Police shoot suspect....................er why?

by ISP 299 Replies latest members politics

• 

  upside/down

  Call me old fashioned...but I was raised to do what a cop tells me...or else!

  If a cop says "halt or I'll shoot"...I'd better damn well halt...

  Thank you Dr. Spock for messing humanity up and making everyone question ALL authority...especially when it's putting a gun to your head.

  And that goes for people in crosswalks too... stand your ground...cuz damn it you have your RIGHTS... who cares if that SUV runs you over and kills you ... HE'S WRONG!!!

  I guess "nature" does weed out the stupid in her own warped little way...

  u/d (of the has enough sense to do what he's told by cops class)

  p.s.-guys with guns ALWAYS trump guys without 'em.
• 

  kgfreeperson

  When I first heard about the July 7 bombings, I wondered if England wasn't experiencing its first Timothy McVeigh/Terry Nichols. When I first heard the description of the police shooting and the reason given that he was wearing a bulky overcoat in 70 degree weather, I thought of the mentally ill street people I see where I live, wearing everything they own in temperatures approaching 100.
  
  But I know that England isn't America. What confuses me, however, is the name calling (do-gooders, whingers, etc.) in response to any concern raised about the report that more than one police officer held down the suspect while another shot him at point blank range five times. It isn't second-guessing public servants to have a "is this what we have come to" moment in cases such as this.
  
  But again, Americans are used to instances of police abuse of power and the fact that the majority of the populace supports it, assuming they will never bear the brunt of it. I always think of Brits as so much more civilized.
  
  I do absolutely agree that no one has all the facts at this point and judgments should not be being made. I don't agree that concerns should not be voiced or questions raised, however.
• 

  Simon

  Would you want to be the cop that went to tell the family of 30 dead people that you could have stopped this guy from blowing up the train, but didn't because you wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt?

  The explanation would fit if he had been shot when he first refused to stop, not allow him to get to the tub, jump on him and shoot him. If they really thought he was going to do something then they should have had people to stop him and not be following him. How come they were all behind him? Sounds like the keystone cops.

  Just because the cops shoot someone and say it's in connection with a terriorist incident doesn't make the person guilty. For evidence, see the train driver who was threatened and the people the day before who were lay flat on the ground with guns pointed at them.

  Yes, he ran. Did he really know they were police or just more people making an attack on an asian man? Did he speak English and understand them?

  If he was a terrorist then the police seem to have been playing fast and lose with people's lives following someone who looked like a suicide bomber to the tube. Why not arrest them when they first thought he was a suspect ... or are they playing up the 'suspect' thing since they shot him - of course they are.
• 

  diamondblue1974

  I have mixed feelings and thoughts on this point; to shoot to kill (which is exactly what the police did) they must reasonably believe there is an imminent threat to life...maybe the guy reached inside his jacket when he shouldve had his hands on the floor...who knows?

  Whichever he obviously failed to obey the instructions coming from armed police who had said who they were and asked him to follow those instructions...is that reason to offload ammunition into the guys body?...again its a judgement call made by highly trained professional people. Are those highly trained professional people without bias or prejudice?...hell no...the police force still is inherently racist as previous documentaries and investigations have shown.

  If they had reason to believe their was an imminent threat to life then as sad as it was the killing will no doubt be lawful; this is a very grey area though and no doubt the police officer concerned will be answering a lot of questions right now.

  DB74
• 

  katiekitten

  
  I have mixed feeling too, and I agree with a lot of posters arguing on both sides.

  I think the problem is we are looking for a RIGHT course of action - he should have done this, they should have done that etc. What if there was no RIGHT thing to do, just a whole host of not quite right options. And what if none of those not - quite - right options would dovetail together to get the RIGHT result?

  So then we are looking for someone to blame for it going wrong in hindsight. (I would have done this, he should have done that, they should have thought the other).

  Someone is dead and a whole lot of other people are gonna get their asses kicked, and its going to cost the British taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds in public enquiries that will probably take longer than a year or two to conclude. Then someones not going to be happy with the conclusion and the papers are gonna find a whole load of NEW evidence to show that old evidence had been hidden from the first enquiry (stop me if im wrong), and theres gonna be calls from the relatives and Liberty (who I have huge respect for BTW) for a new enquiry to take into account the new evidence.

  And in the end were gonna be so weary of it were not gonna give a damn who shot who.

  Personally if 20 armed people were running towards me I wouldnt for one second imagine that running away INTO a tube station was going to help my long term future.

  Like someone already said nature has a way of self filtering.
• 

  Max Divergent

  Balistic: Ordinary police still only carry conventional weapons.

  ...while extra-ordinary cops have the full range of nuclear, biological and chemical street warefare weapons available to them... :-)

  I've heard the arguments for not arming most British police, and I'd prefer they not be armed in the ideal world.... but it just seems a nostalgic self-indulgance for regular police to have nothing more than a batton or a bit of spray in a major western city.

  Maybe downgrade the cops who you can't trust with guns into tourist attractions wearing the funny helmets and giving directions to tourists and arm the rest to the hilt with assult rifles and whatever else to do the real police work.... or....ummmm.... well.... maybe that's what they've already done?? :-)
• 

  katiekitten

  Oh and it IS true that the papers are not accurate in their reporting. The only people who can afford to challenge it when they get it wrong are very rich celebrities (Neil & Christine Hamilton etc).

  The rest of us just have to put up with their fictional prose.

  I am speaking from personal experience of a newspaper report when my cousin got killed. They got nearly EVERY SINGLE detail wrong - even basic things like his address and age despite having interviewed my Aunty and Uncle. They totally made some stuff up. It was pathetic and hurtful.

  It is the only job (according to me) where you can have complete disregard for the facts and still draw a paycheck every month. The rest of us have some accountability for the accuracy of our work. They are cynical and shameless. Drop the Dead Donkey was not a comedy it was a documentary IMO.
• 

  ISP

  http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/23/london.tube/index.html

  Katie...you can check out an interview from an eye witness and draw your own conclusion!

  ISP
• 

  dh

  From what I heard, they had a warrant for the guys arrest in relation to the attempted bombings the day before... They went to arrest him, he ran, headed into a tube station... According to the pigs (and witnesses) he was wearing a large overcoat, which they say they figured could have had a bomb underneath, SO, with shoot to kill (headshot) orders, they shot him. Headshot because IF he was carrying a bomb, a body shot could have exploded it, or given him chance to explode it.

  What would you (the general 'you' of mankind) prefer, that they didn't shoot him and he was carrying a bomb and did blow up a bunch of people? If he was involved and got killed, maybe it's a bit of injustice, but that's life. If he was not involved at all, then it is a big injustice, but that is life too. I for one have no problem with police shooting dead suspects who are running into tube states to escape arrest, that is providing they are REAL suspects, and not just random Indian, Pakistani, Arab people.
• 

  trevor

  I can’t help thinking about all that talk we had, on the thread about The Death Penalty, saying how much more civilized we are in the UK than the USA because we don’t have the death Penalty . I didn’t give my opinion on that thread but simply said:

  If we value life so much that we cannot justify execution, how do we justify the mass murder of people in other countries? Either we do not as civilized people take life under any circumstance, except as a last resort in self defence, or we kill when it suits us to and say ’so what.’ I don't claim to have the answer but I am troubled by the inconsistency of the whole thing.

  It seems ther is no longer any inconsistency - we do have the Death Penalty in the UK after all!

  What do I think? That would be telling. Be seeing you. Number 6