Shots Fired

[thessalian]

So a man tries to board a Tube wearing what looks like a 'bomb belt'. Not sure how much damage it'll do, not sure how it's going to be triggered. And the police chase him onto a crowded Tube train, pin him to the floor (according to the news reports dodgyhoodoo is watching) and shoot him five times.

When the almighty fuck did summary executions become a part of the justice process in this country? Besides that, it was unsafe. You do not shoot people in front of that many civilians in that enclosed a space if you can help it. He was subdued, he wasn't going to trigger anything, and if it was on a timer, well, they'd have been screwed either way. And let's not talk about what would have happened if they'd missed and hit the bomb belt ... but then again, we're assuming the shots weren't at close range, which I guess is kind of stupid. He could have been disarmed, but no one tried.

I don't even want to hear the excuses for this one.

Comments

[blimey85.livejournal.com]

Depending on the type of explosive used in the bomb belt, hitting it with a bullet may or may not have triggered it. It's all a matter of safety. You don't want something that is going to detonate if you fall down or something hits it. You want it to only detonate when you tell it to. It's like how the original dynamite ignited via a (hopefully long) fuse while in later years they switched to a type that was ignited via an electrical plunger. This type would not detonate in a fire and was much safer.

If I recall correctly, C4 won't detonate when it's hit or shot but gives you a pretty good bang for your buck when detonated properly. C4 is something that you could use in a bomb belt quite effectively.

But your main point was this, the cops were pretty stupid to shoot the guy and risk hitting the belt. I'm guessing they had a reason for shooting him. Maybe he was trying to detonate the belt. Better to kill him then have him detonate the belt and take out a lot of people and/or infrastructure.

I have no sympathy for terrorists. I don't know all of the details on this particular incident but if the person was wearing a bomb belt and the police were 100% sure that's what it was, then yea, take him out. Why waste time and money with a trial when vigilante justice can have the matter cleared up straight away? Where is your sense of vigilantism? (is that even a word? lol and if it is a word, I'm sure I spelled it wrong... but oh wells).

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

I don't believe in vigilante justice. Particularly not in a situation such as this one, for the following reasons:

1) Hot pursuit. There was no way this man had time to trigger anything with policemen breathing down his neck.
2) When he was captured, they grabbed him and had him prone. He would not have been able to trigger the explosive with several plainclothes policemen holding him down.

And even if I did believe that any man should be shot to death without a fair trial, is it remotely fair to subject a bunch of innocent public transport passengers to that sort of situation? Please recall that they shot this man in the middle of a crowded Tube carriage. If anything had gone wrong, there could have been injured or killed civilians. Even if the victim was prone and unable to defend himself and push the gun away (read: towards a bystander) before a fatal shot was fired, discharging a firearm in an enclosed space is a bad idea; that can do permanent damage to eardrums. And while thankfully no one but the terrorist in question was hurt physically, some of the passengers involved are going to bear the scars of that little bit of public vigilante justice for the rest of their lives.

I still believe in a fair trial, all major evidence presented before judgement is passed, and not subjecting innocents to vigilante justice, which our legal system has been put in place to prevent. If the police force is willing to storm into crammed public transport carriages and dispense an incredibly fearsome form of vigilante justice without any thought about the mental well-being of the people they are sworn to protect, and if they count life so cheap that they will subject someone to a nasty, violent death in a public place as some kind of object lesson, what makes them better than the terrorists?

[fearmeforiampink]

From what I read of the report, he was aware of the police, and that they were after him. If they had shot him while he was running, that would seem much more reasonable, because as far as they were concerned he could trigger it at any time, but I agree that with him prone the shooting seems unneccessary.

[lokean.livejournal.com]

You're assuming the worst case scenario though; the truth of the matter could be less awful than you've made it out to be.

The choice to fire may well have been precipitated because the victim was not restrained properly and was in a position to detonate the presumed bomb. The witness statements provided don't say that he was restrained, they say that he was thrown to the ground and leapt on; is it not plausible that the officers in question believed, in good faith, that the subject was in a position to detonate an explosive device on the crowded train (seeing as this has been the MO so far)? Police aren't trained for this sort of thing as a general rule, I would think. Why assume it was a 'summary execution' rather than a panicked and misguided attempt to prevent greater harm?

