it was a part of the argument.

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This isn't consistent with the video, which shows police in position to execute the man as soon as the last person, a civilian, was pulled off him. Can you point me to your information?

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The video. Obviously they couldn’t see the vest while people were piled on top of him.

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Right, everything always goes according to plan

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Because just trusting that everything will go right as long as we do what Percy wants - no matter what the evidence suggests - is always tight.Really, why can’t you just admit that I was right? There was little chance of the suicide vest being detonated by the shot ?

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Then when you pointed out that the shot was most likely to the head and that "in an execution style shooting the target would be the head," what did you mean if not that it was an execution?

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I think it is rather likely that I meant what I said - which clearly refers only to the way the killing was carried out, not the reasons why it was done. As I already explained in the previous post.

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In my view executions are never justified.

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Defence of self and others from an immediate threat is not an execution. That would bethe justification.

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I explained this upthread. You said there was little likelihood of a dead man's switch, and since it would look pretty much the same as a detonator switch, there was also little likelihood of a that, either.

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That is a newly-invented misrepresentation. My argument was not based on appearances at all, but in the fact that a dead man switch should have been easier to operate than a detonator switch that was not in his hand. As I already explained.

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What is the source of your certainty?

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If he had something in his hand wired to the vest it would have been sort of obvious.

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Press switch to activate, release to explode.

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That’s not significantly different from a manual detonator, and doesn’t help you. Which was the reason for raising the point.

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I addressed this already upthread.

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And I answered it upthread.

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What is the source of your certainty?

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The fact that he was on the ground surrounded by armed police.

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Again, there are many possibilities, and we can't know what the suspect was thinking. The nature of the attack, i.e. by knife, would suggest, among other possibilities, a fake vest.

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Upthread you suggest that the risk of the vest detonating is so severe that shooting him had to be avoided at all costs. Now you suggest that that risk must be taken in case the attacker changed his mind or was wearing a fake. This hardly seems consistent.

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Well, sure, but I also could find nothing about where the suspect was shot. Upthread you said video suggests a head shot, but I don't see how you can tell. Perhaps you can point me to what you're looking at.

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Mainly where the gun is pointing at the time of the shot.

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Where does your certainty about the mind of the suspect come from?

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The nature of the attack and the fake suicide vest. A real suicide vest would only underline the point.

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Since you don't know the mind of the suspect, you also can't know if he changed it.

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I didn’t claim to know. I argued that it was too great a risk to assume that he had changed his mind.

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Aiming at the head and hitting the head are two different things. The possibilities of setting off the vest and of a dead man's switch must still be considered.

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And I did consider them. Both are far less likely than the attacker detonating the vest if he was given the time to do so.

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I think this may be reading something into the argument that wasn't there.

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If we consider the same type of switch for both a detonator and a dead man's switch, say a thumb on a button of a cylindrical switch held in the hand, then they're both very easy to operate. One sets off the bomb when the thumb muscles flex, the other when they relax.

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If he had a detonator in his hand and if the police officer standing right over it couldn’t tell how he was holding it you might have a point. But that was not in the argument and it looks like just another of your unlikely possibilities.Since he was attacking with two knives, however, it’s far more likely that he wasn’t holding a detonator.

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Where in the video?

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The first twenty seconds. It’s clear that there were multiple people piled on top of him and obstructing the view.

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I think I am only guilty of arguing for my position, as are you.

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I think that it should be self-evident that a trained professional would not be taking silly risks. To argue against that with. I thing but sarcasm seems pointless. Yet this goes on and on.

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Uh, because you're not?

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Since I am obviously correct that isn’t it.

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And you know this how?

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Because a head shot at close range with an accurate weapon is very unlikely to hit the vest.

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I'll interpret this confused explanation as an indication that you'd like to drop this point.

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I’ll interpret that as a desire to be let off the hook for the obvious misrepresentation. Especially as there is nothing confused in my explanation at all.

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That's always the police defense: they felt threatened, and the threat justified use of deadly force. Courts and the public are very gradually diminishing their acceptance of this defense.

