anotherlimey

Harold Fish probably went to jail because he used hollow points, a very sad case; the prosecutor said:

"Mr. Fish shot him three time in the chest with this high powered gun, hollow point bullets and caused his death. That’s murder."

Right, because if he used a .22 with jacketed bullets that wouldn't be as bad.

One of the jurors:

"The whole hollow point thing bothered me. That bullet is designed to do as much damage as absolutely possible. It’s designed to kill."

Okachickima

In early press reports supposed witnesses on the street described how he fled in terror into the subway station pursued by plainclothes officers who were shouting to him to stop. Then the video revealed he was walking casually and stopped to pick up a newspaper. A good reminder of the unreliability of eyewitnesses, or at least of people who claim to reporters to be witnesses.

BritGuyTN

and FMJ is designed to bruise...

Dogbyte

Now you know what the Police have to put with, having to justifyand/or deny stories from 'witnesses' that bear no resemblance to the actual truth.

Roland Hulme

There wasn't time for a high court ruling in the .5 seconds that the police had to decide whether to shoot or not.

Presumably, they were convinced he was a danger. I'm sure British policemen would never shoot ANYBODY unless they felt 100% that it was the only course of action open to them.

After all, have you got any idea of paperwork they'd have to fill in afterwards?

snowbunny

Yes, but they too must acknowledge that they are susceptible to the fallibility of observation. The part of the process that seems to have broken down was the mis-identification of de Menezes as Osman. When you read that one of the officers in charge was "relieving himself" at the time de Menezes left his flat, that means that there'd better have been a back up while said officer was on break. What a shitty reason to die, just because someone needed to take a leak!

Dogbyte

The process of i.d ing someone from scant information has always and will continue to be a problem. In most circumstances, if it involved any other type of crime, time and other methods could be used and would have assisted in the verification.In this case, it involved terrorism from unknown and unpredictable assailants.Their true nature was one of killing innocent people without thoughts for themselves. It can be easy to criticize the obs man, with good reason, which I accept should not have happened without someone else taking over the obs.This was a major blunder but it happened.

snowbunny

Without a positive id they shouldn't have killed him. This is what I can't accept, along with the propaganda that was put out to the press about his dress style, him running, etc. If they'd felt they were justified in the shooting, why put out all of the lies?

Dogbyte

I agree in principle with what you say, but as has been said,confusion, lack of info, pressure to make sure nothing like previous incidents, occur again.As for the difference in information after the fact that again goers to lack of solid information so stories are made to suit someones ideas.Jumping the gun so to speak(no pun intended).The craving of both the press and public to have as much information as soon as possible.To see if there is a blame game.If the Senior officers of the Met had have just come out and said."This is a serious incident and we cannot comment until all the facts are known".That would have put a 'lid' on it for a while,(a couple of days) so proper info could later be released. Foot, mouth comes to mind and has done on many occasions involving Senior officers and crime enquiries.