Tuesday, December 08, 2009 

The revisionism of Sir Ian Blair.

In general, once our great leaders and other betters resign from their positions of power, a strange thing tends to happen. Stripped of their main claim to fame, as it were, they become once again reasonable, even likeable human beings. This doesn't apply to the most controversial or divisive figures, such as Thatcher or Blair, who will doubtless continue to be either lionised or loathed until the day they die, but Major certainly, Michael Howard more recently and I confidently predict, Gordon Brown, will all eventually become mere mortals again that don't immediately invoke an almost atavistic sense of hatred.

Another person to whom this doesn't apply is Tony's namesake, Sir Ian Blair. At one point in the distant past I wondered whether Blair wasn't actually the best we were likely to get, despite being such an utter scaremongering tit; as it turns out, I was completely wrong, and Sir Paul Stephenson has, despite the G20 police riots, been the archetypal safe pair of hands. Blair though, despite having been forcibly retired, is determined that he shouldn't be remembered as the man in charge when a Brazilian was shot by his officers and who didn't learn of the fact he wasn't the man they thought he was until the following day despite even his secretary knowing, and is instead attempting to put together a revisionist account of his own time as chief commissioner at the Met. Not about Jean Charles de Menezes - he's clearly lost that battle - but rather of his role in cheerleading for up to 90 days detention without charge for terrorist suspects.

First, he attempts to draw a hardly conclusive historical parallel:

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both," said Benjamin Franklin. Nearly a century later, Abraham Lincoln would disagree: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." That essential conflict remains alive today.

This is hardly comparing like with like. Lincoln faced the biggest catastrophe a nation state can - a civil war. In such circumstances, when the life of the nation can be conclusively said to be under threat, emergency procedures and laws which would never otherwise be considered as proportionate may well be vital. We at the moment face a tiny band of extremists who can be more than successfully contained using the normal powers of the criminal justice system, who pose no threat to life as we know it whatsoever. New threats do pose new problems, but while the threat may be new, the actual danger posed is relatively limited compared to those we have come through in the past.

After the fall of communism, the west believed it had won. Despite what we now know to be al-Qaida-inspired attacks in the US, East Africa and the Gulf, many supported Francis Fukuyama's theory that history had ended. The 2001 attacks on the twin towers suddenly revealed it had not. As the Balkan conflict had indicated, older conflicts were resuming, not with the left-right mutually assured destruction of the cold war but an asymmetric struggle in an age of global communication.

It would be unfair to suggest that this is Blair attempting to be the intellectual. When he says "many" supported Fukuyama's much quoted but rarely examined in detail treatise that history had ended, it's unclear whether he realises that Fukuyama was one of the original neo-conservatives who believed that the end of the Soviet Union was the perfect opportunity to massively extend US influence and power without anyone having the temerity or power to interfere. History had only ended, in Fukuyama's view, in that both democracy and neo-liberal economics had triumphed and were now the only realistic options for mankind. That nations which disagreed with this view could then have democracy and neo-liberal economics imposed on them by force already suggested that this was hardly the end of history, but then Fukuyama himself has since changed his mind, and is even now espousing "realistic Wilsonianism" as an alternative to the less benign neo-conservative he once identified with.

What we do not know is what happens next: whether the last decade will prove an aberration; whether or not al-Qaida will be marginalised and fade into history. There is no doubt that the centre of al-Qaida has suffered many setbacks: those of its leaders who survive are in hiding. However, the group's inspiration and its message remain vibrant, resonating across continents and borders. It can reach not only its adherents but also the lonely and the unbalanced, using new methods of communication, trumpeting the many causes of anger and despair in the world, suggesting new dreams of fulfilment, offering new tools of attack and searching for more, including radiological and chemical weaponry.

So the question is whether, echoing Lincoln, "our case is new". If it is, then it may be better to risk being at the mercy of the state than at the mercy of the murderously inclined. At the very least, it would be useful to hear the arguments of those who believe or believed that we must "think anew and act anew".

Except none of what Blair lists is new, nor are we unable to adapt to it. He also presents the classic false dichotomy: we need neither be at the mercy of murderously inclined or at the mercy of the state. The current limits on detention without charge, which is what Blair is leading to discussing, do not put us at the mercy of the murderously inclined, but extending the limit further may well be putting the innocent at the mercy of the state.

By 2006, Britain had twice been attacked by suicide bombers and the plot to blow up airliners had been uncovered – a plot described by the trial judge as "the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction". We believed that we could not properly investigate these crimes within the period then available for detention.

Strange that Blair doesn't additionally list the case of Dhiren Barot, which he formerly described as a "true horror". Barot planned to construct a dirty bomb using smoke alarms, a crime so terrible that his handlers decided not to bother funding his fantasies. It's also instructive that Blair uses "believed" rather than "knew" or "expected", as those crimes were indeed investigated within the period then available for detention. The 21/7 attackers were dealt with successfully under the 14 days then available, while the "liquid bombers" were charged on the 28th day. Since then, anything longer than two weeks has not been needed in any terrorist investigation.

We proposed an equivalent of the system of "investigative detention" used in Europe – a rolling series of detention periods of up to seven days at a time, granted by increasingly senior members of the judiciary, with prisoners legally represented at each judicial hearing and throughout police interviews. This was necessary, we said, owing to the growing need to intervene in internationally constructed plots at a very early stage, given the scale of al-Qaida ambitions. At such early stages it was difficult to distinguish main conspirators from lesser players, there were language barriers and problems with encryption. We suggested an outer limit of 90 days.

Now this really is open revisionism - the up to 90 day period was never once described as the equivalent of the system of "investigative detention" used in Europe, probably because it isn't an apposite comparison, as the legal systems in which investigative detention is used differ from our own. The judicial nature was only ever used as a fig leaf - only the boldest judges are ever going to openly disagree with the police when they say they need more time to potentially prevent a terrorist attack. Even with the extra time, the police have still consistently failed to distinguish main conspirators from lesser players, with at least three men involved in the liquid bomb plot released without charge after the full 28 days. One of those tried in that case was cleared of any involvement after the second jury trial. Problems with encryption could have been got round used already applicable laws. Even in retrospect, Blair fails to conjure up anything approaching a convincing case.

It seemed to us that this was like bird flu: when that threatened, the public were entitled to hear from the chief veterinary officer, now they should hear from the police. But no: commentators of all stripes said this was the police being political. It was not. It was the police being the police, talking about policing. We should not be seen as street butlers, silent until spoken to.