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Since the nature of the attack and the apparent presence of a suicide vest give good reason to perceive a threat - extending to the members of the public the police were extracting from the situation - I think that defence holds up in this case.

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It is neither newly-invented nor a misrepresentation. I described this before, though not in a post to you. Read the thread

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I have and I see no such message,

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If you had "already explained" this then the words "detonator" and "hand" would have appeared in one of your earlier posts, but they don't.

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It is a fact that English has many ways of expressing things. For instance the phrase reaching for the detonator implies that is was not in his hand.

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How small can they make switches these days?

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You missed the reference to the wiring - also he would have had to be holding it closed even if the switch was too small to be visible.

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You raised the fact that "he would have had to arm it first" as an objection to the dead man's switch possibility, so I pointed out that one only has to press the switch to activate the bomb.

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I raised it to point out that it would make the dead man switch effectively the same as a manual detonator.

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No you didn't.

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The board software makes it easy to advance forward and backward in a subthread, and it does have a search facility. Prior posts are not a black box.

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Message 371

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We were talking about your certainty of the mind of the suspect. The question wasn't about the reality of the unlikelihood of him escaping. It was about your certainty about what the suspect believed was possible, because what he believed possible would govern his decision making about what actions to take.

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I think we can be certain that he was aware that he was in the ground, surrounded by armed police.

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When there are many possible ways something could play out, i.e., many possibilities, of course they're not all consistent with one another. We mustn't become stuck upon one scenario based upon what actually played out but must keep in mind the variety of ways things could have played out.

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Disingenuous. The issue is the evaluation of the vest as a threat, given the information the officers had. That should remain constant unless you can give a good reason why it might not. It should not change drastically depending on the argument you wish to make.I’ll also point out that merely coming up with unlikely possibilities that happen to favour your view does nothing to advance the discussion.

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The YouTube video is a sequence of shorter videos of the event concatenated together. I can't know what you're looking at unless you tell me the point in time in the video that you're looking at. Here's the video again, it would be appreciated if you could tell me the time in the video I should look at

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20-23 seconds in. Note that Tangle confirmed in Message 378 that the Met’s firearms doctrine calls for a headshot.

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How does it undermine the point?

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Underline, not undermine,

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This repeats the same error. If you don't know the mind of the suspect, you also can't know if he changed it

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I didn’t claim to know. Whether he did or not is irrelevant because we can’t know - and nor could the armed police on the scene.

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I could agree that they seem less likely, not "far less likely," but even "far less likely" is not the same as "can be ignored" given the catastrophic consequences of being wrong.

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I’ve seen no reason to think that m6 evaluation is wrong.
But even if I am - given the catastrophic consequences of being wrong - either way - it would be insane to go with the choice most likely to be wrong. Yet here you are...

I note that you avoid quoting the section of Tangle’s post that is most relevant to this case.

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If you knew the suspect's hands were visible while passersby were atop him then you might have a point.

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No. That’s just nuts. If they can’t see his hands they can’t confuse a deadman switch in his hand with a manual detonator in his hand.

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I can tell you think an argument was made where the point about a detonator was necessary but missing, but without more information I can't tell what argument you're referring to.

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No, we’re talking about my argument that a manual detonator was more likely than a deadman switch because the belt hadn’t detonated.

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Sure, if that were the whole story, but 2019 London Bridge stabbing - Wikipedia says the knives were taped to his wrists. Was that done in a way that left his hands free? We don't know at this time.

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It would be pretty hard to use a knife while clenching a switch in his hand.

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You said, "The suicide vest wasn’t noticed until they were pulling people off him." Where in the video do you think you're able to tell that they noticed a suicide vest? It's not in the first 20 seconds, and you say yourself that the people piled on top obscured the view.

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And I supported my point by indicating that there were people in the way so that they couldn’t see the belt. That is visible in the video, just as I said. I don’t think you can tell exactly when they notice and never claimed that it could be seen.

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The video also doesn't show any shots being fired, and if you start watching at time 30 seconds you'll see a video taken from a bus that shows the policemen at some distance from the suspect, who, if you watch carefully, is still moving. Some part of him bobs up above the divider fencing just as the camera is panning away.

