The UK press has been excited in the last couple of days by the fact that the Metropolitan Police have been found guilty of endangering the lives of the public. The police broke the health and safety laws (such irony) in the shooting of the innocent terror suspect, Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. After the trial revealed a depressing catalogue of catastrophic errors on behalf of the police, there were immediate calls for the Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair to resign. Sir Ian immediately announced that he would remain in the job and was backed by the Prime Minister and later by the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
Although I feel it would be naive and arrogant of me to reach a conclusion about whether he should go or not without knowing the full details and circumstances of such a sensitive case, I would want to bring the following points to any discussion.
First, I do not accept the notion that the leader of any organisation necessarily has to resign because of the failings of some individuals in that organisation. It seems ridiculous, and if carried out, would mean that we were constantly losing leaders because of the failings of their staff. And the people most likely to be able to bring about necessary change within an organisation quickly, and to help the organisation learn from any mistakes quickly are the existing leaders.
For me, I would want answers to the following questions before making a case for Sir Ian to go:
- Did he have any immediate, personal responsibility for the tragedy?
- Was he aware of, or should he have been aware of any systemic failure that contributed to the tragedy? If yes, then he clearly has some responsibility for what happened.
Secondly, if Sir Ian didn’t have any direct responsibility for the tragedy, it may be that some of the officers involved in the managing the shooting (and in ultimately making the decisions to kill the man) should consider resignation. However, even here, I would want a discussion of the following to take place:
- How serious were the consequences of the mistake? In this case, extremely serious.
- What were the circumstances of the incident? Here the previous climate of fighting terror with stretched resources, and the very real knowledge that many Londoners had recently been killed with bombs on public transport cannot be ignored. As far as the officers were concerned, carnage unless difficult decisions were taken, was a real possibility.
- Did the officers concerned act irresponsibly, or were they acting as responsibly as they could, given the circumstances?
- Did the officers concerned have a history of irresponsiblity or of good and reliable service to the public?
- Were there clear failures that can be pinned to individuals, or did the shooting result from a combination of unfortunate mistakes?
Although I understand something of the anger of the family of the innocent man who was shot and their desire for heads to roll, I find it interesting that the judge who heard all the evidence and who was scathing about the failures of the police, said that no individual could be blamed. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, also feels that it is in the best interests of Londoners for Sir Ian Blair to stay.
The terrorists were one of the causes of Jean Charles’ death and have already had one ‘victory’. We should not give them another unless we have very good reasons to.
I think what happened here was absolutley appauling and I personally feel for the family of John Charles. Yes, to control terroism is an extremely difficult job to say the least. But did he really have to be shot? He was sitting on a train, not acting violently,brandishing weapons, bombs or threatening the security forces.He was given no chance to surrender but simply shot 7 times in the head -correct me anyone if I am wrong on this.
For that reason I believe as a personal view this was murder. I can not criticise anyone indidvidual as I do not know the details of the case. However, it would appear it was shoot first ask questions later. A tragic mistake that cost someone his life.If this was my child I would want answers and justice.
Someone’s head should role for this. I would not rest until I found all the answers and I hope the family can continue their fight for justice as this was so wrong, and lessons must be learnt for it never to happen again.
Let’s imagine that the police have been keeping watch on someone considered on strong evidence to be a terrorist planning a suicide bombing and suppose they see him one day boarding a train and believe in good faith that he is about to set off a bomb, killing and injuring scores of people and that challenging him at the point of a gun will not do any good because he will simply detonate the bomb. Would it be right in those circumstances to shoot to kill? I think most people would say yes.
The problem here is that we know that the man who was shot was not a terrorist but an innocent person targeted by mistake. We can easily imagine ourselves or a loved one being in that position and our feelings and reactions are coloured as a result.
The question “Why shoot him?” I think can only be answered by the officers involved, given the circumstances prevailing at the time. I don’t think this is a simple moral issue where we can say yes or no and apply it indiscriminately to all cases.
It seems that the police made a series of mistakes that led to an innocent man losing his life. That is to be deplored, of course. The awful truth is that it could happen again, even if the police act impeccably but receive incorrect information.