Except this doesn't even begin to reflect what Ian Blair was doing when it came to discussion of 90 days. He wasn't just suggesting what was needed, or telling the government what he thought was necessary, leaving it to them to make the case, he himself was actively campaigning for the change, as did other officers. The Tories told at the time of the 90 day vote of MPs being contacted by their local chief constables urging them to rebel against the Tory whip and support the government. Again, it's also not an apposite comparison: the chief veterinary officer acts directly as an adviser; the chief commissioner of the Met is in charge of the police, who uphold the law, not actively attempt to make it up as they go along, a very good reason for them to be directly separate from it. It's also the case that the police will always claim that they need new powers regardless of whether they do or not; anything that makes their job easier and which gives them more authority is to be welcomed. It is the politician's job to resist it. The connect between the two Blairs became so close that the dividing line became indistinct. Neither saw this as a problem, and that in itself was worrying.

Still, much of this now feels like the ghost of Christmas past. Gone is the unrelenting paranoia of the terrorist threat; now we instead have the economic threat, much more real and much more damaging than the terrorist threat ever was. Whether we will feel the same way about our upcoming overlords as we now do about our previous ones may well depend on what happens tomorrow.

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12/08/2009 09:52:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 05, 2009 

Remembering the case of James Ashley.

Everyone, sadly, knows the name Jean Charles de Menezes. Probably not enough know the name Harry Stanley. Even less probably know about, or considering the length of time since his shooting, remember the name of James Ashley, his family formally apologised to today. His case however shows just how little the police learnt from the tragedy which befell him.

Ashley, it must be said, had at best both an unpleasant past and some unsavoury friends. He had served 2 years for manslaughter and had been involved in a stabbing in the pub, although it subsequently turned out that he had pulled the perpetrator off the victim.

Police intelligence was that there was a large amount of drugs in the house, and that it was highly likely that Ashley would be armed and dangerous. On the 22nd of July 2005, the armed officers that were to shoot de Menezes were told in their briefing that they were likely to encounter individuals that were "deadly and determined" and "up for it", despite the fact that all the failed bombers were on the run and had no further explosives to fall back on. Similarly, the intelligence turned out to be completely wrong in the case of the Kamal family, and while we have never subsequently learned definitively exactly what it was they expected to find in their house in Forest Gate (suggestions included that it was some sort of "dirty" device, or an explosive with some sort of chemical substance), allegations have also been made that the intelligence came from a highly dubious source.

The raid itself occurred in the early hours of the morning, as it did in Forest Gate. This is standard police procedure, as between 4 and 6am is when those targeted are felt most likely to be at home. This approach has the downside that unless the police make clear who they are, and this itself has the downside that it makes those inside attempt to flee before the police have succeeded in breaking in, that the occupants often fall under the impression that they're being burgled. This was what James Ashley thought, as did the brothers in Forest Gate. The other obvious thing about conducting raids in the early morning is the problem of the light: this was crucial in both the raid in Forest Gate and in the one which led to Ashley's death. In Forest Gate, Abdulkahar came pounding down the stairs as the police were coming up them; the officer, with only the light from his weapon for guidance, thought that someone was pulling at his arm and probably due to the bulkiness of the chemical suit he was wearing, ended up discharging his weapon, something that ought to have been foreseen (PDF). In the tragic case of Ashley, the officers had been disoriented by the plan of the house, knocking into an ironing board and also coming across an unexpected communal door. Fatefully, when an officer entered James' bedroom, again in the dark, he thought that James, having been woken and in a daze staggering towards the door, was about to attack him and so fired his weapon, killing him.

James had been in bed and was naked when he was shot. He had no weapon to hand, and only an airgun was found in the subsequent search. Also found was a small quantity of cannabis. He was found not to have links to the drug ring he had been suspected of belonging to. It was, to quote what an officer said to the Guardian in regards to the shooting of de Menezes, "a complete and utter fuck-up."

If this was as far as the fuck-up went, it might not have been so bad. Yet just as in the examples of the Forest Gate raid and the Stockwell shooting, the police either gave information which turned out to be wrong to the media or at worst actively conducted smear operations against those shot. Paul Whitehouse, the then chief constable of Sussex police, conducted a press conference in which he claimed that Ashley was wanted for attempted murder, that the raid was professionally planned and that the use of firearms was proportionate. A subsequent report conducted by Sir John Hoddinott under the auspices of the Police Complaints Authority, the forerunner to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which has never been published, found that Whitehouse had "wilfully failed to tell the truth as he knew it; he did so without reasonable excuse or justification and what he published and said was misleading and therefore likely to injure the public interest." Whitehouse resigned after the then home secretary David Blunkett suggested that he ought to be sacked to restore public confidence in the force. Perhaps the best that can be said for Whitehouse is that at least he made an active decision to lie about what had happened, having been fully informed of the raid; Sir Ian Blair, on the other hand, did not know that an innocent man had been shot on the 22nd of July until the following morning, when apparently even his secretary knew that was likely to be the case. Menezes was besmirched in any case, alleged to be here illegally when he was not, acting strangely when he had not been, wearing a "bulky jacket" despite it being a warm day, when he had in fact been wearing a light denim jacket, and that he had jumped the barriers at the Stockwell station, when in actuality the police running to catch up with him, having arrived late, were the ones who leaped over them, being confused with de Menezes.

Much the same thing happened to the Forest Gate brothers, with the Murdoch press leading the way and eventually having to apologise for their coverage. The Times and the Sun said they had criminal convictions when they did not, the Sun claimed that the large amount of money found in the house had not been explained, when in fact the police had been told repeatedly that they were keeping it there as it's haram (forbidden) in Islam to use bank accounts which accrue interest, then alleged that the brothers had spat at and insulted soldiers outside the brothers, also completely untrue. Finally, the big gun was brought out: the police leaked to the News of the World that child pornography had been found on a computer and mobile phone seized in the raid on the house. It turned out that this material had been on both devices since before they had been bought, second-hand by the family.

If lessons were meant to have been learned from the shooting of Mr Ashley, then they quite obviously weren't; the opposite seems to be the case. You almost have to wonder if it was or still is common police procedure to cast aspersions on the character of those who are unfortunate to find themselves at the heart of police bungles, knowing full well that once you have planted a seed of doubt in the public's mind, many will still believe it even if it subsequently turns out to be untrue. Right up until the final inquiry into the shooting of de Menezes was released, commenters on newspaper articles were still bringing up his supposed jumping of the barrier and that he wasn't legally here. In almost all the cases the police themselves could have corrected the mistakes, if that's what they were, but chose not to. Whitehouse was eventually held accountable, but no charges were brought over the Forest Gate raid, and while Sir Ian Blair was eventually forced out by Boris Johnson, the prosecution of the Met on health and safety grounds only resulted in a fine that the taxpayer had to be pay, while the coroner at the inquest denied the jury the opportunity to decide whether de Menezes was unlawfully killed, although they did strongly criticise the officers who shot de Menezes over their conflicting stories with that of other witnesses. The hope has to be that the next time an innocent person is shot, as they inevitably will be, that the above does not happen again. That however is all that it is, a hope.

