Macrolog
More Thoughts on the Tube Shooting
The Observer’s Rafael Behr puts it bluntly:
A man slips on his denim jacket (unimpeded by explosives of any sort) and steps outside. He gets a bus to his local metropolitan railway station. He enters the station using the conventional, unathletic ticket-in-barrier walk-in method. He goes down to the platform, runs for a train and gets on it. He is then shot repeatedly in the head by armed police.
It all raises certain questions about the judgement of our senior law enforcement officers.
Five weeks after the shooting at Stockwell Tube station, the truth about the events that lead to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes is finally beginning to emerge.
And it doesn’t look good for the Met. An investigation by The Observer, published last Sunday, has raised fresh questions about de Menezes’ killing: key errors were made by the surveillance team; security cameras were mysteriously not working; new testimony suggests he walked calmly through the station and to the platform, unchallenged; a photo of the scene of the shooting released by leaked from the Met Police shows a man wearing a light denim jacket, not a padded winter coat.
At the same time, it also emerged that Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Ian Blair tried to halt the independent investigation into the affair. Allegations of a cover-up abound.
The more evidence that comes to light, the less this incident seems like an accident and the more it looks like manslaughter, at best — or at worst, murder. If the armed officers involved, not to mention their superiors, don’t face any charges or disciplinary action for their part in this horrendous warping of justice, there could be some serious trouble ahead.
Fri 19 Aug 2005 at 15:29 ·
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Makes you wonder about those eyewitness reports doesn’t it. I’m sure at least one person described him as wearing a bulky jacket, and vaulting the barriers.
Then again, maybe what they saw was the cops chasing him?
That’s what I’m thinking, especially when it comes to Mark Whitby’s account of what happened; the man he saw and gave a detailed description of was probably one of the first officers who boarded the train after Menezes — in the scuffle that ensued, I doubt I’d know who was who if I was there.
But I guess we’ll never really know, will we? I just hope the police don’t get off scot-free, because the more I think about this the more it seems like Mega City One, and the police are Judge Dredd.
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This is the personal website of MacDara Conroy, a twenty-something journalist, editor and all-round creative type living in Dublin, Ireland.
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You are reading More Thoughts on the Tube Shooting, a Macrolog entry by MacDara Conroy. It is filed under Culture & Society, and was published in August 2005.
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