Mistakes Led to Tube Shooting

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All I can say, is my sun (4years old) is so tan compared to his ass, that if he did not look so much like me, I would wonder where he came from. He is so TAN, he does not look white at all.

:wink:
 
180px-Menezes.jpg


This guy looks Asian?? :scratch:
 
Can anybody see the side by side comparison I posted (the second picture)? The picture of Menezes keeps disappearing so it looks like I posted two pictures of Osman without explanation. :huh:
 
That's a valid point. It is certainly wrong to assume that police are racist. These days so many stories are in the news about profiling and such, and profiling does happen. Still, it's grossly unfair to accuse every cop of being racist.
 
Like a lot of people, de Menezes looks like he might belong to any one of a dozen or so ethnic groups. In defense of the notion that he "looks Asian," I will say that from my own experience traveling in Central Asia, he does indeed resemble a certain type of face that you frequently see there. However, it's a kind of face that you're just as likely to see in many parts of Europe, Latin America and the Middle East...

The wording of the article meegannie linked to is perhaps relevant:

The documents suggest one of the officers watching the flats was relieving himself as Mr de Menezes left the building at 9.30am and failed to identify him or switch on video equipment. He alerted other officers to check whether he was a suspect. Another plain-clothes officer followed the Brazilian electrician and was unable to identify him as the suspect but said he had "distinctive Mongolian eyes".

Mr de Menezes caught a bus to Stockwell Tube station and by 10am firearms officers had been given "positive identification" he was a suspect. It remains unclear how this "positive identification" came about.
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Originally posted by VertigoGal
My dad's whole side of the family are white-ass Jews, and his sister is so dark...she could pass for black in summer.
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A lot of Jewish families are like that. Genetics isn't like mixing paints; what you get won't necessarily resemble a "blend." I get "Huh, you don't look Jewish" all the time because of my red hair and green eyes, which always makes me smile--having been to Israel, I've seen firsthand that we come in every skin, hair and eye color of the rainbow. 2000+ years of diaspora will do that to your gene pool...
 
:rolleyes:

Jesus, did I say all cops were racist? No. Go back and reread what I said.

And I think further posts back up my assertion that there was a racial basis for this poor guy being tailed. If he were as white as some of you claim, he would not have been suspected of being of middle-eastern heritage.

If you read accounts of police shootings of innocent and/or unarmed people, you will find that many, many of them are people of color. If that makes some of you defensive or uncomfortable, then you'll have to work that out. :shrug:
 
Well martha, the guy does look really white from the pictures. That's why I have such a hard time believing they could positively ID him as the suspect. It makes no sense. I absolutely agree that in many cities colored people experience a higher rate of police brutality, and it's wrong. There's no evidence that racism had anything to do with this case though.

If he was more Middle Eastern looking and was shot, would you say that's racism? Or would you say it was a result of the police wrongly identifying him as someone else, one factor in that being that they had identical skintones?
 
VertigoGal said:
There's no evidence that racism had anything to do with this case though.
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"Mongolian eyes" suggests otherwise. And pictues don't tell the whole story. I realize that no one here was there, but there has been a pattern in law enforcement of the kind of behavior I'm talking about.


VertigoGal said:

If he was more Middle Eastern looking and was shot, would you say that's racism? Or would you say it was a result of the police wrongly identifying him as someone else, one factor in that being that they had identical skintones?
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I think that racial issues led to the misidentification.
 
A_Wanderer said:
Well I guess that the reactive law enforcement is the best way to go to fight terror.
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Kill'em all, let God sort 'em out. :up:



A_W, you may be able to accept an innocent man's death as merely the price to pay for a "safer" world, but I'd prefer a police force that doesn't let fear and bad detective work rule the decision-making process.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
Well I guess that the reactive law enforcement is the best way to go to fight terror.
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Is this the old 'sometimes we have to sacrifice little freedoms to protect greater ones' argument?

Seems to me this is a very convenient argument for governments to use in their agenda to ever increase their size and expand their powers over private citizens, families and businesses. Given that you are a libertarian I am surprised you don't see this.
 
martha said:
I think that racial issues led to the misidentification.
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I agree, does anyone honestly believe that if this guy was white he would have been shot? Get real, people!
 
martha said:

I think that racial issues led to the misidentification.
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Race, like many other factors, would obviously play a role in identifying a person. I don't think that's racism if it's not abused, and I know it is. What I think really needs to be addressed here is what procedures exactly the police used for "positively" IDing a person.."slanty eyes" isn't good enough.
 
financeguy said:



I agree, does anyone honestly believe that if this guy was white he would have been shot? Get real, people!
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(assuming the guy was darker, and not as white as he looked in that pic)

Someone with white skin, flaming red hair, and freckles for example would be hard to mistake for the suspect. Since the suspect was Middle Eastern, would it also be fair to say "does anyone honestly think he would've been shot if he were black?"
 
Lack of training, perhaps some unconscious bias, adreneline running, uncharted territory.

An innocent man dies. Mistakes get made.

But when the police try to blame the victim, it's an indication they find the mistakes acceptable. They should never be acceptable.
 
Wow, what a mess. With all of this new information, it's obvious the police made a fatal mistake. But that the department then goes and tries to cover it up and place the blame on the victim is, as BonosSaint said, unacceptable. There's nothing like someone who thinks they're above the law. :rolleyes:

Out of curiousity, wasn't there an incident similar to this a few years ago? A Scottish guy with a table leg was mistaken for an Irish guy with a gun, and shot on site.
 
financeguy said:
Is this the old 'sometimes we have to sacrifice little freedoms to protect greater ones' argument?

