Worrying Disfunctional Organisation and Culture

The legal and moral basis for the killing of a suspect by the police is to protect themselves or the public. There must be a reasonable believe that there is a serious threat which can only be prevented by the use of lethal force. The only people who can sensibly make that decision are people at the scene. The article describes a ludicrously top heavy and buearacratic command and control system. The potential for orders to execute suspects by remote commanders transforms the firearms officers into little more than death squads. Command at a distance cannot work and guarantees mistakes.

There was clearly no reasonable basis for belive in a serious threat by anyone at the scene and there was a concerted campaign to prevent investigation and mislead the public. This is not an isolated case that previous time the Met shot an innocent unarmed man the same campaign of deception occured. What confidence can we have in the integrity of the police, and the evidence they give, when there is a organisation wide campaign of disinformation and obstruction of investigation led from the very top? There is more than a hint of an organisation culture that believes it is not subject to the same laws and constraints as the rest of society.

The politics of terror means a that there is a competition in how far the norms of the judicial and polcing system can be extended. Most of the changes have no obvious benefit in reducing the risk of terrorism. The key areas are the hearts and minds of those who may support or become terrorists and intelligence on dangerous organisations. It is unlikely that armed police will ever be in a position to thwart an attack in progress. Suspects identified and under arrest are not the danger, the danger is the people no one knows about. The changes made giving ever more power to the police do not adress the real problem areas but are designed for political rather than security reasons.

merely an illusion of security.

"It is unlikely that armed police will ever be in a position to thwart an attack in progress. Suspects identified and under arrest are not the danger, the danger is the people no one knows about. The changes made giving ever more power to the police do not adress the real problem areas but are designed for political rather than security reasons."

Agreed, if someone is willing to die to get something done then there really is no way you can effectively stop them without having some degree of intel, even then there's still no telling..

All these measures taken by the government are just ways they create an illusion of security and safety, and they know it too. The government isn't so much interested in preventing/stopping the attacks as they are interested in maintaining control and order. Like lemmings we go, marching off the tops of cliffs.

Besides, if they actually prevented an attack then we wouldn't have an excuse to test out the latest war machines on whoever is the most convenient scapegoat... Not to mention, everyone knows how profitable war is... =/

Don't blame the police - blame Hussein Osman

It was Osman who the day before tried to blow up a train full of passengers at Shepherd’s Bush, Osman was linked to the block of flats in Stockwell where Mr de Menezes lived, and it was Osman whom the police thought they were following. Had Osman not existed, or else been content with allowing his fellow citizens to exist in peace, Jean Charles de Menezes would still be alive.

The people responsible for terrorism and it's consequences are not the police or government but the terrorists.

Re: 1865

"The people responsible for terrorism and it's consequences are not the police or government but the terrorists."

While I accept that police operations are a consequence of terrorism, I don't think that they have to be severely flawed police operations. The terrorists don't control the police (not last time I checked anyway).

Certainty - on a scale of 1 to 3 <rolls eyes>

The boundary of knowledge and ignorance is a topic worth studying. It obviously applies to this case. It is much more complicated than a linear scale of 1 to 3; it is more like a multidimensional hypercube.

Some of the things that we know, we know we know. Furthermore, we often know that what we know is correct (at least as a very good first approximation of some deeper unknown reality - which is fine). Ideally, we would even be aware of the limits of applicability of this knowledge (for example: Newtonian physics applied at speeds near the speed of light).

There are other things that we don't know, but at least we know that we don't know. Some of those things are knowable but presently unknown; others are unknowable. They might be unknowable because they are Heisenbergish (affected by observation); or Chaotic (sensitively dependent upon initial conditions); or possibly even both.

There are some things that we actually do know but we don't realize that we know. This is mostly harmless, but sometimes surprising.

The worst are the things that we think we know but we really don't know. As Feynman noted, naming is not the same as knowing. There's almost no excuse for allowing your brain to wander into this area where the ratio of confidence to competence exceeds unity. You need to actively filter incoming knowledge and ideas to prevent being contaminated in this manner.

