The de Menezes fiasco

Yep, its not the mistakes but the coverups that ought to destroy public confidence. Yet officialdom never seems to understand that – and what still ceases to amaze me is that so many punters not only tolerate official lies but will willingly swallow the next lot without question.

The editorials ought to be absolutely scathing – the journos, after all, were the ones who were lied to in the first place.

“Is it the case that noone in the UK seems to be calling for possible prosecution of the police officers involved? Is there just some presumption about the virtuousness of the London police?”

Well until now we were all reserving judgement, but on the information now available it seems hard to believe that they won’t be prosecuted – we don’t need to call for it because there is automatically an investigation, an investigation that is currently ongoing, and presumably where these documents came from.

Although we all know how dodgy Met officers can be you can hardly blame us for being surprised they’d be quite so callous with human life.

A cascade of blatant lies from the very top down — from Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair to the trigger-happy plain-clothes CO19/SO19 officers — have now been exposed as a cover-up of an horrific catalogue of failures that led to the police-murder of an innocent Brazilian man at Stockwell Underground station.

No doubt plenty more lies about 7/7, 21/7 and 22/7 will emerge over time but already there is enough to hold a wide variety of authorities to account for the gross errors of judgement that resulted in the murder of an innocent man.

Further details of the specifics of the lies and cover-up.

“Speaking at a news conference this afternoon, Sir Ian said the man had been challenged by officers shortly after 10am and was shot after failing to comply…He was then followed by surveillance officers to the station. His clothing and his behaviour at the station added to their suspicions.”

Ray, I can see that some of what the police said at the time was misleading to say the least, if not factually incorrect, but all this hysteria about a cover up is overblown when the story we were told was pieced together by the media themselves. They can hardly get indignant now.

Some of the things about what he was wearing and whether he jumped the barrier that later came out via de Menezes’ family were apparently told to them by the police themselves.

Liar.

If the facts that have been leaked to the media since yesterday and last night’s Newsnight report was at all accurate then it would seem a pretty good case could be made for murder against the officer(s) who fired the fatal shots.

And the way the story was presented to the media by the police on the day of the shooting looks like inexcusable propaganda.

rs – Apologies. For some reason I read that the other way around as the police (and hence the media) being told that by the de Menzes’ family. Actually, I think there may be some specific reasons for jumping on you like that:

1) I’ve had far too little sleep

2) I’ve had far too little coffee

3) I’ve become far too inured to the most ridiculous and illogical of what passes for arguments by Republicans and their enablers that it’s become a reflex to anticipate the latest in their endless streams of phantastical talking points.

If the facts that have been leaked to the media since yesterday and last night’s Newsnight report was at all accurate then it would seem a pretty good case could be made for murder against the officer(s) who fired the fatal shots.

Evening Standard (or at least, the lunchtime “Standard Lite” edition) says that they will be.

At the time this reminded me of a shooting in 1982/3? in Kensington High Street when police stopped a car belonging to someone who shared a name with a notorious criminal (a very common name) and shot him 26 times (or something like that). He was, in fact, a BBC employee of some sort (I think) and, amazingly, survived (again, I think). I don’t remember what happened to those cops, but I don’t think anyone resigned, and I don’t think there were prosecutions. Does anyone have the details on this?

How the hell did you do that, chris?

Maybe you would like to know how the De Menezes case impacts the brazilian blogsphere.

From the beggining, brazilian conservative bloggers blamed De Menezes for his own death, and thought that the mistake was justifiable as an incident in the “war on terrorism”. There was no space for details _ for example, if the Met was lying or not.

The most progressive-minded bloggers _ myself included _ see the incident as an outsourcing of terror by Al-Qaeda _ and sadly it seems that the Met acted as their franchise. I think this must be put in context, and the big picture is that of Britain´s participation in the Iraq War.

Of course there is path-dependency here: once Tony Blair took the decision that UK (a country with an appreciable stake of muslim immigrants) should participate in the war, you got some hot-potatoes in your hands and now you have some hard decisions to make. Notwhitstanding, you clearly have also a right to defend the innocent population from terrorist attack. One only hopes that all this mess can be useful as a lesson to be learned on the future of the transatlantic alliance of Britain with the USA.

Sorry for the large comment.

==> Yep, its not the mistakes but the coverups that ought to destroy public confidence.

No, I think any form of extra-judicial killings should give us the heeby-jeebies.

==> But I think it is right to concentrate more on the supervisors than the men who pulled the trigger.

I can imagine Germaine Greer taking the same line – “these were just poor working class boys! This is the w-o-o-o-orst thing I have e-e-e-e-e-ver heard!”.

