Shooting Menezes
Scott Kirwin
When Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police on July 22, civil libertarians in the UK as well as many elements of the Left cited this action as an example of police overreaction to the events of 7/7 and 7/21. Many on the Right - including myself - believed that the police had acted properly according to the reports coming out of the British media.
Well, it turns out that they didn't. The police lied. Menezes wasn't wearing a heavy coat, jumping turnstiles and running from police. He was wearing a light jean jacket and following police instructions. The official report hasn't been issued yet, but it appears that Menezes may have been gunned down in what I can only describe as cold blood.
In general I trust the police. I believe they have a tough job and would really prefer not hassling people. I believe that cops should always be given the benefit of the doubt in highly publicized cases. Why? Because they have no axe to grind. They have no political agenda to feed or organization to build. I've known cops. One of my gradeschool friends is a sheriff now - which I find amusing considering how many times he had run-ins with the law as a teenager. They are people, and they make mistakes.
However they are trained not to make the mistakes made by the London cops on July 22. This was no mistake - no toy gun mistaken for a pistol in a dark alley.
What happened? What was the shooter thinking? Would American cops have made similar mistakes?
There are times when cops screw up badly, and when the do, no excuses should be made. If this is such a time, then there is nothing that can be said for this mistake, no support we can offer. John Gibson seems to agree.
The Left will no doubt interpret this as the Right being silent on the matter, but what should we do? What needs to be done that isn't being done? The police lied, and now we are finding out the truth. We will learn why the shooter acted, and if he did shoot Menezes down in cold blood than there are institutions and laws in place that will mete out justice.
The Left cannot deny that fifty+ people died on 7/7 and that two weeks later a group of individuals were attempting to repeat the atrocity. There are suicide bombers around, and the only way to stop them is to shoot them dead so that they don't detonate their explosives and kill everyone within a 20 meter radius.
Shooting Menezes may have a chilling effect on police activity in the UK, but honestly, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe they need retraining considering how they slaughtered an innocent man and then lied about it. That doesn't help stop terror.
This makes that incident with the poor immigrant who was shot at 52 times look good by comparison. At least those guys had reason to be confused and think he was shooting at them.
Man. What a horrible tragedy if so.
I agree with you. Something doesn't seem right about the whole incident, its reporting and the supposed "lies" made by the police.
I'm also wondering if this "leaked" video has been played on air or otherwise made available to the public by the station that acquired it. Maybe I'm just remembering CBS news too strongly, but "Oh, wow, a video that proves the cops lied! Yay, our prejudices are confirmed!" doesn't seem out of the question.
Sometimes actions need to be taken with less than perfect information--and mistakes do happen. But that's no excuse for rushing to judgment when we know an investigation is going to follow. To do so is no different than the MSM whose need to scoop the competition leads to inaccurate--and rarely corrected--reporting.
It's another case, though, where I, for one, am grateful for those surveillance cameras.
And "healthy" means "healthy overall", as in "not so wild and conspiracy-mongering that no authority figure can do right". So I don't expect the typical traffic cop to gun me down for speeding because it's The Man, and why would he be carrying a gun if he didn't intend to use it, etc.
But that only works when the real screwups, like this one, get the full treatment.
And if the so-called Left got this one right, well, kudos to them. Look at Michael Moore if you want to see where you end up if you start believing that the "other side" can never be right.
And second reports, please. So far, all we have is ITC's reports of what they saw in the video, not the video itself, nor the official report. While I'll admit that these reports are awful if true, we've seen enough media screw-ups to know that grains of salt are needed everywhere. At this point, if you ask me whether I believe an eyewitness at the scene vs. a media story, I have to say that neither one rates high on the credibility scale.
Sorry if that sounds apologist. I fully believe this could be a scandal or worse. But the media tell the story to fit their template. Sometimes the template fits. Sometimes it doesn't. But they use the template whether it fits or not.
There are no lessons to be drawn.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
That might have been survivable, but it does look like the brass-hats made an attempt to embellish what happened, whether with whitewash or gilding: if so, it should become more apparent soon.
About a month and a half ago, there was a non-fatal shooting at my apartment complex (domestic violence call; the guy charged a cop with a knife and took a shotgun blast.) I have never seen so many police cars and investigators, despite the fact that the ambulance didn't even bother to turn on the siren (I thought the guy was dead because of that!) All for a shooting that, apparently, left the guy still cursing at the police.
British police may need more hard core training with shooting situations. Practice facilitates a cool head, and it's nerves that lead to bad judgement calls.