What People Believe

A report has recently been published regarding the shooting of Charles de Menezes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6927140.stm One of many but this one addressed the point I was most interested in. It deals with how the information relating to the shooting was handled. This is due to the massive discrepancy between what the Met reported as De Menezes movements before the shooting and what actually happened.For those living in a cave (Or indeed a large section of the British Public, which is where I'm going with this) here are the two events, and it reads like a comedy sketch of bad policework.Police Version: On suspicion that terrorists were living at his address Police folowed de Menezes from his flat on to a bus. He was wearing a large bulky jackect, an unusual garment for such a mild day. On leaving teh bus they follwed him into the underground where he broke into a run, police chased him into the station, shouting stop, Menezes vaulted the ticket barrier and boarded the train where police shot him after he had not acknowlaged their calls to stop.WHat actually Happened: On suspicion that terrorists were living at his address Police folowed de Menezes from his flat on to a bus. He was wearing a denim jacket, not a bulky coat, something that was perfectly normal for the weather. They then follwed him from the bus into the tube station where de Menezes walkedthrough the barrier, picked up a copy of metro and walked on to teh train where he sat down. Police rushed on to the train, wrestled him to the ground and shot him 9 times in the head.There is a fair discrepancy between teh two, not one that could be made by say a casual mistake or a fddly detail. The police report was not an error, it was a lie. A Bare faced lie that, in the most forgiving light, was told to cover up a huge cock up, from intelligence to the very literal execution, that lead to the death of an innocent man. Indeed to further try and cover themselves for woeful intelligence and dangerously trigger happy men they even tried to start rumours that he was an illegal immegrant. WHiel teh report does not accuse commissionar Ian Blair it does point out taht the handling of information was hugely flawed. However this is not my biggest gripe.My biggest problem is with the great brittish public, and their idiotic ability not to be bale to update facts after the first run. Look at any discussuins on the shooting and you'll always see some Daily Mail reading numbnut saying "Well he shouldn't have run away, he was wearing a big puffy jacket" etc worse you get some amature bomb squad numpty who'll add "The police have to shoot first on suspicion, what with the super fast triggers these terrorist have access to" I'll address this second one before my main and final rant. Super fast triggers. Lets forget the fact that we're talking about home made explosives for a moment, and so the chances of having some form of high tech trigger are fairly remote. Second, there are 2 ways of detonating a bomb you are wearing. The big red button (possibly what they are refering to if its wired into a hand) but in essence you press a button and go boom, not "Super Fast" and the hand linking is unlikely (Longer wires mean more chance of the trigger becoming disconnected by tugging, think of your walkman headpohones and how they seem to snag on anything) the other is the dead man switch, popular in films release a button and boom. Only this never happens outside hollywood, and if it did, then killing someone is probably unwise. Either way giving police carte blanch to shoot anyone who looks a bit shifty without warning is a hugely dangerous thing to do.On to my final point, a cynic may think that the Police version of events was rushed out first, before any other sequence of events, to deliberately exploit this feature in the dim masses of not updating facts. They know that the vast majority of teh bovine public will take their story and then repeat it parrot (A half bovine parrot) fashion during any debate. The series of events taht makes them look less like gun happy loons and the intelegence side less like bumbling idiots keeps circulating as fact despite the truth being public knowlege. In short if you want to cover youself, tell your lie first, before anyone elses gets out there.