==> Stephen Waldorf was shot instead of David Martin in 1983.

Was he not coming out of his girlfriend’s house at the time? It was lucky he wasn’t stark naked in bed; he might not have survived.

==> Can’t believe you paused to pick up the Standard Lite, Daniel.

Rather like Maxine Carr *lying* about being with her mother in Grimsby, of all places. Who the flippin’ ‘eck would do that?

==> Some of the things about what he was wearing and whether he jumped the barrier that later came out via de Menezes’ family were apparently told to them by the police themselves.

I’m still convinced that came from members of the public, who quite likely did see someone (e.g. a police-officer) vault over barrier. Not that C.C. Blair did owt to dispell the mistruth.

==> If this isn’t another round of misinformation, the guy’s family should sue until they own the London PD.

I’m sure London, Alabama will be surprised when that happens.

Just listened to a Radio 4 interview with the crime correspondent for the Mirror talking about how the media got it so wrong originally (note they didn’t interview anyone from the BBC) – as far as I could tell his argument was that the police should have told them that what they were saying wasn’t true, that they got it off the news wires so presumably someone somewhere had good sources, and that you have to trust eye-witnesses (even though you know they can be unreliable).

Sounds like a pretty poor set of excuses to me, I think the media are dodging their responsibility for this one. But what is really scary is how little actual work seems to be done by the news organisations to check the veracity of events, where things slide from ‘a witness says such and such’ to ‘such and such happened’ a few days later, with no apparent attempt to follow up these witnesses to get a more coherent picture. That, and the rapidity with which a news wire source can become accepted fact as all the outlets run it. We are in the age of truth by consensus.

What I found interesting about the PM piece was that the axiom that truth is the first casualty of war does *not* mean it is bend out of malfeasance.

>> I’d like an appology from the nice folks who called me an idiot for arguing that this was a pretty obvious case of massive over-reaction by the police and that the explinations for it showed more irrational fear of darkies than good sense, please.

I have no doubt you were as traumatized as the de Menenzes family: there, there, I apobogeyize. You might be setting yourself up for some chutzpah-pies, there. I’m sure there have been times when you’ve dug in your heels, and found yourself completely and utterly and horribly wrong. Humility, man, humility.

I don’t know what you said at the time, I can only speak of some of the peeps whom I had a spat with on the subject. They used speculation and conjecture and the information which has just been disproved to damn the police (e.g. he was indeed wearing a puffer jacket but, hey, he wasn’t accustomed to London temperatures; he did indeed vault the barrier, but was probably running late). These prats, also, by the way blame Bliar directly for the London bombings. So, so I won’t apologize to you if you made preposterous connexions and were right only by coincidence.

Off-topic: the italic in “myself included” is not the fruit of emphasis but of an unintended use of hyphens creating, somehow, italics.

a …catalogue of incompetence?

it looks every day a lot more like a criminal racist act.

…they should resign?

What about prosecuted and jailed?

I admit it, my immediate thought was that there were damn good reasons for the shooting – after all, why not drag him down the nick for a good thrashing? So even if it were to turn out to be mistaken identity, I would have been able to better cope with this thought that it was a tragic mistake. As I remember, on the 21st and 22nd armed police challenged several other individuals. None were shot. However, a mistake though it’s turned out to be, tragic it ain’t. Monumental stupidity verging on criminal negligence now springs to mind.

You’ve read me wrong, though. As much as owt else, I have changed my opinion based on new evidence. They remain prats and not at all clever. I could throw a ball, which you catch despite not having an appreciation of the calculus of determining the resulting parabola. They arrived at their opinions based on prejudice, with little critical thought. Go back and re-read that which you took the scissors and glue to. They accepted the reports in the media as much as I did; it was just that they attached tales of increasing fantasy to them. Double think bloomed. On one hand, he spoke no English so did not understand the police’s challenge; then he spoke perfect English, but didn’t hear the challenge (if it came).

Nothing was going to please ‘em. Remember the talk of “lop-sided” security focused on Scotland six weeks ago. Heaven forfend that they blame the bombers! In their febrile minds, everything traces back to Tony “the knuckles” Blair (as well as a inchoate guilt that it was they who‘d attracted the spooks’ attention).

It’s very nice to engage in coffee-shop sociological discussions as to why four boys from Leeds decided to bomb their countrymen, but you cannot refuse to discuss the reasons for the Stockwell shooting without belying your motives. Violence begets violence. Whether or not the perpetrators of the London bombings were radicalised by our nation’s revolting role in Iraq, there was no justification for the bombings. One result was to put the country on tenterhooks, culminating in the police firing wildly at someone who bore the barest resemblance to a suspect. Violence begets violence. Anyone who attempts to *justify* the bombings but refuses to even *explain* the shooting becomes, in my opinion, little more than an apologist for the bombings.