I recommend the following topics for further study:

1) cognitive bias (including 'list of cognitive biases')

2) uncertainty principle *

3) chaos theory *

* Skip the math; just absorb the basic concepts.

Google your way into Wiki to start.

After you educate yourself on this boundary, you will have much less respect for people looking for clear and straightforward answers. And no respect at all for people looking for a simple 1 to 3 value.

Don't blame the police - blame Hussein Osman

That's a cop out. I spend decades telling my children that they can't use each other as an excuse for their own mis-behaviour. It wasn't my fault! He started it! Daaad :-(

The intended function of the police is to deal with devient behaviour. If they can't handle terrorism, I expect better training and managment, not excuses.

The people responsible for

"The people responsible for terrorism and it's consequences are not the police or government but the terrorists."

Maybe. In a war, those in charge now call it "collateral damage" or "friendly fire", and Dubya and the Blairs (tony, ian, and gordon) are conducting a "war on terror" aren't they. So that makes it all right, doesn't it?

"once or twice a week there would be a "Newsnight Special Report" "

That was before Tony's Crony, Dirty Birty, took over at the BBC and basically privatised most of it (apart from management, which for some reason never gets outsourced to the lowest bidder), creating the Endemol-dependent empire we see today. Nation Shall Speak Dross Unto Nation, calls cost 50p per minute, Mr Wogan's Fee will be donated to a charity of his choice..

Newsnight Special Report was also before Gilligan got the BBC into serious trouble by reporting that A Dossier had been sexed up. Which, history now shows, it had. But the BBC governors caved in to Blair there and then, and now we have a tame BBC and an ITN that couldn't care less about hard news. Paris Hilton in the jungle would be a different kettle of worms.

Does Rory Bremner (and the Two Johns) deserve a mention here, as maybe the closest thing there is to an Opposition right now?

Where's Mark Thomas when you need him? Oh, that's right, sh*t stirring wrt to the BAe/SFO Dodgy Dealings Kept Quite Quiet enquiry. Thanks Mark, someone's got to pin the barstewards down.

Thank you, El Reg.

Thanks el Reg

This case doesn't even get a mention in Australia. Apart from the shooting at the time. Its good to know that the register undersands that techies care about freedom and opression.

@1865 - You're an imbecile.

By your reasoning, because Hitler was born, Dresden, the ensuing civilian-targeting campaigns, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not our fault or responsibility?

I'd like to see how that holds up with Osama Bin Laden - presumably, because he existed, the entire War on Freedom (sorry, Terror) is his fault, as are the deaths in Iraq, etc, etc? Perhaps, then, you'd like to address the point that America set Bin Laden up? Or that they put Saddam Hussein in power?

Tracking back by your reasoning - it's all America's fault! There's a shock.

Your crap reasoning and black-and-white views simply don't work. You're an idiot.

At least the Brits have the BBC, and therefore some hope

Not so in the USA. When Rigoberto Alpizar was shot in the same manner in a Florida airport, the US government refused to reveal the shooters, threatened the unshot passengers lest they tell anyone what they saw (yes, first with guns, then with jail), and never provided any public hearing, whatsoever.

Most disturbingly, it was essentially uncovered by "American" news providers, to wit, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NYT, Washington Post et al. In fact, it was best covered by the BBC.

Terrorism...

"The people responsible for terrorism and it's consequences are not the police or government but the terrorists."

I would say it's both.

The root word of "terrorism" is terror. Clearly terrorists are responsible for actual terrorism. They do the actual killing and generation of terror.

However, the secondary is when officials are terrorized, and come up with poorly thought through policies that are "tough on terrorists" or whatever but end up causing more harm and distress than they avoid.

As it is in the US, while flying I'm far more anxious over getting delayed by the overly elaborate airport security (let alone the frequency of stuff being stolen from luggage), than I am about actually being blown up. Similarly if DHS ever implements the kind of hair-brained data mining stuff they want, I'll be much more concerned about people getting picked up or shot for "no reason" due to data mining false positivies than about people being blown up.

Re: The comment about the SAS

I very much doubt that the SAS/SBS carried out the shooting, as everything says that if they had they would not have made such a shambles of it such as getting close to the subject, holding him down, and shooting him 7 times in the head. I fully believe that if the SAS were under orders to shoot the suspect they would get into the carriage, tap him in the head without getting that near him at all, check he was dead, then leave.