Of course, the witness statements don't actually say that policemen shot the victim. The witness statements say that police in uniform were telling people to get down and that three people in plainclothes chased the man and shot him, possibly repeatedly (numbers vary from one to five). It's possible that the plainclothes pursuers weren't actually police at all, Special Forces or S19 might have been involved.

It's apalling that a man was shot by, presumably, government agents of some sort, but things are still vague enough that there are interpretations that are less bad than others. Given the possibility of the man being capable of detonating an explosive device when they bore him to the floor I'd prefer the people pursuing him were intending to shoot him in the head until dead rather than letting him blow up a crowded tube train... Excuses are pretty pointless when there's a man dead on the floor, but there are possible situations where killing a man was the lesser of two evils.

[gf2e.livejournal.com]

I'm uncomfortable with police shooting people, but if a bomb has a triggering mechanism and detonator attached, it really only takes a second to press a button and trigger it. Something like this:
http://www.swatheadsets.com/PTT/ptt2.html
(Specifically, PTT RP7)
...would be pretty easy to make yourself. I don't know how you stop somebody with a trigger like that from pressing the button.

I'm withholding judgement until I hear more details. If the police knew that he had a bomb belt on, and he refused to stop, it starts to sound like their actions may have been justified. If he simply didn't stop, then clearly this was a ridiculous over-reaction.

[lokean.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd say it was justified even then. Warranted, perhaps but to say it is justified is to imply that it was, ethically, the right thing to do. Tactically and reasonably it might have been right to shoot the victim but, personally, I cannot even begin to consider it just to kill somebody in anything resembling those circumstances. Not that I wouldn't do it, if the alternative was the possibility of killing many people I had promised to protect and injuring many more. I wouldn't think it was right though, I'd think it was wrong but necessary.

[gf2e.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. My choice of words was poor. What I really meant was, "I would not be calling for the prosecution of somebody under those circumstances."

It's hard for me to really argue nuanced levels of right, justified, warranted, etc. without much more detailed scenarios. Small details can change things enormously.

I think the biggest problem is the level of certainty. It's fairly easy to speculate about what to do if you KNOW that somebody has a properly wired up bomb. It's a lot harder to decide what to do when you're, for example, 90% sure they do.

As I mentioned, I am uncomfortable with what I've heard, but I'm not ready to support or condemn anything until I hear more facts. Regardless of the facts, I am sad that somebody died, and I am disappointed that they were not able to be questioned by the police.

[nightskywarlock.livejournal.com]

even so, there's a thing called a dead man switch.

his thumb (for instance) is on a button. if he presses, for instance when he spots the police, the mechanism arms. he releases, for instance when they kill him, instant detonate.

yes, i have thought about this far too much.

[(Anonymous)]

As I do not know all the facts its hard to make any comment but 5 shoots to the head while on the ground seems excessive to say the least. As the lady notes thats one hell of a justice process. Having said that it would be interesting to know what type of gun was used; semi-auto, full-auto, type of triger etc and most important who was behind the gun. Your normal beat-bobby, SB, or military. What is very important is that an independent body investigate the incident and that their finding be made public. And pigs will fly.

Sillen

The facts have come out...

[msgeek.livejournal.com]

...and the poor soul shot by cops was a BRAZILIAN TOURIST.

Put yourself in his shoes. You don't speak English, you speak Portuguese. Maybe you know a few phrases of English but not the right ones to understand what the cops are shouting at you. The cops are in plainclothes, not uniform. One of them has their gun out.

You freak. You think this is a gang of thugs who want to rob you. You take off running. The cops are in hot pursuit. Their adrenaline is high. To them, you are a swarthy guy wearing a big coat which probably is hiding explosives.

I am from Los Angeles. I expect this shit from the LAPD and the LA County Sheriff's Department. Not from Scotland Yard. I understand that a contingent of anti-terror "experts" from LASD visited Scotland Yard after the 7/7 bombing. They were on a plane going home when the abortive second round of bombings happened last Thursday. I wonder if there was any connection with the LASD advising the London police and this tragedy.

Auntie Beeb has the details...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4711021.stm

Re: The facts have come out...

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, saw that. Hate to think that bulky clothes, an easy mistake to make in a country whose weather changes radically in the space of three minutes, is a sign that you're a terrorist...