Out of interest, how is Marie Fatyati-Williams getting on?

You haven’t addressed Matt’s original post. I’ll speak plainly about him, as irony seems to have passed you by. A wholely innocent man is dead, and his immediate reaction was self-aggrandizement. Ha! I woz rite & u woz wrong. Extremely distasteful.

Procrastinator,
Actually, it was quite clear that a wholly inocent man was dead as soon as this happend. I was quite upset about it. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, even if all the things said were true, this was a pretty big screw-up brought on by a fear of darkies by those with guns and that this whole “we must destroy the brain!” bit was nonsense brougth on by those who didn’t want to feel bad about it. For saying that I was called an idiot. All I was saying was, I was right about this, and those calling the names were wrong. My feeling awful for this guy and his family started long ago and goes on, so please calm yourself down a bit.

this was a pretty big screw-up brought on by a fear of darkies by those with guns […] For saying that I was called an idiot. All I was saying was, I was right about this, and those calling the names were wrong.

Matt, I hate to say it – and I wasn’t one of the ones calling you names before – but the guy who got shot wasn’t dark-skinned. The Guardian got that little detail wrong because it fit their preconceived biases and their readers believed it because it fit theirs too.

There are some pictures of the guy and his family in this
CNN story. He’s as caucasian as I am, Brazilian nationality notwithstanding

Spare a thought for the conspiracy theorists. How can one have faith if irrefutable proof keeps appearing. A least they can cling to the story that the person who did the murder/execution/unfortunate-occurrence was a Mossad agent. Fingers crossed and this _wont_ turn out to be the case.

So, having brown hair now makes one “a darkie” and “a standard issue scary Muslim terrorist”?

No wonder I keep getting searched at the airport! :-)

The picture in the article Chris linked is better lit – scroll halfway down the page to see it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4157892.stm

Does that guy really look like a Muslim terrorist to you? Does “darkie” apply in any way? He looks vaguely european to me. Although, being an American, I’m not entirely sure what “a ginger bloke” is supposed to look like…

Does that guy really look like a Muslim terrorist to you?

Nope, but he’s dark enough to pass for Muslim, if that’s what you’re expecting to see. I live in Bethnal Green, and there are plenty of Muslim kids in my block who aren’t any darker than de Menezes. I think that people who say he was shot because he’s a “darkie” are basically just taking “darkie” and shifting its meaning to mean “dark enough to pass for Muslim”, which opens it up to a much broader spectrum of skin colours, eg any southern European. I’d be wary of their cries of racism, but his colour was one of the combination of factors that led to the police shooting him. It would not have happened to your bog standard pasty-faced English white boy.

As for “ginger bloke”, have a gander at Malcolm Glazer (if you dare).

What with all this fascinating discussion of at what point of tan-ness one can be considered dark-skinned, I forget whether the whole cover-up accusation was ever settled. Anyway, if the below article is accurate, it seems pretty irrefutable that there were attempts to avoid an external inquiry, which look an awful lot like a cover-up:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1551340,00.html
It’s not clear how much Sir Ian Blair knew when he made the claims Chris refers to in his post. But it does seem clear that he tried to keep the details of the shooting quiet. I think that, under the circumstances, it might be appropriate for him to resign. And I think that, if it emerges that he not only tried to avoid external investigation, but also knowingly misled the public, he should definitely resign.

Nope, but he’s dark enough to pass for Muslim, if that’s what you’re expecting to see

You don’t even need to be dark skinned – I find a black beard enough to give me hassle.

Ray, the suspicious clothing bit was, I believe, in Blair’s statement quite soon after the event, and he referred to something like it being his understanding that his clothing and behaviour aroused suspicion or somesuch, the police never elaborated on it.

Whether in the second link she was referring to an off the record comment (and I don’t know, how do you?), the first link was from their press conference following their meeting with the Met, so can hardly be considered off the record, in that they say the police confirmed that he was not wearing a bulky jacket and didn’t jump the barrier.

“Relatives say Met admits that, contrary to reports, electrician did not leap tube station barrier…Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday. Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police…”

Anything else is superfluous because I was only referring to the jacket and barrier claims, and whether it was the police that made them. I can just about buy the argument that it was unnaceptable for the police to have let unsubstantiated claims that they knew not to be true to be repeated by the press, but why does everyone need to believe that every single false claim was part of an evil police cover-up, even to the extent of having to explain away all contrary pieces of evidence, isn’t the fact that they shot the guy without good reason bad enough without having to have your conspiracy theory confirmed exactly?

from my memory of the Guardian coverage it was clear that the family were talking about things that unnamed individual officers had told them.