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I don’t see how that helps your point

The only sensible response - in line with the objectives and guidelines of this forum - is this: Message 726

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Tangle cut-n-pasted without attribution, and I sought out the source of his cut-n-paste and posted a link to the full Wikipedia article. Of what use would quoting from Tangle's cut-n-paste be?

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To give an accurate impression of what Tangle posted of course. The fact that you quoted material that supported your claims but not more relevant material that contradicted you is quite telling.

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I have asked time and again for evidence or testimony of where the suspect was actually shot. It's been insisted many multiple times that he must have been shot in the head, that in fact there's video showing that he was shot in the head, and that he was shot there because he was wearing what appeared to be a suicide vest. There has been no response to my repeated requests for evidence the suspect was shot in the head.

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As I stated that appeared to be where the most likely shooter was aiming, and as Tangle posted, that is the correct action when a suicide vest is present.On the other hand you presented no evidence at all for him being shot in the body, until this post.

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I have also questioned at what point the police had visual evidence that the suspect was wearing a suicide vest, and there's been no answer to that either.

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The video has evidence - which I pointed out - that shows that they were unlikely to have noticed it until they had pulled at least some of the people off of the attacker. The audio has a civilian asking if the attacker was going to set off a bomb, which may refer to the belt.From the image showing the belt, it seems to me that the officers on the spot should have noticed the belt by the time they pulled the last person off.

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I don't know why searches didn't turn this up earlier, but I have now come across an article that states where the suspect was shot, and it wasn't in the head. This is from https://www.mirror.co.uk/...ge-terrorist-bled-death-21026112:

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That would be disturbing if it turned out to be true.

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I know the suspect had already served time in prison for terrorist related activities, but the police didn't know that at the time. I know the police knew that he had attacked people with knives, but they didn't know that it was two fatally, and in fact one of them didn't die until after the suspect was killed.

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Given the nature of the attack and the location I am certain that terrorism was on their minds. This is not the first terrorist knife attack at London Bridge.

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More importantly, they can't even tell if either type of switch even exists.

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No, the important thing is it leaves no reason to think he’s holding a live deadman switch.If you were genuinely concerned with the risk of the bomb being set off that would decide it. But you aren’t you’re just determines to say that the shooting was wrong, no matter what.

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Oh, okay, I understand now that "the argument" and "it" referred to an argument you had made, not me. I was assuming the opposite. Could you please remake your point if you think it important?

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Your whole idea about the police confusing a manual detonator with a deadman switch was a daft idea you made up.

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With the knives taped to his wrists, why can't his hands be in fists?

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Because that would make it harder to use the knives.

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You can't say you never claimed the vest could be seen because you said exactly that in Message 367: "The suicide vest wasn’t noticed until they were pulling people off him." Unless I'm parsing this wrong, this says that they saw the vest after pulling off the passersby

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The point was that it wasn’t noticed earlier. Maybe they didn’t notice it until later but I think they would have noticed it by the time they pulled the last man off since it’s visible in a photo.

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That information was in support of the point that there is much that we do not know. What we have is fragmentary video from different cameras with different perspectives that might not even be arranged in the correct time order, and we have the words of police spokespeople.

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Which does not help your argument in the slightest. And, by the way, it is obvious that the videos are not a sequence.

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Given the information that the suspect was killed with multiple body shots (which should not yet be accepted as gospel, but it's from https://www.mirror.co.uk/...ge-terrorist-bled-death-21026112), it's possible he was first shot in the chest and/or body at close range, then the police retreated because they saw what looked like a suicide belt (not a vest since they were willing to take body shots), then when he continued moving (as shown in the video on the bus) they took more body shots from greater range

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In that situation the first shot seems questionable, but once the risk of an explosion is apparent, it is not clearly unreasonable to incapacitate him.

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I earlier argued that the bomb squad should have been called to help deal with the suspect, and some reports say that bomb squad vehicles were observed at the site (e.g., A total of three dead after “terror” incident at London Bridge – South London News).

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Of course they would be. If there was a chance he had a real bomb it had to be checked out, and disarmed if found.