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3/05/2009 10:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 10, 2008 

Direct action and the democratic deficit.

Few described the inclination to riot as superbly as H. L. Mencken. He wrote that "[E]very normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats." Somewhat thankfully, even when riots break out, few often spit on their hands; slitting throats though...

The past few days have shown both the benefits and pitfalls of direct political action. Whatever your views on climate change, I defy anyone not to admire the chutzpah of those that succeeded in breaching Stansted airport security and shutting down the runway for three hours by barricading themselves together, then phoning the media. It's often difficult to know where to draw the line with such disruptive protests, knowing that you're always going to piss some people off regardless. The question is whether you piss off those that would otherwise be receptive to your cause, and while making the odd individual potentially miss a funeral or leaving foreign teenagers stranded without any idea how they're going to get home is not necessarily going to help matters, the occasional action where the only real downside is some having their holidays delayed by a few hours is probably worth it. Again, whatever you think about Fathers 4 Justice and their immature headline-grabbing stunts, there's no doubting that they drastically increased the perception of fathers being failed by a system which was biased in favour of the mother. Blocking a road by lying down in it and chaining yourself to others just annoys; blocking a runway, even while middle class, potentially inspires others.

Likewise in Greece, it's hard not to admire the results which at least the initial rioting, since turned into apparent looting and trashing which is far less appealing, brought from an recalcitrant government. The shooting of a 15-year-old boy by a police officer after rocks were thrown at a patrol quickly resulted after an uprising in the officer in question being charged with murder, his companion as accompany to it and the interior minister resigning, but not before saying that "exemplary punishment" would be sought against those responsible. It's all rather different to our own slow-turning cogs of justice: three years after an innocent man had 7 bullets pumped into his head and 3 into his shoulder after he was sadly mistaken for a suicide bomber, the coroner at the inquest decides that it would inappropriate for the jury to be able to consider a verdict of "unlawful killing", despite the previous conviction of the Metropolitan police for breaching health and safety law, the undisputed confusion and chaos which was going in the control room, the complete failure to accurately identify the Jean Charles de Menezes as Hussain Osman, partially due to the police not even having a complete photograph of him, and finally the apparent lies told by the firearms team themselves that they shouted armed police when they entered the tube carriage. That their version of events is at odds with that of the members of the public that witnessed the shooting, is, according to the corner, not necessarily lying in the strictest sense, as the jury should bear "in mind people tell lies for a variety of reasons, not necessarily to put their own part."

While the Jean Charles de Menezes case is an extreme example, when failed suicide bombers were after all on the loose and police officers potentially found themselves in a situation where they may well have thought that they and the others around them were going to die if they didn't act, perhaps the family of de Menezes shouldn't have expected any better if they had considered the case of Harry Stanley, shot dead, allegedly in the back (although the IPCC report decided it was likely he was facing towards the officers when shot), after someone reported that there was an "Irishman with a gun wrapped in a bag" on the loose. The "gun" was a chair leg. Like with the de Menezes case, at the initial inquest the coroner ruled that the jury could not return a verdict of unlawful killing, only for his widow to gain a judicial review which ordered a second inquest, which did return a verdict of unlawful killing. Rather than the people themselves rising up in outrage over an innocent man being shot dead, the firearms officers did instead in favour of their comrades. Subsequently, the officers' suspension was lifted, the verdict of unlawful killing was overturned, and a subsequent IPCC investigation decided the officers should face no further disciplinary action.

The riots in Greece are as much, it seems, about general discontent with the government and life in general as they are about the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, capitalised on additionally by anarchist elements which have long been strong in the country. His death though was the straw that broke the camel's back, just as the 2005 and 2007 riots in France, both after the deaths of individuals attempting to escape from the police were the catalyst for violence which reflected anger over dislocation from society as much as that over police brutality. It's impossible to tell whether the reaction to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes might have been different if he hadn't been a Brazilian, initially reported, erroneously, to have overstayed his visa, and instead a British citizen, but it seems doubtful. Despite the riots in 2001, there have been few signs that there's a potentially similar conflagration building in this country: whether this is down to docility; a less corrupt police force; higher living standards helped by the unprecedented boom between 1994 and last summer, even though few of the benefits of that have been seen by the poorest; despite the scaremongering, less racism and better integration; or the fact that it seems to really take a lot for us to get into the spirit of Mencken, having not even taken any large role in the protests of 68 which rocked continental Europe, is unclear and absurdly difficult to know for certain.

It is however hard not to be struck by the increasing disconnect between parliament and the more boisterous, radical elements of society. As one of the Plane Stupid protesters said, she was of the Iraq generation, which had learned that a million or two taking to the streets could not stop a war we had absolutely no need whatsoever to take part in. Instead we had a government that with opposition support has still offered no formal inquiry into how we came to be taken to war, other than whitewashes which have either avoided looking at it in full or have obfuscated in their conclusions. Up until this year, and the revolt over 42 days, much the same could be said of the government's approach to civil liberties, and the casual way in which they have been diluted, surveillance has become the norm and we are no longer surprised by local councils that think that spying on newsagents employing paperboys is a good use of their time and resources. Again, perhaps some of this is down to individuals deciding that these things aren't go to apply or affect them; who after all cares if terrorists determined to kill us are locked away indefinitely, or subject to control orders, or held without charge for 90 days? Whatever you think of David Davis, he surely deserves some of the credit for changing perceptions at least over 42 days with his stand, whether the bill was doomed in the Lords or not.

The point is that we shouldn't have to rely on archaic institutions like the Lords to preserve our rights and freedoms. It could not be more ridiculous that such inanities and beyond fuckwitted measures as banning the display of cigarettes in stores, lest anyone be seduced by the shiny packets, messages of doom and now diseased organs which adorn them and decide that taking up smoking is a good idea are proposed and introduced so easily when issues involving censorship, such as the IWF, not to mention the keeping of the fingerprints and DNA profiles of the innocent go undiscussed in the supposed mother of all parliaments. Even when it talks about itself, as it did on Monday over the Damian Green affair, our current government thinks that it's appropriate and necessary to introduce three-line-whips to ensure that it or the police aren't embarrassed by the findings into a raid which was carried out without a warrant. For a government that often preaches the mantra of if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear, it was a performance of the most shabby variety. They probably thought they could get away it because no one out in the real world apparent from political geeks cares about a Tory MP being arrested, and they're probably right. That Labour backbenchers should agree with that though is just as shocking.

