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...a blog by Richard Flowers

Monday, August 06, 2007

Day 2405: SO when IS an innocent man being shot dead a calamity, Mr Mayor?

Thursday:


Today we got the report into the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Mr Jean-Charles de Menezes.

If you remember, this was in the days after REAL terrorists had exploded fifty-two people on the London tube and on a bus, so the police were on high alert and probably a bit PANICKY when they mistook him for a threat and so shot him very, very dead.

In anybody's book, this is a TRAGEDY. Another innocent victim in the War on Adjective, and doubly so because we are supposed to be the GOODIES.

Well, I SAY in anybody's book, but not, apparently in the book of our very own Mayor of London Mr Ken, who rubbished the idea "that this is some sort of catastrophic error of judgment on the part of an officer".

The office in question is Mr Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman who was ALSO in charge of the shooting of ANOTHER innocent person in the raid in Forest Gate last year. Though that is just a coincidence and you shouldn't hold it against him.

"Well, basically, he's my mate so he can shoot anyone he wants to, really," the Mayor very nearly added.

Of course, the report – which DID find errors of judgement – was in fact about the rather curious events AFTER the police made their horrible error. I am talking about the news stories that were MYSTERIOUSLY leaked to the press about how Mr Jean-Charles was wearing a heavy overcoat (suspicious in the HOT July weather) and how he supposedly LEAPED over the barriers at the tube station, clearly making it more urgent that the police catch him before he could escape or WORSE explode himself.

Except of course he was NOT wearing a coat and he entered the tube station at a walk, picked up a Metro and read it standing on the escalator.

So, these stories were NOT TRUE. They were FIBS. But they were fibs that were terribly handy to the police in justifying their precipitous and ultimately WRONG actions.

That wouldn't be a problem except that the police, and by "police" in fact the report rather specifically means Mr Mayor Ken's mate, rather seems to have KNOWN that they were fibs and carried on letting people believe that they were true, and by people the report includes his own BOSS the clone of Lord Blairimort who is Head of the Met.


But Mr Livingstone said: "It's all very well for academics, which is largely what the police complaints authority are, sitting in their office saying this is how it should have worked.
You try doing it while you are waiting for the next bomb to go off.
"

Actually, this report is from the INDEPENDENT Police Complaints Commission, and you might guess that the point of them being INDEPENDENT is that they AREN'T police officers. In fact, the Chair and Commissioners are a group of lawyers and public servants and you can read all about them HERE… but basically they are people pretty much like Mayor Ken and if he thinks that means THEY aren't qualified to oversee the police, then he ought to be calling for his OWN immediate resignation too.

Ooh, just listen to the silence.

And ANYWAY, this FIBBING – well, all right "allowing people to go on believing in fibs that you could and should have corrected" – was being done AFTER the shooting, not while waiting for the next bomb. No, more like in the time after it turned out not to be a bomb at all.


I am afraid to say that this is a very SOCIALIST attitude: "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, unless…" as Mr Mayor Ken might put it "…the one happens to me ME!"

Mr Mayor Ken has done many good things for London… but like any good old-fashioned SOCIALIST DICTATOR, he knows that the first step to a successful POLICE STATE is to get the Police on YOUR SIDE.

Oh, and speaking of the police not having enough evidence, the Joint Human Rights committee says there is not enough evidence to extend detention without trial beyond 28 days.

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