I remember the morning of the raid, and wondering how on earth you could fit 250 police officers into a terraced house. Why would they send that many, if only because it's not practical.
I remember hearing that the police had shot one of the men in the house, then that the police said that his brother had shot him, then just that he had been shot.
It turns out to have indeed been the police who shot him, and apparently after shouting no warning, not even identifying themselves as being the police, and not against any kind of threat from the guy.
Within days the police realised there was nothing they had done, there was nothing they could charge them with, and they released both the blokes.
You can see the press conference with the two brothers here. They just look totally exhausted, bewildered, and hurt. One of them had applied to be a community police officer, the other had been asked if he was a member of various terrorist organisations, including the fucking KKK.
What did the police think they were doing? At all stages of the thing?
I am somewhere between very angry and very upset, and have been when following this story since it started.
The police can't just take this power, can't just go round shooting people. The lads can't return to their house because it was stripped to the floorboards.
What a mess. Let's hope the Police Complaints Commission actually does properly investigate this thing and come up with some answers.
Yep, they were Asian men, with beards. The last guy was Brazilian. We really don't want this shooting people who have been wrongly accused of anything, while they are undefended thing to keep on.
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Technorati tags: police; angry; incurable_hippie; racism; rant.
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2 comments:
Don't forget that a little less than a year ago 37 people were killed and over 700 injured by terrorists in London. Is it any surprise that the police are taking all possible threats seriously? We don't know the intelligence that led to this raid, but do you really think they would have acted on this scale if they didn't think there was a real possibility of a serious threat? They didn't fit 250 police officers into the building - that was the total number involved in the operation which would have involved securing a large area of the neighbourhood.
It must be investigated by the PCC, but it will be, which is more accountability than the terrorists have.
Wow. I thought that kind of thing only happened here in the USA. I guess the paranoia of terrorists (thank you Mr. Bush [/sarcasm]) has spread beyond the States. It sort of reminds me of how Japanese Americans were treated here during WWII. I keep wondering when the detention camps will be set up for anyone who vaguely resembles someone from the Middle East?
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