While I fully agree that we cannot limit our forces by needlessly harassing them over every shooting, that means even more that we should follow them up on every innocent person that they kill. If we are to give them more freedom to operate at their discretion (as surely ground forces who are meant to deal with EXTREME situations must use) we absolutely MUST monitor and punish them when things go wrong, so that they do not use their discretion without reproach, and to prevent the use of deadly force in anything which does not completely fulfil criteria of an extreme situation. It does not matter whether they were acting on good faith, unless they were 100 per cent certain they should not have shot, and moreso, they should never have tried to deceive the public. In this alone they failed twice in their duty to protect the public.

As for the BBC, sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. It still has a lot of objective journalism, but it gets closer to corporate media every day, and the lack of objective reporting in our media really worries me, almost as much as the lack of depth in the two main political parties. I tend to read El Reg, The Week (as a compilation, makes much more interesting reading) and occasionally The Independent. I only really watch the news on TV when there's a Newsnight special, or something in particular I want to see, or if I'm bored after a film or before a programme starts.

Who to blame?

Who is to blame for this cock-up?

It appears to me that those on the ground (whether surveillance or whatever) did the best they could. Some ran towards a suicide bomber or stayed close observing at great danger to themselves. Those that opened fire were told beyond doubt he was a suicide bomber and had been given dubious information beforehand about the bombers capability. Given the circumstances and information at their disposal, can you blame them? Whether they were police or special forces etc. is not really that relevant.

To my mind, it looks like the communications were utterly confused and led to this whole incident. The operations rooms manifestly failed in its duty to provide good communications, clear information and timely decisions. Cressida Dick certainly did not make her decisions in good time and appeared ignorant of important information (such as the location of CO19 etc.) at least some of the time. So, for someone to blame, I think we should look no further than the people responsible for the operations room and its activities. Presumably, as the senior officer present, Cressida Dick must take responsibility for this. Her complete inability to make tactical decisions in a timely manner also highlights her.

Additionally, the misinformation initially put out after the operation must also have come or been organised by the operations room. Later press releases would undoubtedly come from the press office etc.etc., but the initial few I suspect not. So, Cressida Dick also presided over false information being fed to the media.

All in all, it rather looks like the people on the ground took a lot of personal risks to try and defend us, but the senior staff and those sitting comfortably in the operations room let them down dreadfully with the consequences we now know. Sir Ian Blairs position and that of a few of his senior officers should be in grave doubt. If he goes, Cressida Dick should also.

Wrong basis

We aren't really looking at the risk aversion issue from the right angle here.

The decision to kill de Menezes was a calculated political risk. Imagine if he had been Osman. You can see the tabloid headlines now - "Hero cops save dozens by shooting terrorist". From that point on, the police would have a massive amount of brownie points which they could spend on anything they liked - no politician would have the balls to stop a sweeping expansion of police power in the name of "stopping more Osmans". Every cop armed, 90-day detention without trial, weakening the basis of conviction for terrorist offences from "beyond reasonable doubt" to on the "balance of probabilities" - the only limit is your imagination. We already know the British police are perfectly willing to intervene in politics, this would led them do it on an unprecedented scale.

On the other hand, if they'd got it wrong and the guy wasn't Osman - well, absolutely nothing would happen. The police are the one profession allowed to use lethal equipment without any responsibility, unlike factory workers, taxi drivers, etc who can count of being sacked at least and prosecuted at worst if their negligence gets someone killed. There'd be a media frenzy, an investigation or two, and in the end no-one would be sacked. And so it has proved.

From a risk perspective, shooting the foreign-looking man who was boarding a Tube train was a surefire bet for the police. As it happened, it didn't come off. But if you bet on red you don't cry if it happens to come up black.

Oh you guys.

Are still scary as hell.

Hey, I live in a country where 'guns' I mean 'scary might go off at any time' guns are carried by Law Enforcement and otherwise qualified (sane) people.

And geeze, I haven't been shot yet.

You guys have been screwed.

Really.