Also on Monday we had the sight of Jack Straw going cap in hand to the Daily Mail, agreeing with the view that the act that he saw the introduction of was right to been seen as a "terrorists' and villains' charter", the same convention which the previous Friday the Mail had been praising after the European Court found that the retention of DNA profiles from the innocent was illegal. We know from Paul Dacre's own speech that the real reason the Mail hates the Human Rights Act is because it potentially threatens the tabloids' business model of exposing sex scandals, not because of how it protects everyone else, but half the reason why we are in the mess we are is because the gutter press has been allowed to get away with the idea that rights are something which only criminals, scroungers and foreigners have and that they're the only ones who benefit. Instead of challenging this, the justice secretary either agrees of partially does. The Conservatives meanwhile, the supposed upholders of our civil rights, disgracefully denigrate the HRA and the ECHR as foreign when we ourselves were the major drafters, instead proposing to introduce a "British" bill of rights, as though the ECHR or HRA are not. Kenneth Clarke denounced this as "xenophobic nonsense", but the same people who spoke up for civil liberties keep this ignorant charade alive. Only Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats seem willing to defend the HRA.

The riots in Greece and France occurred not because of police brutality, but because of the desperation of those who saw what had happened and imagined that it could have been them instead. Abandoned by those in power, denied a voice, and only able to articulate themselves through carnage which targeted those in the same boat, our own parliament and politicians are surely in danger of repeating the same mistakes, of not listening and living in their own bubble. Whether it will result in violence in this country is uncertain, but the apathy and cynicism which we already have in spades is only likely to increase until our own sources of injustice and discontent are drained.

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12/10/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 02, 2008 

Blair today, gone tomorrow.

Almost perversely, I take no pleasure whatsoever in the resignation of Ian Blair. Perhaps because it has come so suddenly and without warning, when if he had had any dignity it would have been when it was revealed that he hadn't known that an innocent man had been shot dead by his officers until morning after it had happened, when even his secretary had apparently known.

That stubborn obstinacy to admit to his failings however was something that completely dominated his tenure as the Metropolitan police's chief commissioner. While the execution of a Brazilian man on a tube train the day after an attempted round of suicide attacks was ultimately what brought him down, with its slow but inexorable casting of a shadow over him, this was a policeman who thought that he was a politician first and a cop second. He never ceased to inform the country of just how dark the sky was due to the potential threat of exploding brown people, even while his officers proved themselves almost as adept at causing fear as the terrorists' attempts were amateurish. He campaigned for up to 90 days detention without charge, thought that identity cards were a brilliant idea, and generally put himself about as much as he possibly could.

While you cannot directly blame Blair personally for the smear campaigns against Jean Charles de Menezes and secondly the Kalam family, he was ultimately responsible for the actions of his officers. What he can be directly linked to was the decision to plead not guilty to the charges brought under the health and safety act, especially when so many other senior officers pleaded with him to take the hit and get over it. Again, even this wouldn't have been so bad if he had instructed his lawyers not to be aggresive and instead defend the Met purely from the operational point of view, that it had been a dreadful mistake in an incredibly hectic and uncertain time, but they didn't; they went straight for the jugular. Jean Charles de Menezes was according to Ronald Thwaites QC more or less asking for it: despite never being challenged by the police, Thwaites claimed that he had failed to comply with them; that he looked like the suspect, when his skin tone was completely different; that he was aggressive and threatening when he acted just like every other commuter that morning, as the CCTV showed; and that he might have acted in such a way because he may have thought he had cocaine in his pocket, even though he hadn't.

No one with absolutely any feeling for the de Menezes family would have argued such a case, but Ian Blair somehow imagined it was appropriate. Just like other things he thought were appropriate, such as recording a call he made to the attorney general without permission, as well as ones to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The IPCC in fact undoubtedly delivered the most telling criticism of him: that if he hadn't, as soon as he knew a man had been shot dead by police on 22/07/05, wrote to the prime minister asking that the IPCC be stopped from launching their investigation into the death of someone at the hands of the police, as they are legally required to do, then many of the things that subsequently happened that resulted in the prosecution against the Met may not have occurred. There was never any evidence that Blair was trying to cover anything up, as after all, he was completely out of the loop. It was just a typically ignorant, short-sighted move, delaying something that would have had to be done at some point as a matter of course. That delay effectively left him a dead man walking.

I take no pleasure, not even schadenfreude, not just because it sets a precedent where the London Mayor can effectively veto the choice of the home secretary, not to mention the MPA, further politicising the role, but because as bad as Blair was in so many ways, there's hardly a whole bundle of talent waiting to take over from him. And as much as he was potentially corrupt, constantly scaremongering, interfering in political discussions and out of his depth, he also was probably the most liberal, at least on general policing and on encouraging ethnic minorities to join the force, commanding officer the Met has ever had and is now likely to have for quite some time. Despite his apparent personality clashes with both Ali Dizaei and Tarique Ghuffar, he started the move towards a more representative Met, and no one I think can begin to suggest that was anything but a good thing. When you consider that the other most senior police officers, or at least publicly recognisable ones of late have been Lord Stevens, Andy Hayman and Peter Clarke, all of them as either convinced of the sky falling as Blair was or in the case of Hayman, just as guilty as Blair over de Menezes whilst also accused of siphoning off money, then it doesn't exactly fill you with hope that the replacement will be any better. Celebrate the demise of Blair if we must, but perhaps as with what we got after the other Blair, we might come to rue what we wished for.

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10/02/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 04, 2007 

One down, one to go.

Good riddance then to Andy Hayman, the man who in the Sun's words "is feared by the terrorist scum determined to destroy our way of life." I'm sure that those willing to "martyr" themselves were terrified of him, while anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way of the anti-terrorist operations he was responsible for had plenty of reasons to be frightened, as the death of Jean Charles de Menezes and the Forest Gate fiasco more than demonstrated.

Like Ian Blair, Hayman should have resigned after the second IPCC report into the Met's operation on the 22nd of July found that he had failed to inform Blair that an innocent man had been shot dead. According to multiple accounts, Hayman informed the Crime Reporters Association that an innocent man had been shot dead at around 4pm. When questioned about what he told the CRA by the IPCC, he said he couldn't remember what he had. At 5pm he attended a sub-meeting of the Met's management board, where he said the following:

AC HAYMAN: There is press running that the person shot is not one of the four bombers. We need to present this that he is believed to be. This is different to confirming that he is. On the balance of probabilities, it isn’t. To have this for offer would be low risk.

Having started the press running that the man shot was not one of the four bombers, he then commenced the squall of lies and smears which wouldn't be fully corrected until the IPCC's preliminary investigatory findings were leaked.

Rather than going with something approaching dignity, Hayman has now "retired" after allegations were made that he had ran up credit card expenses of £15,000 and that he took a female officer on foreign trips with him, which he has described as "unfounded accusations". Accurate or not, it's difficult not to see them as poetic justice.