Seems to me this is a very convenient argument for governments to use in their agenda to ever increase their size and expand their powers over private citizens, families and businesses. Given that you are a libertarian I am surprised you don't see this.
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Given the finely honed sarcasm of that statement that is exactly the point that I was highlighting. Domestic security can only go so far before innocent people are killed and we loose our freedoms (and the CCTV that was around before is an example of that), every time that it is argued that to fight Islamist terror the culture of Jihadism must be broken down the retort is that terror should be fought like other criminal acts with heavy increases in domestic security; this is a reactive measure and it will never be 100% effective in stopping terror. If "homeland security" is maximised then there will be a lot more "mistakes" made.

No need for CCTV, national ID cards, biometric scanners all over the place. A few simple measures could do a lot more good ~ things like conductors on trams, turnstyles on buses and bag inspections with right of refusal. Yes there is a balance between security and liberty and for the marginal increase in security that the governments are offering from major trade offs in liberties it is just not worth it.
Originally posted by martha
Kill'em all, let God sort 'em out. :up:

A_W, you may be able to accept an innocent man's death as merely the price to pay for a "safer" world, but I'd prefer a police force that doesn't let fear and bad detective work rule the decision-making process.
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Is that what I said? Again I reiterate this is exactly what we should expect from reactive security measures, the greatest part of the war on Islamism is overseas through espionage, economic, political and military power not sitting around waiting for attacks to happen.
An innocent man was murdered; I cannot accept the mistakes that made this possible. I can accept that shooting somebody 7 times in the head is a shoot to kill policy. I cannot abide the deception and misinformation from the police following the killing, I could understand mistakes in eyewitness testimony but when they had acess to the cameras that covered the damn station and were running the operation information like jumping the turnstyle, wearing a winter coat and those initial reports about wires sticking out of the jacket were apparently all wrong.

Shoot to kill policy for a suicide bomber ~ fine. Lacking an effective system of checks and balances to prevent killings like this ~ fucking criminal.
 
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DaveC said:
Do I need to post the pictures again?

HE WAS WHITE.
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Yeah I've seen them. He was not of Anglo-Saxon appearance which is what we generally mean by white in this part of the world.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
Given the finely honed sarcasm of that statement that is exactly the point that I was highlighting. Domestic security can only go so far before innocent people are killed and we loose our freedoms (and the CCTV that was around before is an example of that), every time that it is argued that to fight Islamist terror the culture of Jihadism must be broken down the retort is that terror should be fought like other criminal acts with heavy increases in domestic security; this is a reactive measure and it will never be 100% effective in stopping terror. If "homeland security" is maximised then there will be a lot more "mistakes" made.
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Ok, I understand now the argument you are making.
 
LONDON (Reuters) - London's police chief on Sunday defended his handling of the fatal shooting of a Brazilian electrician by his officers, insisting he still believed the dead man was a suicide bomber 24 hours after the killing.

Ian Blair, Britain's most senior policeman, also suggested news media were concentrating too much on the shooting rather than the deadly suicide bombings police were investigating when they mistakenly killed 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes.

Blair has come under heavy pressure over the July 22 shooting on an underground train. Leaked documents from the investigation into the case last week exposed blunders and cast doubt on initial accounts from police and witnesses.

The shooting took place with the capital on edge, the day after a failed attempt to repeat suicide bombings by four British Muslims which killed 52 people two weeks earlier.

"The key component was that at that time -- and for the next 24 hours -- I and everybody who advised me believed the person who was shot was a suicide bomber," Blair told the News of the World newspaper.

Relatives of de Menezes have called on Blair to quit because of police mistakes and information they say was misleading.

But Home Secretary Charles Clarke backed Blair and his force on Saturday. He said no judgment should be passed on the shooting until the investigation was complete.

Blair defended his actions as two newspapers reported that units involved in the killing were blaming each other.

"HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM"

The broadsheet Observer and tabloid Sunday Mirror both said undercover officers who followed de Menezes -- after he came out of an apartment block under observation as part of the police investigation -- did not believe he posed an immediate threat.

The officers were shocked when armed police arrived at the train at Stockwell station in south London and shot him, the reports said, citing senior police sources.

But the armed officers maintain they would not have shot the man if he had not been openly identified to them by one of the surveillance team, the Mirror said.

Blair said it was not until the morning after the shooting that he was informed an innocent man had been killed.

"Somebody came in at 10:30 a.m. and said the equivalent of 'Houston, we have a problem'," he said. "I thought: 'That's dreadful. What are we going to do about that?"'

Lawyers for the de Menezes family have voiced doubts that senior police officers were not aware of the truth soon after the shooting.

Sky television, citing security sources, reported on the day of the shooting that the dead man was not one of the four who had carried out the failed bomb attacks the previous day.

Also on the day of the shooting, Blair said it was "directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation." He did not say the dead man was a suspected suicide bomber.

In Sunday's interview, Blair stressed he had apologized for the killing and was concerned for the de Menezes family.

"But what concerns me is that this part of the story is concentrating on the death of one individual, when we have 52 dead people from all faiths and communities in London and from abroad," he said.

"We have four dead bombers and we have to concentrate on how we find the people who are helping or thinking about planning further atrocities," he said. "It seems the balance of reporting is in the wrong place."


Wow, that is disturbing :|
 
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