More on the Menezes Shooting
More details are emerging about the Brazilian man gunned down by authorities on a London Underground train. From The Guardian: New claims emerge over Menezes death.
Basically, the guy we were told a) emerged from an apartment that was under surveilllance because it contained dangerous Muslim radicals, b) wore a heavy winter coat with wires dangling from it, c) refused orders to stop, d) was not recorded on closed-circuit TV due to mechanical problems, e) vaulted the turnstile, and f) ran to the train with officers in hot pursuit, actually didn’t do any of those things.
Instead, he a) was not seen emerging from the suspect apartment (because the officer in question was taking a leak around the corner), b) wore a light denim coat with no wires, c) was never contacted by officers on his way to the train, d) was recorded on closed-circuit TV, e) did not vault the turnstile, but paid with his pass, and f) entered the train and took his seat (though he apparently did run at the end, presumably to catch the train), before plainclothes cops burst onto the train and shot him.
This is preliminary, being based on leaked documents from the official investigation. But it’s interesting how thoroughly the official version of events told by authorities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is being contradicted.
August 18th, 2005 at 9:15 am
I heard about this on NPR yesterday. It sounds like there were so many fuck-ups, nobody even knows who to start shaking their sticks at.
What’s I find particularly disturbing is that nobody will likely learn any lessons from this (especially on our side of the pond). People won’t realize that this is indicative that when tension is high among law enforcement, stupid shit can occur. People also won’t realize that with their new orders law enforcement has been sufficiently alienated that they have to ‘protect their own’ even further than they normally do, and file false reports to cover fuck-ups like this up. We also won’t see that this may be a product of opporitunistic governments going a little overboard in their reactions to terrorist activity…a little closer to home, what uses/abuses of USA PATRIOT Act and the Intelligence Reorganization Act of 2004 (aka Ashcroft’s PATRIOT Act 2) will have to occur to get a reaction here?