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12/04/2007 08:14:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 22, 2007 

A complete failure to find anyone accountable.

Ian Blair then seems set to continue as the head of the Metropolitan police, at least for another two and half years, upon which his current contract expires. It's anyone's guess as to whether it would then be renewed.

I don't think it can be overstated that, as it stands, absolutely no one has personally been found culpable for the systemic failures that culminated in an innocent man losing his life on that morning, in the most dreadful, vicious and reprehensible of circumstances. This isn't about being vindicative or demanding a scalp just for the sake of it; someone, in this case Sir Ian Blair, is ultimately responsible for what went wrong on the 22nd of July 2005, and then subsequently the behaviour of the Met as a whole right up to today.

If, instead of reacting in the way that the Met did, they had come out within a matter of hours of de Menezes being shot, come clean and said there's been a terrible tragedy, we're incredibly sorry, and we'll immediately let the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigate what went wrong and learn from its recommendations, all of the unpleasantness of the last two years could have been avoided. Instead, within an hour of de Menezes being shot dead, Ian Blair himself had written to the prime minister urging him to stop the IPCC from being allowed to investigate because of the "unique circumstances" of the time. As the first IPCC report stated, if Blair himself hadn't tried to halt their investigation, all of this could have been sorted out far sooner.

What followed from there was blatant lies, obfuscation and smears. The police, despite knowing full well that de Menezes had not been wearing a bulky jacket and that he hadn't leapt the barrier, allowed those details to become stated fact without putting the record straight. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that this was deliberate when you consider what followed: the leaking that he had overstayed his visa, as if this made a jot of difference to the fact that they had shot dead an innocent man, then later that a woman had accused him of rape, which when he was cleared of involvement in was hardly reported. If the IPCC investigation hadn't been leaked, there's the possibility we wouldn't have learned the truth of what happened for months more. The leaker responsible had her door broken down at dawn for her trouble.

Then, in the biggest and most outrageous insult of all, de Menezes was further smeared at the health and safety prosecution trial. A photograph comparing Menezes with Hussein Osman was according to a prosecution witness manipulated to make the obvious differences between the two less distinct, while Ronald Thwaites QC, in his closing argument wove a tale which directly contradicted evidence that the jury had heard, claiming that de Menezes didn't comply with officers who challenged him when he never was challenged, that he had behaved suspiciously when he had in fact acted like any other commuter would have done, and that Menezes might have "thought" he had drugs in his pocket which could have accounted for the way he acted, even though he didn't have any and didn't act out of the ordinary.

Sir Ian Blair could have pleaded guilty to the charge, especially when the prosecution case was so compelling. Instead, as the force today openly puts on its website, it's asked lawyers to consider whether it was in the public interest to contest the charge, and then whether an appeal is possible. Rather than learning from its mistakes, under Blair the force is still intent on challenging the actual facts of what happened on that morning. The document (PDF) itself only demonstrates the arrogance with which the lawyers responsible for the Met's woeful defence view their arguments, and shows their contempt for both the jury and the judge. Choice parts are:

9. Although the jury’s verdict is impenetrable as to precisely what they accepted and what they rejected of our defence, the judge made it plain at the conclusion of his summing-up that it was sufficient for the jury to make a finding against us on only one of the nineteen allegations in order to convict. It therefore does not follow from the fact of conviction that the jury accepted all of the prosecution’s allegations, or that we were found guilty of even one “catastrophic” failing as the prosecution labelled our shortcomings: a description which the judge did not adopt in his sentencing remarks.

This is what is called being in denial.

11. We knew and acknowledged that this was always going to be a difficult case in which to secure an acquittal. There was always a significant danger, as we think in fact came to pass, that the central issues would be obscured by too close a focus on the tragic outcome (which was not of itself a necessary element of the prosecution’s case), and that the jury would be unable to divest itself of hindsight and emotion fuelled in part by uninformed and adverse reporting before and during the trial.

How they came to such conclusions as these is anyone's guess. Rather than them not being able to rebut the case, built around the IPCC's report, it's all down to the jury's hindsight and "emotion". The part about the "uniformed and adverse reporting" is classic: the Met did everything it could to spin the coverage their way, lying, smearing and not correcting those "uninformed" reports, yet the guilty verdict is partly a result of the "adverse" reporting.

14. In summary, we feel that it was appropriate, right and reasonable for the MPS to mount a full contest to the charge and allegations which it faced. The MPS was accordingly entitled to seek the verdict of a jury.

See, this isn't just about whether there's a case for appeal, it's also about the lawyers, no doubt handsomely remunerated for their tactics in smearing de Menezes, justifying themselves.

Next, it's all the judge's fault:

18. The trial judge brought his influence to bear on the jury throughout the trial by the manner and frequency of his interventions and most conspicuously in his summing-up. We have little doubt that he conveyed to the jury his own unshakeable assessment that we could and should have done a better job. This should not have occurred. It was a matter about which strong complaint was made to the judge in open court. We are not, however, at all optimistic that an appeal on this ground would succeed.

If anyone should be complained about, it's Ronald Thwaites, but then he's one of the authors of this document, and unsurprisingly he doesn't criticise his own role in the Met's failure to get an acquittal.

All of this is without mentioning that Blair himself didn't know that an innocent man had been shot dead until the following morning, when even his secretary had heard the rumours. Those supporting Ian Blair know in their heart of hearts that the Met's behaviour both on that day and since then has been indefensible: that's why they're left with such intellectually bankrupt tactics as saying that "Al-Qaeda must be laughing at us while we busy ourselves pillorying the police who keep us safe," when the reality was that the police did the bombers' work for them, and then going off on tangents about how it's really about Ian Blair's success(!) that those who want him to go care about.

The failure for anyone to be found accountable though shouldn't be surprising. The police have killed innocent men before and got away with it. They will almost certainly kill more innocent people and get away with it too. Sir Ian Blair should have been sacked, seeing as he's too obstinate and too pig-headed to do the decent thing, to show that the police themselves are not above the laws that every other single one of us are held to. He has survived, but the Met itself has been tarnished.

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11/22/2007 09:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 08, 2007 

de Menezes: Blair as mendacious and deluded as his namesake.


Finally then, a year and ten months it was first formally finished, we receive the IPCC investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes (PDF).

What once would have been explosive and damning reading has been rendered, both by the leaks and the trial of the Met under health and safety legislation, into something almost familiar. It documents failures at all levels, from the officers conducting the surveillance on the morning all the way up to "Sir" Ian Blair himself.