@Anonymous Coward

I completely concur that the person pulling the trigger must ensure they have the legal right to do so. In order to shoot, they must believe they or someone else is in immediate danger and that lethal force is the only option. Given what the shooter was told on this occasion and the circumstance they found themselves in, I believe he did think this. He believed they had a suicide bomber, with bomb who had to be stopped. He and others were in immediate danger from the bomb. The fact he was given incorrect information and therefore his belief is wrong is the fault of those supplying the information.

Yes, nobody can tell him to open fire, but they can affect his beliefs etc. and therefore his likelihood of doing so by what they tell him.

@Logically flawed

Actually, I'd say it's a shoot-to-kill policy that's logically flawed since it's trivially easy to make a dead-man switch. In this scenario, either the bomb goes off when the bomber chooses or when he's shot/killed. Horrible as it is, there is virtually no possibility of a bomber not detonating once his bomb has been armed.

Maybe the police have good reason to think that terrorists don't use these; I certainly hope so. However, terrorists KNOW that the Met has a shoot-to-kill policy so there's yet further incentive to incorporate dead-man switches. If someone has evidence as to why the police don't make this assumption, it would set my mind at rest:

@The ignorance of some commentators is becoming tiresome...

Pointing out a logical flaw in policy is not pouring scorn on the officers' motivation or integrity any more than criticising the tactics of First World War generals diminishes the heroes that died executing those tactics.

Re: Wrong basis

Er, John, factoring in the likely consequences of getting the wrong guy is what I did in the third paragraph. To repeat, the likely consequences were exactly what's happened. A couple of inquiries, a lot of press attention, but no-one sacked, no-one disarmed, no-one prosecuted. The high command aren't on the edge of the precipice, Ian Blair doesn't look any more likely to go than before. He may go in the end, but one golden handshake is scarcely much of a price for a man's life and reputation.

By risk assessment I don't mean that the high command sat down in a room and worked all that out. They didn't need to. Most risk assessment is carried out on a subconscious level, as it was here.

Responsibility

"By your reasoning, because Hitler was born, Dresden, the ensuing civilian-targeting campaigns, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not our fault or responsibility?"

Yes, you've got it. Those who argue against actual facts with "what if, maybe" are onto a loser. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed. Japan surrendered. The "it might not have been necessary" crowd are idiots who have absolutely no facts to back themselves up. Dresden was bombed. Civilians were killed. London and Coventry were bombed. Were the German citizens who carried on regardless of an evil, insane leader and claimed to be innocent responsible for Hitlers reign of terror? Yes, in part. Those who died fighting against this tyranny are the heroes, not those who died allowing it to continue.

Loss of armed police? Good.

"You can't get firearms officers anymore because when they try and do their job, the get hounded by the public and through the courts. It's not worth it for them to try and defend us."

Good, fewer guns on the street means fewer deaths.

The police cannot (at the moment) be trusted with guns.

re: Not all bent...

"8 pigging officers, 2 cars and a wagon just to arrest a drunk that was trying to see his ex against a restraining order. Thats the reality of todays policing. But at least they are not all bent."

But the problem is that they will all close ranks to protect the few bad apples. That makes them equally culpable for that minorities' actions.

I don't know about the Met but outside there was the low level corruption that meant that police mumped free beer and overlook the closing hours. Others may have been on the take, but you didn't hear about it.

Now you hear about cockups like this and all the police are protecting each other. Outright lying if necessary to show no culpability of their compatriots.

Now most people I know wouldn't cross the road to help a policeman getting hte crap kicked out of them. Which may be why 8 officers went out together...

@AC; You ain't seen risk adverse yet

<< "You can't get firearms officers anymore because when they try and do their job, the get hounded by the public and through the courts. It's not worth it for them to try and defend us." >>

If they weren't involved in the totally preventable summary executions of inoffensive civilians, this wouldn't be a problem.

The police are the problem here, and if you're of the police, you need to be taking a hard look at yourself, your peers, and your organization. In this *particular* case, *everyone* fucked up *except* the victim.