You are, if I may say, making that up. They do not identify who told them, that is true. But the do not in any way suggest that this was some secret information supplied to them surreptitiously by a police officer (which seems to be what you’re implying), having, in both cases, just met with the police (in an official capacity), they then repeat what the police have told them, saying that the police told them.

Granted the police did not then hold a press conference saying that they had indeed said that to the de Menezes family (or deny it), and they also did not retract the claim that he was dressed/acting suspiciously, a claim made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when they realised they’d shot an innocent man. You can say that this was bad, but it is not the same thing as denying that the police told the de Menezes family, in, as far as I can tell, an official capacity, that he was not wearing a bulky coat and didn’t jump the barrier.

The fact that they shot a guy for no good reason is bad. The fact that they tried to cover it up – by trying to stop an investigation, before you ask – is also bad. I don’t see why I should limit myself to complaining about one of the two.

Well I agree there. But that is not what I was objecting to, I was objecting to the refusal to even countenance the idea that the primary source for the idea that he wore a bulky jacket and jumped the barrier was the press, and the refusal to accept that the police did tell the truth to the de Menezes family, even if Blair did initially give a misleading impression of de Menezes’ clothing and behaviour.

I give up now, I was just trying to correct a question of fact, but it seems to matter too much to people, and I hate the bloody police so defending them, in however limited a sense, leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

DARREN >> Fingers crossed and this wont turn out to be the case.

I heard that it was Ariel Sharon.

MATT >> I was quite upset about it.

Upset? As upset as I am by the tens of thousands dead in Iraq, or worse; rolling and thrashing on the ground like an injured werewolf? Will you now call for a minute silence… no, your grief is too potent for that… let’s have two. Let’s have David Beckham wear a red t-shirt and “score” one for however_you_pronounce_his_name.

I’m sorry, but unless you are a family member, quit your histrionics. This is the Internet, there are nooks much nastier than CT. Just how vitriolic was the name-calling? If you had called on those beastly people to apologize to the de Menezes family for suggesting their son had done something to court his death, you would have had a point. But you didn’t. You were upset that you had been offended.

Yes, I admit I gave the Met the benefit of the doubt, but no matter how far inwards my toes are curling, I feel much better than the de Menezes family. Have you never made a political misjudgement? Voted for Labour in 2001, maybe? Those who swallowed the initial story, and used it to the cudgel the Met, were wrong and remain idiots. Remember when we were swithering desperately at the thought Tony Blair might have been right and justice was being brought to Iraq (oh, how long ago was that!); a column stated that if you get on the wrong train all subsequent stations are equally wrong, no matter how familiar they look. These peeps got on the wrong train.

>> It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, even if all the things said were true, this was a pretty big screw-up

That it would have been a mistake to shoot someone wearing a puffer jacket with wires trailing out, and carrying a knapsack, running across a platform to a crowded train while shouting “lalalalalalala!” – all one day after attempted bombings, and a fortnight after actual bombings. Yes, shooting him would have been a balls-up. Please, confirm my suspicions about you and say “we don’t need police” or “I wouldn’t mind if they acted within the law, but failed to prevent a bombing” and put me out of my misery.

Within a few hours, I was feel distinctly uneasy, especially in the face of better structured arguments that Serina Blair’s circumlocutory talk was pointing to a very nasty truth. Those peeps got on the right train, and were right. I have respect for them; I do not have an iota of respect for the other argument.

>> brought on by a fear of darkies

Oh, please, he looks less a “darkie” than a large section of the British population. His hair is darker than mine, but my features are more semitic and I have a dark beard. Like RS, this has given me hassle in the street (although, not yet from SO19). Just as your call for an apobogey was ill-placed, any attempt to appropriate this as an attack on the Muslim community (sic.) is equally ill-placed..

There. I hope I haven’t made you cry.

I rarely watch the ITV news but today it is covered in the story that the Police are claiming no CCTV footage at all from Stockwell station on the day in question was available (from about 10 cameras) so couldn’t be passed to the IPCC due to a technical hitch BUT the staff at Stockwell station say the CCTV was working fine on the day – the BBC do not even give this story a mention and the BBC also insist on saying that de Menezes was shot because he was ‘mistaken for a suicide bomber’ (like it is a fact), maybe he was shot because the powers that be decided that ‘somebody’ would be shot that day as a message to the potential bombers….just maybe…so until the inquiry concludes then the BBC should not be reporting as fact the reasons he was shot.