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Friday, July 29
Clarification of my personal opinion on the Tube shooting

Ok, it's come to my attention that some people may not have interpreted what I was trying to say exactly when I blogged about the shooting on the Tube. When I posted that blog up, only very sketchy information was available, nothing like what's available now - however, I stand by my opinion.

Somebody commented,

"If he had only applied for a work visa, this may well have never happened." >> WTF!!!!

"Wrong place at the wrong time" >> it could be you, or a member of your family. Jesus!
Are you really a nutter, or just trying to provoke your readers???

This man was shot 8 times!!
Wake up! Wise Up!


Given the light of the new information my response remains:

The fact remains that the (now-dead) man entered the country on a STUDENT VISA, which was valid until the end of 2003. He then had his passport stamped with a FAKE work permit, so in fact after 2003 he was an illegal immigrant. Disregarding the moral and ethical issues about him being shot (because we'll just go round in circles forever and a day discussing those), the clear logical conclusion is as thus:

ONE: He cheated the system by faking his work permit. He therefore had something to hide. TWO: While he was unfortunate enough to be coming out of the same block of flats police were watching, when he was being followed, he refused to obey any of the commands issued by the police (which included "POLICE - STOP", which is an order, "POLICE - STOP OR WE WILL SHOOT YOU", another order, "POLICE - STOP THIS IS AN ORDER". All three of those things they are required to say before taking any action, and witnesses have them down as saying that. THREE: The man continued to run (fight or flight I guess, but he really should've thought about it and stopped, especially given the circumstances. FOUR: He ran INTO A TUBE STATION, jumping the barrier (!!) and onto a Tube train. By now, if I were one of the SO19 anti-terrorist officers chasing this guy, I would have to think, 'what are his intentions?', and given the same choice, I probably would have followed orders and probably shot the man, because if you aren't 100% sure about someone's intentions and there's the possibility that they are carrying a destructive device with them, you have to take action - that's the police's shoot-to-kill-to-protect ORDER.

I regret the wrong person was shot, however his actions in this were a major contributor to his expiration, if you look at it objectively and logically.

Also, when you do shoot someone, and you're shooting to disable, you have to make sure that they are properly disabled and don't have a chance of activating any devices they carry on them. If someone's suspected of carrying a bomb, you don't shoot round the abdomen as there's a chance you hit the trigger. So, you aim for the head. The man was shot by a policeman carrying a semi-automatic handgun - the fact he was shot 8 times just shows the policeman fired his weapon and made sure he was disabled, because all you have to do is squeeze the trigger and it reloads automatically, bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang as fast as that.


The policemen were following orders, the man refused to obey orders, if I was a policeman in the same situation I wouldn't have time to sit and moot the possible future ethical problems that could arise from me shooting this SUSPICIOUSLY-BEHAVING SUSPECT, I would most probably act from the specialised training I'd received, neutralise the suspect following orders. I still have the utmost admiration for my country's police force, they're doing one of the hardest jobs they've ever had to do under extremely tense circumstances, and people making out they're the big bad wolf in all of this isn't helping at all.

As the person comments, "it could be you or your family" - yes, I could get blown up on my next trip into London when I'm travelling on the Tube, and I would imagine that if I was a suspiciously-acting character around the area of intense police scrutiny shortly after a failed bomb attack on my capital's public transport system, and I fitted the behaviour profile for someone they were looking for - yes, I might get shot if I refused to obey very clear orders from police chasing me (the Brazilian guy ran through a fair bit of London before he even reached the Tube)! He had many opportunities to stop, the police would've interrogated hm and probably deported him, but if you cheat our immigration system, what do you expect? If I was someone from overseas living illegaly in this country, I would expect nothing less than deportation if I was caught. That is probably why he was scared, but if you trace it all the way back to his initial actions here, if he had applied for a real, official work permit instead of living on a falsehood, then he would have most probably never found himself in the same situation - at the very least, he would've had nothing to hide had he stopped and given himself up to the authorities (there were other people detained that day and the day before by the police, one man outside Downing Street for example was made to take off his clothing above the waist and was then frogmarched off, all caught on cameras, but was later released - he wasn't shot because he complied with the police!

Make your own mind up on this at the end of the day I suppose, however my personal opinion remains that the circumstances leading up to his shooting were mostly of his own making, he decided to get a false visa, he decided to run from armed special ops police (not clever, in any circumstances), therefore fault lies with him as much as the officer who shot him. If the man had turned out to be a suicide bomber, made it onto the Tube and detonated his device before the chasing police officer had a chance to shoot him to neutralise him and prevent his explosive device killing many surrounding civilians because he was busy weighing up the moral and ethical issues, what would you say then?




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Dragged out of Christopher's memory and pasted
into his blog at 7/29/2005 09:57:00 AM. Roughly.
Blog ID: 112262841760357363·
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