The one thing that overwhelming sticks out from quickly speed-reading the entire document is that of the differing accounts between both the public witnesses of what happened on the tube train and that of the CO12 Special Branch officers and SO19 firearms officers, the first (section 13) who state the police made no mention of who they were when they entered the train, except from the CO12 officers stating "he's here", and the latter (section 18) who all claim that they shouted "police" or "armed police".

Similarly, Cressida Dick and the others inside "Room 1600" all maintain that de Menezes had been identified as Osman on a number of occasions, up to 5 in all. The CO12 officers (section 12) deny ever making a positive identification; indeed, the chronicle of events suggest that one officer decided it definitely wasn't Osman, while the others were uncertain, and thought that the surveillance should continue as a result. Although one managed to come to the conclusion that de Menezes had distinct "Mongolian eyes", there was never a definite positive given to Room 1600. Again, despite none of the surveillance team mentioning that the suspect was "jumpy" or "nervous", Room 1600 came to believe that de Menezes was agitated and "definitely their man." Dick and Detective Superintendent Boutcher requested that the surveillance team give a number on the scale of 1 to 10 on how sure they were that de Menezes was Osman (section 12.22), a request that the receiver, 'James', said was ridiculous, but said that when he had previously seen him over 15 minutes earlier he thought it was a "good possible". This was taken as "they believe it to be Osman."

Despite all the talk after the death of de Menezes of the police's use of "Operation Kratos", the shoot-to-kill policy on those suspected of being suicide bombers, it was never actually put into effect on the morning of the death. The report does go further into the background of Kratos (section 9) and how it came to be police policy, with there being little to no government input. The only real advice the police sought was that of the Treasury Counsel as to the legality of shooting to kill, which came to the conclusion that it was. One of the IPCC recommendations is that there should have been a public debate prior to the implementation of the policy, but that it wasn't thought necessary, or even worthy of discussion in parliament is an indictment of the secretive way of which the police continue to operate.

Even though Kratos was not in actual operation, de Menezes' fate may well have been sealed by the briefing delivered to the firearms officers at Nightingale Lane police station, which dropped everything but the actual shoot-to-kill policy itself into the mix. The individuals involved in the bombings were described as being "deadly and determined" and "up for it" (section 11.11); never was it mentioned that they might encounter those who were entirely innocent in the course of the day. The two officers who shot de Menezes, referred to as "Charlie 2" and "Charlie 12" in the report both said how they believed it was very likely that they would be asked to "intercept deadly and determined terrorist suicide bombers," in the words of Charlie 2 (section 18.21). Charlie 12 was more verbose (section 18.31):

‘We were possibly about to face subjects who had training and had attempted to commit atrocities on innocent human beings with complete disregard to their own lives. They had prepared devices in order to achieve this. There was a real tangible danger that if we didn’t act quickly and correctly there would be an extreme loss of life”.

Both felt as they entered the tube that de Menezes was about to detonate his explosives and they had no choice but to use deadly force, even though it had not been authorised by any officer. The report asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether the actions of of Charlie 2 and 12 amounted to murder, given their justification for shooting de Menezes. (section 20.74). They decided against. Cressida Dick's abject failure to properly either know what was being sent to Room 1600 from the CO12 team, or to make clear to the SO19 team that she wanted de Menezes arrested and not shot, something she failed to make significantly clear, was of no help. One witness from within Room 1600, as had been leaked, claims that Dick added "at all costs." (section 12.36) Whether, if true, it would have made any difference we'll never know.

The report does possibly help clear up some of the initial eyewitness reports given to the media which were so horribly wrong. Many of the witnesses mistook "Ivor", the officer first on the scene and who grabbed hold of de Menezes for an Asian man, and with him also being thrown and a gun pointed at him, he could have easily been mistaken for the man who was shot.

There are a few more minor points in the report that are interesting or indicative of what already was happening on the scene in the aftermath; the pathologist who was on the scene by 13:33 on the 22nd of July was apparently briefed that de Menezes had vaulted the ticket barrier (section 14.16) and ran down the stairs before being shot after tripping, and included those "facts" in his report. It also notes how officers took statements from some of the witnesses inside nearby pubs while music was playing and with the news of what happened on the TV. One of the witnesses described how an officer tried to influence her statement (section 14.8):

“You have to be careful what you say in this sort of situation, or it will be just one more copper with a family losing his job or worse”.

It also shows how officers were allowed to draw up their statements on what happened together and come to a general consensus, whereas the witnesses were denied any opportunity to do just that.

This report really ought to have been the final nail in the coffin of Sir Ian Blair's term as head of the Met. The most damning condemnation is really reserved for him. The IPCC was not allowed any access to Stockwell tube station until the Monday, following Blair's order that the IPCC should be refused access, sent to the Home Office within an hour of the shooting. If we are to believe that Blair didn't know until the following morning that an innocent man was shot, it can't even be said he was trying to instigate a cover-up; he was simply opposed to the IPCC doing the job they was set up to do. Nick Hardwick, in his statement on the issuing of the report, made clear that the delay in the IPCC being able to investigate led directly to much of the "difficulty" that has faced the Met since then. The fact alone that Blair worsened the situation that the police has faced since the tragic death of de Menezes is reason alone for his resignation or sacking. That he presided over a police force that lied through its teeth, smeared de Menezes on a number of occasions and even now seems to deny that the failures were "systemic" makes him almost as mendacious and deluded as his namesake.

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11/08/2007 09:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, November 02, 2007 

de Menezes backlash commences yet again.

Just like when the second IPCC report into the Met's dealing with the aftermath of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was quickly in the crossfire of the backlash against its findings, so it is today when the Sun leads the way with the claims that yesterday's successful health and safety prosecution could mean that "terror gangs will go free":

FURIOUS cops last night warned terror gangs could escape scot free – after the Met was convicted under health and safety laws over the bungled shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The jury’s verdict – after a trial costing taxpayers £3.5million – was slammed for giving bombers a new loophole to dodge arrest.


First things first, make sure that you get in just what it cost the taxpayers for this important verdict. The £300,000 cost of the IPCC investigation was similarly highlighted last time round. Naturally, don't mention that "Sir" Ian Blair himself could have spared any further cost to the taxpayer by pleading guilty, as some officers urged him to do.

 Angry officers claimed robbers and kidnappers would also be gloating that the killing of the Brazilian – mistaken for a suicide bomber – was deemed to have put public safety at risk.

Of course. They won't be put off by knowing just how likely they're to be shot considering how often they manage to kill innocents.

And Met Police Authority member Damian Hockney branded the implications “ludicrous”.

He said grimly: “We now have a police service that will be so terrified of taking positive action in future potential terrorist situations that it may ultimately lead to even greater loss of life.”


Specious nonsense. It may have came before this prosecution, but the example of Forest Gate sure doesn't suggest that the experience of Stockwell had altered police planning and conduct one iota.

