Fear, Incompetence and Lies
The death of Charles de Menezes. RIP.
Every word of the initial police statements was a lie, even the part about putting seven bullets in the young man’s head. (Three missed. One hit his shoulder. That left four in the cranium.) “Suicide by cop” turns out to be “murder by fuckup.” “Heavy coat” turns out to be denim jacket; “jumped the turnstile” using his pass; and the only “running” de Menezes did was to catch his train before it could pull away.
They killed him out of their own panic, ill-training and loose operational discipline. Then they lied. Oh how they lied. In the most surveilled city in the Western World, somehow the video of de Menezes killing of all videos has up and disappeared. Imagine that.
DO NOT BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT WHEN IT TELLS YOU THINGS! It’s all well and good for rightist defenders of the initial reports of de Menezes killing to forthrightly change their minds with new information, but how much sense does it make to trust the competence and good faith of the same state that killed Charles de Menezes with a grandiose project of liberation by invasion? The same institution (the state) that propounded blatant falsehoods on the day its agents killed Charles de Menezes propounds blatant falsehoods before and during the war you’ve trusted it to wage. Its unexamined press releases become the roundups of the “good news the MSM ignores.” The same institution whose agents missed a proper handoff of Charles de Menezes’ surveillance because the peeper was off taking a piss is the one you’ve sent to divide the sheep from the goats in a country they know even less about than their own. The same institution whose agents knocked an already subdued civilian subway passenger to the floor and blasted his head off you’ve trusted to man traffic control points in cities where we speak little if any of the language, to search the homes of people whose lives are locked doors to us.
The British government’s job on that morning was to safeguard the life and liberty of Charles de Menezes, British resident. There is no recourse to, They had to play it safe to protect Londoners. He was one of the Londoners they were to protect. They failed and lied. They will always have powerful reasons to fail and powerful incentives to lie.
Comment by Anodyne —
August 18, 2005 @ 12:18 am
Based on the reports so far, it’s difficult to come up with a reason beyond CYA for why some of the most apparently misleading rumors about the case were left to simmer so long (heck, there’s a picture of Menezes lying dead in a denim jacket). Is this a case of trying to break the news slowly to deflect some heat from the shoot-to-kill policy and redirect the outrage at the MET’s incompetence? Is there a tactical counterterrorism justification for the Blairs (Tony and Sir Ian) to keep silent this long?
Comment by Curtis Erhart —
August 18, 2005 @ 1:43 am
I haven’t heard anything, is an investigation underway as to who was responsible for covering this up? Surely some jail time is called for here.
Comment by Grant —
August 18, 2005 @ 5:42 am
The question in my mind is, where do they get off calling these people “police”? What were they policing? I was under the impression that, given the choice between killing innocent civilians and getting donuts, the *defining characteristic* of police was the choice of donuts. I know they do things differently in the UK, but I thought it was limited to scones.
In fact, I was under the impression that organized violence against innocent civilians got a slightly different name under most circumstances. Something starting with a ‘T’ for “I am absolutely Terrified of these heavily armed fanatics devoid of the least respect for human life.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue here…
Comment by baroose —
August 18, 2005 @ 7:53 am
The good news is that the societies in the UK and USA are still free enough to allow this story to come out eventually. I take that as a sign of hope, faint as it may be.
Comment by Avram —
August 18, 2005 @ 8:33 am
According to a BBC story I saw the other day, the police aren’t releasing this information. There’s an independent group that investigates the police, and their investigation is leaking.
Comment by Nell —
August 18, 2005 @ 9:13 am
After the horrifying killing itself, the most chilling (and damning_ aspect of the coverup is the disappearance of the CCTV footage. Next is the police’s willingness to let the lies sit out there uncorrected.
Here’s an excellent post by Daniel Davies (thanks to a pointer by Tad Brennan in comments at Obsidian Wings).
Comment by Avram —
August 18, 2005 @ 10:11 am
Wait, what’s this about disappeared CCTV footage? I haven’t seen any news stories about that. According to what I’ve read, the Independent Police Complaints Commission is working from CCTV footage.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 18, 2005 @ 10:35 am
Avram, that was the police story as of a few days ago. That they said it then and that the independent commission has footage seems to confirm that the police lied about the cameras.
Comment by Ben —
August 18, 2005 @ 11:05 am
Does anyone know why there are not witness’ accounts of the shooting being published? There must have been civilians that saw the whole thing first hand. Am I missing something?
Comment by dsquared —
August 18, 2005 @ 11:33 am
Plenty of civilian eyewitness accounts were published and they were worse than useless. What appears to have happened is that people saw the police chasing de Menezes. The *police* jumped over the barriers and they were wearing bulky (bulletproof) jackets. This caused a lot of avoidable confusion (”citizen journalism”, how are ya) which the police did nothing to clear up.
What I don’t understand is how the police, who must have known he wasn’t wearing a bulky jacket because they could see him lying there and had the photos, allowed this “big jacket” myth to continue in public. If Sir Ian Bliar had got his way and stalled the inquiry, they might even have got away with it!
Comment by jamie —
August 18, 2005 @ 11:48 am
“What I don’t understand is how the police, who must have known he wasn’t wearing a bulky jacket because they could see him lying there and had the photos, allowed this “big jacket†myth to continue in public. If Sir Ian Bliar had got his way and stalled the inquiry, they might even have got away with it!”
Possibly on the assumption that they could stall the inquiry in the general “unite against terror and behind the cops” atmosphere.
Comment by sifl2 —
August 18, 2005 @ 1:09 pm
Umm, if I saw the police shoot some innocent guy in the head for no reason, I wouldn’t exactly be forthcoming about the truth of it either.
Comment by Dan —
August 18, 2005 @ 2:11 pm
“DO NOT BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT WHEN IT TELLS YOU THINGS!”
Should have been the title of the entry.
Comment by Anodyne —
August 18, 2005 @ 4:50 pm
Dsquared,
.
They may have already gotten away with it. Some idle speculation. It’s probably safe to assume that the shoot-to-kill policy was in effect and that police training and guidelines were being adapted to it well before the episode (something similar is probably going on in this country). Adopting the policy implies assuming the risk of taking out innocents and facing the political consequences.
.
If the first lethal intervention had been an actual terrorist, the policy would probably not have been seriously questioned for some time to come, even with subsequent errors. But it turns out the first case was an innocent, apparently under particularly egregious circumstances. If all of the facts of the case had come out immediately, the public would not have had the opportunity to mull over the ambiguities that may arise in specific cases in the future. Public outcry could have chewed up a lot of time and resources in an effort to defend the policy, perhaps even forced it to be jettisoned altogether. While a parliamentary debate on the policy is now likely to ensue, those who wish to defend it can appeal to the imagination using an artificially created example.
.
Preventing the details from leaking out immediately has apparently diffused some of the emotion. Attention can now be directed at sacking or demoting someone, and then to improving police methods and procedures while retaining the policy. Counter terrorism on training wheels. Of course, a believable alternative is that it’s just déjà FUBAR all over again.
Comment by lukery —
August 19, 2005 @ 2:10 am
actually – he was ’successfully’ shot 8 times – and they missed thrice – for a total of eleven shots. bastards.
Comment by dsquared —
August 19, 2005 @ 4:34 am
It’s now been established that the policy had been in effect since 2002 (it’s called “Operation Kratos”, thanks for telling us guys) but I am by no means convinced that there had been any coherent guidelines given to our police, let alone training …
Trackback by Conjectures and Refutations —
August 22, 2005 @ 1:10 am
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