Even the shooters (the most innocent of all the official parties in this case, odd as that sounds) must wear some blame for the totally slipshod manner in which they mustered up and reported for duty that day. Terrorists may be on the loose, and there's a stake-out and intercept operation on for the day? What the hell were the CO19 people doing wandering in like it was a normal day at the office, showing up late for their assignment in the team, and playing catch-up across the city? The surveilance plods certainly could get to work on time; why couldn't CO19 do the same?

Had CO19 been Johnny-on-the-spot, as they ought to have been, de Menzies could've been intercepted well before he was in such a official-panic-inducing locale, and might well be alive today.

Stop dog on no account stop corporal

Or if you're not familiar with the WWI original - here's the 21st century version - Eats shoots and leaves.

Kudos to James Cranch - nice example of group think being infected by paranoia.

Now exactly who would that mysterious Inspector Charlie be, what was he briefing, and who _wasn't_ he briefing?

Israelis training the Met....? If you knew the first thing about the Mossad MO you might be inclined to say this is a very strong explanatory factor in the whole depressing and sordid affair.

Dead man switch

"Actually, I'd say it's a shoot-to-kill policy that's logically flawed since it's trivially easy to make a dead-man switch. In this scenario, either the bomb goes off when the bomber chooses or when he's shot/killed. Horrible as it is, there is virtually no possibility of a bomber not detonating once his bomb has been armed.

Maybe the police have good reason to think that terrorists don't use these; I certainly hope so..."

Dead man switch: trivially easy to make. Less easy to make reliable. If you've got a dead man switch "live" you're at risk of premature (wasteful) detonation because of things like jostling, trips, distraction. Keeping focus on a DMS will be potentially likely to draw attetion because, for example you never take your hand out of your pocket. You don't want something like that impeding your transportation of the bomb. Sure have a DMS option so that in the final phase you can switch to that mode ensuring detonation even if people in the immediate proximity try and prevent you, but getting from storage to target you probably don't want any such thing.

A more technical device like one wired to a heartbeat/pulse monitor would be less likely to go off accidentally, but every element you put into a detonation circuit is another point of failure (if it's a wireless link it's susceptible to spoofing/jamming/failure; if it's wired to the fuse, that has to be in a bag that's never set down or a "vest") and the Jihadi terrorists so far haven't shown particular expertise in bomb-building.

And in the end, if you can't stop the bomb going off, you can't stop it going off. But if the best chance of stopping it going off is to blow the Medulla Oblongata of the suspect out all over the window, that's what you've got to do.

Failures in intelligence and control as certainly occurred in De Menezes' case certainly need accountability to be demonstrated. Cressida and Blair and any shitwit that designed/puked those operational procedures need to get sacked and prosecuted for at least reckless endangerment and possibly conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

@John Lettice

<< "Their 'hounding' could therefore be seen as a necessary part of the process, to some extent caused by the police hierarchy's reluctance to have its own role put under the microscope." >>

That's an entirely plausible take on things. In which case, "taking a hard look at... ...your organization" becomes the operative portion of my above statement.

Note that my above post was aimed at someone whom has at least implied that they belong to law enforcement, and the thrust of my post was aimed at the police, not at the media or any other organization.

I'm still sickened by the apparent ineptitude and lackadasical approach that CO19 took in preparing for this operation, but as I also noted above, the actual shooters were the least reasponisible for the disaster, IMO. Mind you, they bear culpability, but not nearly so much as the supervisors do, and only to the extent that they performed below par. My disgust at Cdr. Dick's slipshod leadership, the crap organizational structure of the operation, and Blair's mendacity is much greater than any which I hold for the officers at the scene.

Obviously, the real problem was from above. The Met heirarchy was clearly unprepared to handle such operations in a properly-managed fashion, and seems to have utterly failed in their trust. In as much as the shooters have been extremely well-protected to-date, I must say that 'hounding' the shooters is pretty much not the issue here. Hounding the Met, OTOH, most certainly *has* happened, and the cries for blood from the media have been pretty much shotgunned at the entire organization, whichever portion was most easy to reach. The armed officers need not feel that they've been singled out for special attention. Indeed, the entire Met has been liberally spattered by this mess. Which is as should be expected, even if not entirely fair.