John Yates, the Met’s assistant commissioner, described the verdict as “very significant to policing and fast-time operations, not just around terrorism”.

He said: “This could go into kidnap situations and live firearms operations that we deal with day in, day out.”


One would think that the judge in his ruling had not considered the fact that the police were under unique pressures on that morning - when he fact did. That this case involved potential suicide bombers was crucial; a suicide bomber poses far more threat to the public than any kidnapper or even a lone gunman, who usually have such weapons for robbery or protection. Spree shootings in this country, which could be considered as dangerous, are incredibly rare thanks to the gun laws, and in any case would also be another unique circumstance. Yesterday's ruling made clear that there were failings at every level, but the biggest was that the police's plan to stop individuals after they had moved a suitable distance away from Scotia Road didn't work because SO19 weren't in place and the other officers weren't suitably trained to stop those who left the flats. The only major effect it should have on the police is that they ought to *shock* actually put some thought into their planning and then make sure what is in those plans actually goes ahead. It was a unique situation, but by the time de Menezes left his flat, the police had had the best part of 18 hours to get on top of it.

That would turn undercover operations into a farce. The Met’s chief lawyer Mark Scoggins said: “Say we get credible intelligence that a number of people are planning an atrocity.

“We identify one of them. Under normal circumstances, we would want to identify what they were doing and who there were associated with. If the prosecution case is correct in this instance, that option will not be open to us.

“We won’t be allowed to let him go anywhere near the public – even if we don’t think he is carrying a bomb – because that might expose the public to risk. We couldn’t follow him to his bomb factory or associates.”


This is a complete misleading, fearmongering misreading of the ruling. The police failed because they let the bomber get on public transportation, where the previous days' failed attacks had taken place, not because they had let the suspect leave his property at all. It will most certainly not affect everyday policing, purely because the police simply cannot prevent every terrorist attack, just as they cannot prevent every crime. The unique circumstances involved here, where the terrorists had already attempted their attack meant that they should never have been let to return to where they were most likely to strike again.

The Scum's leader is more nuanced and balanced this time round, but perhaps more representative are a handful of the comments on the piece itself:

He was in the country illegally and acted accordantly by running when chased what are those who were who believed they were chasing a terrorist supposed to do. They the police did their job to protect us. Now the legal system has created a massive loop-hole that will create a bigger threat, will the courts be liable for compensation should people be injured or die as a result?

The man ran away, it was after terror threats made to this country...

It was a horrible mistake that he was shot, but mistakes happen. He ran from the police... On the carriage Jean Charles made a specific gesture that the police are trained to identify as trying to detonate a bomb... And now when gun cops are faced with dangerous situations in future, instead of thinking "if I have to pull the trigger to minimise the danger to members of the public, that's what i'll do", they'll be thinking "oh no. What about that brazilian guy? I don't want to lose my job".

Even after all this time, numerous people still believe that de Menezes ran. The Met's failure to correct those stories, and indeed, its active encouragement of them to begin with only shows how, as long as you get your response in early enough, you can get away with the most obscene of lies and disasters with some people. The last comment is especially galling: the officers who shot de Menezes have not only not been sacked, they were put back on active duty prior to any disciplinary action and praised to high heaven for their "professionalism". It's worth pointing out that two people have commented and pointed out de Menezes didn't run, but there still seems to be a majority disagreeing heartily with the ruling and blaming "political correctness". Blood and Treasure also tackles yet more inanity from Ken Livingstone.

Despite Daily Mail front pages, it seems that Ian Blair is going to manage to remain in his job yet again. We shouldn't really be surprised at this state of affairs, however. After all, you can lie and distort about weapons of mass destruction, be ultimately responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and not be held in any way accountable. How could Labour call for his resignation when all Blair did was learn from his namesake and their former leader?

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11/02/2007 08:32:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 01, 2007 

A guilty verdict, but still no justice.

Before we get away with ourselves celebrating the fact that the Metropolitan police have finally been held to some sort of account over the events of the 22nd of July 2005 (although no individual has been personally blamed), Unspeak throws a spanner into the works. The prosecution case against the Met didn't in fact rest on the small matter that they had endangered the public by shooting dead an innocent man, but rather they had endangered the public by not stopping Jean Charles de Menezes before he had got on any mode of public transport, either a bus or the tube train where he met his violent end. Presumably, if de Menezes had been shot dead shortly after he exited his flat, the police would have not been in the dock at all.

That detail is only one of the minor perversities that have littered the police's response to their execution of de Menezes. The not guilty plea was itself a joke, as the prosecution clearly showed. The detailed, at times forensic examination of what happened that morning exposed a police force in chaos, riddled with general incompetence and showing myriad failings. The Met didn't have any answer to why the SO19 firearms unit, which had been meant to arrive at Scotia Road, where Hussein Osman, one of the failed suicide bombers of the previous day lived at 5:30 in fact didn't turn up until 5 hours later. They couldn't explain why de Menezes was first dismissed as not Osman, then subsequently told that he in fact was, although that is also still confused. The surveillance officers themselves didn't know that the firearms team were present. They couldn't argue against how the firearms team had been told the "suspect was up for it" or that they had been informed they may have to use special "tactics" - shooting the suspect in the head. No one managed to even come up with a reason why he was shot - there was, if the testimony of Cressida Dick and the firearms officers involved is to be believed - no unmitigated authorisation of lethal force.

Instead, the Met fell back on the two things that it has used since shortly after de Menezes was shot: smears and lies. In the aftermath of the Stockwell shooting, the police actively encouraged the stories which some witnesses had given that de Menezes had leapt the barrier, been wearing a bulky jacket and refused to cooperate with officers. One source even stated he had been wearing a belt with wires coming from it. Rather than correct these inaccurate stories, which they knew to be untrue within a matter of hours as the second IPCC report showed, they included them in their own press releases. It took the leaking of the initial IPCC investigation for the truth to slowly start to emerge, that de Menezes had been wearing a light denim jacket, that the officers who shot him were the ones who had leapt the barriers and that he offered no resistance whatsoever; he wasn't given a chance to. In the mean time, the media were briefed that he had overstayed his visa, as if this affected anything whatsoever and later on, that a woman had accused him of rape, something he was cleared of to far less fanfare.

This attitude was exemplified by the behaviour of the defence during the trial. The fact that he had cocaine in his urine was blown out of all proportion, used to try to explain his "aggressiveness, agitation and nervousness" all adjectives used to suggest his in fact normal behaviour was indicative of that of a potential suicide bomber. A prosecution witness accused the defence of manipulating a photograph of de Menezes that was released side by side with one of Hussein Osman to show just how similar they looked, when anyone with a pair of eyes can see that they look nothing like each other. The closing speech by the defence lawyer, Ronald Thwaites QC, has to be one of the most mendacious and deliberately misleading attempts to push the jury towards acquitting of recent times, claiming that de Menezes, who didn't act out of the ordinary or in an "aggressive and threatening" manner was doing something he didn't because he "thought" he had drugs in his pocket, even though he didn't, or because his visa had run out. It's worth quoting some of it in full:

"He was shot because when he was challenged by police he did not comply with them but reacted precisely as they had been briefed a suicide bomber might react at the point of detonating his bomb.

