Justifiable Homicide?

Yesterday on the news I heard a man talk of his experience that morning of witnessing a man being shot dead on a tube train by plain clothes police officers.

He talked of a man running from three men, looking like a cornered rabbit. Then the men, who the eye witness presumed to be undercover cops, pushed him to the floor on the underground train and discharged 5 shots into him. He died.

He was a young Asian man and he was wearing a padded jacket which seemed inappropriate for the warm weather. Apparently he had come out of a house which was under police surveillance. Maybe the police thought he was about to blow up the tube train there and then? But if so - if he was carrying or wearing explosives - was pushing him over and shooting him the best idea? Will those things not be likely to ignite any explosives?

The implication was that he was one of the people who had tried unsuccessfully to blow up more people on the tubes and bus the day before. The police killed him. To prevent further death?? I don't know.

The people in that carriage of the tube train were, by all accounts, very traumatised at having witnessed a shooting at such proximity. Understandably.

(When I lived in France, I never got used to the police carrying guns around on their daily business. Each time I saw a copper I would become totally preoccupied by the fact that he had a gun on his belt, and it really, really scared me. I never, ever got used to that. And that was just them carrying them, not using them, and not killing people with them while I watched.)

So I was listening to this man on the radio news, who had witnessed the shooting. The man who had been shot had been wearing a top with New York written across it, and it was suggested that this was a nod to the September 11th attacks. Also he was wearing a padded or thick jacket, which in this weather must have meant there were explosives underneath.

(Really?? Must it have meant that? I want to know just how much these police had to go on when they made the move to kill him.)

But anyway, for many reasons, or for none, they shot him dead. I could kind of understand. If he was about to blow up a whole train, then them killing him and noone else dying is perhaps justifiable.

Perhaps.

But no no. It's like death penalty without even a trial. I don't agree with the death penalty ever. Not with any number of jurors, judges, barristers, magistrates involved. So the sentence of death penalty as decided by 3 undercover cops, as a spur of the moment decision, that can't ever be right. It just can't.

(And shooting someone who has explosives on him? Is that really likely to kill him and not detonate the explosives at the same time? Because it seems to me it would be more likely to detonate things. And if so, there is even less justification for the shooting.)

But no, keeping an open mind. They wouldn't have shot him without really, really good reason, good back-up, good safety information, good intentions. I mean, you just can't go shooting someone dead Just In Case, can you?

No, they'd have done something like that only when they had no doubt at all of who they were dealing with, and a clear immediate threat, and that it was the only only way.

(Surely.)

UK Police: Man Killed Unrelated to Probe
LONDON (AP) - The man shot and killed on a subway car by London police in front of horrified commuters apparently had nothing to do with this month's bombings on the city's transit system, police said Saturday in expressing their ``regrets.''

So no. No! They were wrong! They shot someone - shot him dead - with no trial or truth. The utter bastards.

Was the evidence against this lad really that he was Asian and wearing a padded jacket?? Lord help us if that was it.

There will be an inquiry. I will be interested to see what it throws up but I doubt we will get anywhere near the truth.

The whole thing was wrong. Scaring commuters, making people witness first hand a man being shot five times in the head and body, and die in front of them. Killing this man for... well, clearly no good reason, because the police have even said as much!

Guns are evil. I am angry and disillusioned. The world I live in is racist and presumptious and just horrible.

But the police are sorry, so that's ok.

(It is just not. Never.)