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July 24, 2005
Victim #53
Jean Charles de Menezes' murder — and that's what it was — is a baffling, gut-wrenching thing. I suspect that the inevitable inquiry will result in the people who did this not being police officers (or whatever they were) any more, and I suspect those people won't much care. They followed their instincts and made a gruesome, unrecoverable, and chillingly understandable error. I cannot even imagine what they're going through right now. This case defies easy conclusions, but I look at it the same way Ken Livingstone does: Menezes was simply the latest victim of the 7/7 attacks.
In the face of all this hideousness, I find it comforting to see western society in action. Britain is one of painfully few large countries whose citizens know for certain that the Police will admit such errors. Only in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the EU nations, Israel, Japan, Korea, the United States and a few other countries I have no doubt omitted can regular people trust the Police to the extent that when they screw up royally, they'll come clean. (Menezes himself would likely have been aware, at the age of 15, of the murder of his compatriots in Rio de Janeiro by off-duty policemen, and it's not as though Brazil is often counted among the world's leading basket cases.)
It is significant that all such countries are targets for Islamic terrorism, and it is soothing to see the reactions of Menezes' friends and relatives and the Brazilian community in London at large. They want an inquiry, of course, and they are understandably furious that this happened (and yes, some of the quotes you read are downright nutty), but most of the comments seem to mirror those of Menezes' friend Marcos da Silva:
I am feeling very sad. It is a big mistake. I do trust the police and this mistake can happen anywhere. I think everyone can live together.
The Muslin Association of Britain's Dr Azzam Tamini also said something eminently reasonable:
Frankly it doesn't matter whether he is a Muslim or not. He is a human being and it's human life that are [sic] being targeted, whether by terrorists or whether in this case unfortunately by people who are supposed to be chasing away or catching the terrorists.
But can you imagine the rhetoric had Menezes been of Middle Eastern descent? It's unseemly to be glad he wasn't — to be glad about anything in this mess, I mean — but I am glad nonetheless. The idiocy would have been deafening. Terrorist recruiters would have had one more ludicrous talking point.
These mistakes happen everywhere, as Marcos da Silva said — not as often in the UK as in the US, for obvious reasons, but there too. We try to figure out how to stop it from happening again, knowing all the while that it inevitably will. At the end of the day, it was an attempt to save lives gone horribly, horribly wrong, and we will all have to live with the consequences to whatever extent we are involved and soldier on. We think, and then we act, and it is in so doing, I think, that we best distinguish ourselves from those who murder innocent commuters.
Posted by Chris Selley at July 24, 2005 08:47 PM
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Comments
I don't disagree, but I can't get over a few weird things about this incident.
First of all, if we take what his family is saying at face value, he did "not have a past that would make him run from police." But that raises the obvious question of why on earth he would run away from several officers (plainclothes or no) pointing guns at him and shouting "stop, police!". I know people who've been held at gunpoint before, and that's just something you do not do. Most people would not react that way.
Secondly there's the extremely carefully-worded line that's being repeated everywhere by the London police: he "was not connected to incidents in central London on 21 July in which four explosive devices were partly detonated." Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but that seems very specific.
In light of the above, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the guy was involved in something, but they don't want to say what yet because they're worried about blowing further operations.
Or maybe I'm way off base, but if so it's still perplexing.
Posted by: Matt McIntosh at July 24, 2005 08:50 PM
I've suggested to a few folks already that perhaps it would be best to give the investigation time to collect all the relevant facts (and release their results), but there have been a few folks (oddly, mostly from the left on the political spectrum) who seem intent on predetermining the conclusion of any such inquiry.
It is terrible that this man died needlessly. But until I know more, I'm content to leave it at that.
Posted by: Paul at July 25, 2005 01:18 AM
They followed their instincts and made a gruesome, unrecoverable, and chillingly understandable error.
Actually, Chris, I'm hoping they followed procedure, not just instinct. Because if they followed procedure, the police imperative to protect society with lethal force when required will not have been undermined. And maybe, just maybe, the populace at large will realize that when a constable tells you to 'stop', they mean you should actually stop. They don't mean that you should run the other way as fast as you can, and skip onto a train in the Tube.
That would be the only good to come out of this mess.
Posted by: Damian at July 25, 2005 02:03 PM