From the BBC:
Scotland Yard said Mr Menezes, who lived in Brixton, south London, was completely unconnected to the bomb attacks and added: "For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets."
The Brazilian government has expressed its shock at the killing and Brazil's foreign minister Celso Amorim is on his way to London to get an explanation from foreign secretary Jack Straw.
In a statement the government said it "looks forward to receiving the necessary explanation from the British authorities on the circumstances which led to this tragedy".
The shooting is being investigated by officers from Scotland Yard's Directorate of Professional Standards, and will be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The family of Mr Menezes told the Brazilian media there was nothing in his past which would give him a reason to run from police.
Nothing in his past, so why did he run? Well that's a stupid question in my opinion. When the cops run after you, you run. When several armed men in plain clothes come after you, you probably run faster.
3 comments:
I'm sorry but I don't buy it. All of London is walking on eggshells, jumping at shadows, afraid that terrorists are going to attack again and this moron runs?! If a cop yells at you to stop, you think it's okay to run? I don't care if an army of cops with weapons drawn told me to stop I would not, as an innocent person, run. These police are being taught (correctly in my opinion) that the only way to neutralize a suicide bomber is to shoot them in the head and shut down their ability to detonate their bombs.
This man walks out of a building that is under surveillance with a padded jacket on and runs from police...onto a subway. Come on. The guy was an idiot. I'm sorry. I hate to talk disrespectfully of the dead, but give me a break. Let's not blame the police because the man was too dumb to survive. If I believed in evolutionary theory I believe that would be called "natural selection," but since I don't I'll just say I'm surprised he survived this long.
I guess what the problem with this situation though isn't a who's to blame thing. The police will be investigated just like any police are investigated when someone is killed, injured or talked down to without just cause. Likewise, I don't disagree that the guy was stupid, but the fact is, all people are stupid at times. They shouldn't die over it. But that's not my point either. The point of this story and why it matters is that we can't go around telling people to shoot first and ask questions later, even when a bomb going off may be the consequence. It's about control. We need to make sure that the right action is taken at the right time, and in this instance, there's nothing anyone can say that will prove to me that this falls into either of those categories. Every bomb has a detonator. If this had been an actual terrorist with an actual bomb, and they tactle and subdue the guy, he can't set the detonator. If he can, then shooting him isn't going to prevent that. If he's really intent on setting off the bomb, he'd do it the moment he felt an officer's knee in his back. So blame the guy for running, blame paranoia, but the people at fault are the police on this one. They might not, and probably shouldn't recieve full penalties, but if they don't recieve any, that's an example to every officer in every country to shoot based on suspicion. It's the very same reason why we don't target people based on race or appearance or any other non-fact based suspicion. Because that's how innocent people die.
As I said before, information on specifics is still coming out. What we need to be careful of doing though, is patting someone on the back for being a bad cop OR defending a man as innocent without any full story of the circumstances that made him run. We may never have all of either side of this story, but I think the reports should caution certain approval, just because it's based on speculation, not facts.
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