A time to kill...
For the first time in a long time, a major issue has wafted under my nose and I find myself incapable of formulating an opinion.
I honestly just don't know what to make of the shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.
On the one hand, what happened was and still is a terrible and seemingly avoidable tragedy.
While on the other hand, was the guy acting so suspiciously that the police were left with no choice?
To make matters worse, police reports conflict with other evidence and in some cases, evidence seems to have gone missing.
What do you guys think?
posted by Wayne Smallman at Monday, August 22, 2005
5 Comments:
I still cannot understand why it was necessary to kill him, when he was already overpowered and his hands were secured. On top of that, he was allowed to board a bus on his way to the station; if he was a suspect, you have to question the thinking of the police.
Well these are the things that concern me, but you have to put all of these questions in the context of the current political climate, which is one of suspicion and fear.
Almost anyone with dark skin and a ruck sack could be viewed as suspect these days.
The problem with a city like London -- which is an enormously cosmopolitan city and has been for centuries -- is that there are probably hundreds of thousands of foreigners within the city at any one time.
So imagine the police stop the guy going onto the bus, can you imagine the headlines the next day?
"Police seize Brazilian in knee-jerk terror alert"
I'm not condoning what the police did, far from it, and I'd hate to think that what happened reflects on the police as a whole, especially the armed response units.
Something went radically and catastrophically wrong. So wrong in fact, the climate of fear for some must be palpable...
I still can't believe that poor innocent man got shot, but you're right to say that he may have been suspect just by his dark skin and rucksack, but I reckon that they should have checked him first.
I am not very good with this sort of thing, but am all for diversity in society, as with my interest with disability issues.
Thanks for the comments on my blog Wayne, but don't feel bad, everybody in this world all need to have an understanding of issues.
The fact that the police shot him a total of eight times is pretty bizarre, even more bizarre given that he was sat down.
What's even more disturbing is that seven of the bullets were put in his head.
Hi Gindy!
We have a number of current affairs programs, such as Panorama and Dispatches.
These are the kind of programs that really do dish the dirt.
They're usually so inflammatory that in some cases, they've led to government inquiries...
Over the course of the last two days, some Brazilian officials have been over here, liaising with our government.
They held a press conference to announce that they were largely satisfied with what had taken place and stated quite clearly that there was no cover up.
Now, this is where things get a little fuzzy, and this is where conspiracy theorists put on their foil hats.
What the hell have the Brazilians seen that we haven't seen that's convinced them that were was no impropriety?
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