uk+kiwi

I think that if any of you were there in London on Friday in the situation that the policemen were faced with, you only have one option - to fire. Any other option would show lack of judgement given history of what is going on in London at the moment. HOWEVER, I would have thought shooting to bring down was preferable to shooting to kill, although I'm not a firing expert so am not sure whether that was an option or not. Plus, who would then want to approach the victim personally to check him out phsically???

The police HAVE to act for the potential good of the MAJORITY. Of course all involved will be deeply saddened by what has happened, especially those that fired the bullets, but what choice was there really? Unless we actually want London to shutdown and the economy collapse overnight . My OH and several friends work in the city, and I am telling you second hand that it is not somewhere anyone actually wants to go to at the moment!

let's hope that's the end of it - please God -

CitySimon

It was an analogy. I am sorry for the loss of your cat. The guy who ran him over was clearly a heartless git.

krizzy

I know.......

My cat was killed 25 years ago.......I'm over it now.......

But thank you for your kind words.......

anotherlimey

Just to clarify....

There is no way you can shoot to disable a suicide bomber, there is no "sweet spot" you can hit which disables someone temporarily.

If they had used another method of brining him down, he could - if he was a suicide bomber - have set off his explosives.

fatbrit

In that case #2 should conclude that it was an act of god and is unlikely to occur again so there is no need to take any action.

krizzy

I was just reading this....

1: Jean Charles de Menezes leaves a house under surveillance and arrives at Stockwell station
2: Witnesses say he vaults the automatic ticket barriers and heads for the platforms
3: He then ran down an escalator after being approached by up to 20 plain-clothed police officers and tried to board a train
4: He apparently refuses to obey police instructions and after running onto a northbound Northern line train, he is shot dead.

No matter how I try to see other peoples points of view....because I would change my mind if I thought the cops were in the wrong.......I can't see how they could of done anything else.....

anotherlimey

In the lounge forum people want to know why this house was under surveillance. I guess all the facts will come out soon enough.

Manc

Fine him £50 for getting on the train without a ticket and then deport him back to Brazil for being an illegal alien.

Lion in Winter

Perhaps they could have detained him quietly on the street and checked him out at some point during the miles they followed him from his home and before he boarded a train?

Franklin

Hindsight reconstruction is a great and wonderful thing.

What happened was clearly wrong and correct at the same time.

These are challenging times. There will be terrible mistakes, terrible tragedies, friendly fire, innocents like that Brazilian man killed, but such things are bound to happen in such challenging times. It goes without saying, but perhaps we should recap, that the true criminals here are the bombers.

The police are not superhuman and don't have the power to analyze the true intent of a person running away from them into a tube station after the person was ordered to stop.

The Police are doing their utmost to protect everyone from the bombers and in the few seconds that they have to make such appalling but necessary decisions, they WILL MAKE MISTAKES. They are human too. God Bless their cotton socks.

anotherlimey

They probably wanted to see where he was going first, but once he went towards the tube station they decided to apprehend him.

Guelder Rose

How can you detain someone quietly and check him out when he may be concealing a bomb and be prepared to take his own life?

It is certainly true that it is tragic that this man's life was taken, but his own actions led to what took place. I wonder how the police officer involved must be feeling now, it cannot be easy to live with the fact that you have killed someone who it then turns out was not a suicide bomber.

I also wonder why it seems to make such a huge difference as to how many shots were fired. The first shot was more than likely fatal, so the subsequent shots did not really make any difference to the final outcome.

I feel very sad that this type of killing had to happen in England, but then again I don't see how else the police can act in such a situation ... to hesitate to act could have resulted in other lives being taken if this man had indeed been a suicide bomber.

There are no easy answers .... and hindsight doesn't help.

Guelder Rose

Very true .... well said!

CitySimon

I read on BBC that they had found an address within the block of flats on a piece of paper in one of the backpacks.

krizzy

Very nicely put.......