Just a thought...

[hellison]

Seeing that the shooting that guy debate [1] is still going on on flame made me wonder - if he had turned out to be a bomber, would the majority of the people have even considered argueing about it?

(I've mostly skimmed it, so this may have been brought up there already).

I have my own opinions on it, it always just amazes me to see people who see things in such strict Black and White, Good Thing/Bad Thing etc - and thats on both sides of the argument.

There are always Circumstances, and Context and shades of grey.
Or maybe I see too many shades of grey.
hmm.


[1] Yes I could find a better name for it, but its late and its been a long evening.
And I'm footnoting lj posts. Oh dear.

Comments

[vashti.livejournal.com]

Um. Of course if the guy they shot had turned out to be a bomber, there would have been no debate about it beyond the fringes, because the police would have been right to do so - their intelligence would have been correct, the decisions that brought them to the point where they shot an innocent man would have been correct, the decision to shoot would have been correct. Ergo, there would have been nothing to debate or investigate.

[hellison.livejournal.com]

And of course if he HAD been a bomber and they hadn't shot him, most of the very same people now screaming 'omg why did they??' would now be the ones screaming 'OMG why didn't they??'

Just another bandwagon to jump on...

[vashti.livejournal.com]

Yes, but we can "what if" until the cows come home. The facts remain that the police shot someone dead based on his coming out of a block of flats that some terrorists had been in - a block of flats they didn't even have sufficient evidence to raid, like they did a lot of other places that they had firmer evidence about that week, and which they have still not raided.

[hellison.livejournal.com]

I do understand that - I wasn't really debating the issue itself, primarily because I haven't followed the story closely enough to get the details, more bemoaning the knee-jerk reactions to it of, well, jerks.

And by that I don't mean everyone who was posting, just the ones who would have been screaming the exact opposite of what they're saying now if things had gone differently. If you see what I mean.

[sleetersoulfire.livejournal.com]

I look at it like this - The police "intelligence" made a huge cock up for which one officer is going to take the fall.

The officer probably shot the guy on the belief that there was a real and present danger posed by a man coming out of a house under surveillance.

There are a number of types of device that are detonated from a distance, so there was not a choice of leaving the guy alive while you find out if he has a bomb strapped to him. He could move to where there were people, could detonate it while you were searching him, it could go off because you are searching him, or he could be trying to waste time until the remote point detonates his bomb.

You have to shoot to kill, get everyone away and wait for the bomb disposal guys to come in, at which point you discover that the guy has no bomb on him.

From reading about the post shooting psychological damage which officers who shoot innocents suffer, I believe that this officer is going through his own personal hell. Starting with "Why me? Why did I have to be the one to take the shot?" to "Why the fuck did I get told a random guy coming out of a random flat was a fucking bomber!?!"

In short it was a total cock up because the "intelligence" which was the foundation of the suspicion was totally wrong. Had the guy actually been a suicide bomber then, as Vashti says, the point where the cock up started wouldn't have be there, the "intelligence" would have been accurate, the police on the ground would have been told the correct information and the shooting of the guy would have saved people's lives.

Ah, the power of hindsight.

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

At last! Someone looking at it from the officer's point of view!
I would hate to be an armed PC. Not least of which because as soonas they fire a shot, they're suspended pending an investigation.
This man is going to have to live with the fact that he shot an innocent man.
*Is numb*

[hellison.livejournal.com]

Added to the fact that he'll probably be made the scapegoat for the whole thing and there goes his career...

I also think the other officers there will have a hard time with this too.

From what (admittedly little) I've seen of this so far it looks like a horribly tragic series of cock-ups.