"Furthermore, he looked like the suspect and he had behaved suspiciously. Not only did he not comply, he moved in an aggressive and threatening manner as interpreted by the police and as would be interpreted by you and me in those circumstances, less than 24 hours after an attempt to bomb on the Underground and a bus had taken place.

"This case should never have been brought by any conscientious prosecuting authority worth its salt."


The first paragraph is directly contradicted by the evidence given by "Ivor", the surveillance officer that grabbed de Menezes.

Ivor moved into action as Mr Menezes stood up from his seat on the Northern line train with his arms at waist level and slightly in front of him. He told the jury: "I grabbed Mr Menezes, wrapping both my arms around the torso, pinning his arms against his side, pushing him back to the seat with the right hand side of my head against the right hand side of his torso, pinning him to the seat.

A witness who has spoken to the BBC gave a similar account:

Anna Dunwoodie, who was in the same carriage as Mr Menezes when he was shot, told the BBC how she witnessed this "horrific" moment when armed police ran on board the train.

"It didn't feel to me like I was in the middle of a police operation," she recalled.

"The men who came running in seemed quite chaotic. I'd describe them as slightly hysterical.

"Jean Charles, to my knowledge, did nothing out of the ordinary.

"I didn't notice him until he had a gun pressed to him. It felt to me like he was someone who was being picked on at random because he was nearest to the door.

"We all ran to the sound of gunshots."

Hardly the actions of a man who didn't comply with police requests (some accounts suggest they weren't any) or that was about to detonate explosives. By Thwaites' and Dick's definition, acting suspiciously is getting off a bus to enter a tube station, finding it's closed and getting back on again, then using your mobile phone to send text messages and phone people. If the police shot dead every person who did that on public transport, we wouldn't have to worry about immigration ever again.

Dick herself was just as disingenuous. While being cross-examined she claimed she would act exactly the same again:

"In relation to my own decisions, given what I now know and what I was told at the time, I wouldn't change those decisions."

So instead of just saying that "Nettletip" should be stopped, as she claimed she did, she wouldn't have instead said, unequivocally, that he should be arrested? Dick is either a knave or a fool to say such a thing. The original IPCC report, contents of which were leaked to the News of the World, suggested that she might have added "at all costs" to her order that de Menezes be stopped, something she denied in the witness box.

As a result, we still have no real answer to why de Menezes was shot dead. As Vikram Dodd's account of what took place on the Grauniad website makes clear, and if the evidence given by Dick is to be believed, there was no official authorisation of lethal force. Did the SO19 officers, pumped up by their briefing, take the matter into their own hands once they knew that a potential suicide bomber was already on a train, or was there some other communication that they either misheard or misinterpreted? We simply don't know, because neither of the men who fired shots were called to testify.

We may yet learn more from the inquest, which is likely to be held next year, or from the release of the original IPCC report, held back until the end of the trial, which according to them is to be released within days. Other questions that need answering are how and why the SAS was involved and why bullets that are illegal under the Hague convention were felt suitable for use.

Two things remain the same after all this, however. The Met, despite being fined a substantial amount, a curious decision in itself as it means the taxpayers who were put at risk in the first place are paying for the police's "complete and utter fuck-up", still decides no one is personally accountable. Sir Ian Blair, a man who could have resigned or been sacked multiple times over, and who most certainly should have been fired after the second IPCC report found his secretary knew before him that an innocent man had been shot, is refusing to resign, despite both opposition parties' calling for his removal. Indeed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he even claimed the mistakes made were not "systematic". He has the support of the government, and of Ken Livingstone, who really should know better but who defends Blair because he fears a more "traditional" copper in the top job. Livingstone's remarks that it will make defending the capital more difficult are also nonsensical: this was the only way to force the Met into changing its procedures which endangered far more people that day than the bombers on the loose did.

Secondly, the de Menezes family still has not seen justice served. The Crown Prosecution Service ought to reconsider its decision not to charge the officers responsible for de Menezes' death with at least manslaughter, considering no order was given for him to be shot, although the inquest may yet find de Menezes was unlawfully killed, triggering another investigation.

The de Menezes family's son was first shot, then smeared, insulted with the promotion of Cressida Dick before any discplinary action, then smeared once again. When police failures involve officers lower down the chain of command, it results in sackings. When the failures involve top level management, no one's responsible. The Met truly has become a corporate machine.

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11/01/2007 08:35:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, October 05, 2007 

A tale of two tragedies and different police responses.


Peter Woodhams - Murdered by Bradley Tucker after a seven-month campaign of terror was waged against him by a gang of youths. Despite being previously slashed across the face and stabbed in the neck, the Independent Police Complaint Commission's findings were:

Officers failed to bring in forensic experts
No photographs were taken of the scene
A proper record of the attack was not made in officers' pocketbooks
Officers failed to contact the Woodhams family for more information
Anonymous phone calls identifying several suspects were not followed up by police
Two sergeants did not adequately manage the scene of the attack

As a result, a detective sergeant and a detective constable have been required to resign.

Jean Charles de Menezes - Brutally murdered by a member of the SO19 firearms unit, shot 7 times at point-blank range in the head after being "mistaken" for one of the men who had attempted a suicide bombing on the tube the day before. Despite two highly critical IPCC reports, one of which still yet to be publicly published, and a prosecution against the Metropolitan police on health and safety grounds, which is currently detailing the amazing incompetence and negligence of the Met on July the 22nd, no one has so much as been disciplined over de Menezes's death. In fact, quite the opposite has happened: Cressida Dick, the woman in charge on the day, has already been promoted to deputy assistant commissioner. Despite the second IPCC report into the police's response after de Menezes had been shot, which identified that Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman had known that it was likely an innocent man had been shot as early as 16:00 the same day, he instead continued to brief the media that the assumption was that it was one of the bombers who was dead. As for Sir Ian Blair, despite seemingly everyone apart from him hearing the rumours that an innocent man had been killed, he didn't learn of the deadly mistake until the following morning. Neither have been disciplined, let alone felt the need to resign.

For Peter Woodhams, justice has come far too late. For Jean Charles de Menezes, it seems unlikely to ever come. It seems that those in the front line are expendable, while the responsible commissioners are untouchable.

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10/05/2007 09:52:00 PM | | | links to this post

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