On the death of de Menezes : 22 July 2005
[London Metropolitan Police Chief, Sir Ian Blair] acknowledged “somebody else could be shot” as the hunt continued, but added “everything is done to make it right”.
But he said the “shoot to kill” policy for dealing with suspected suicide bombers would remain in force.
“There is no point in shooting at someone’s chest because that is where the bomb is likely to be,” he said.
“There is no point in shooting anywhere else if they fall down and detonate it.”
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: “It is obviously deeply regrettable but what we have to appreciate is the very intense pressure under which the police officers have to work“.
He told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend: “These very brave officers, on behalf of the citizens of London, were pursuing somebody they had good reason to believe was involved in this terrorist outrage.”
He said they had to ensure clear rules were operated but police had “effective discretion to deal with what could be terrorist suicide outrages about to take place”.
– On the fatal killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot to death by London police on Friday, July 22, 2005. Menezes, suspected of being a suicide bomber, was completely unrelated to any terrorist organization and was an innocent victim. From “Police Chief ‘sorry’ over death”, 24 July 2005, bbc.co.uk.
Many of us can draw parallels not only between the London terrorist attacks and New York’s 9/11, but the reaction of the London police on Friday beckons to an era of police brutality, deeply marked in the fabric of New York’s psyche by the death of an innocent Guinean immigrant, Amadou Djallo.
It seems today, the only difference between the cops and civilians is that the cops have guns. Even people as innocent as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27 year-old Brazilian immigrant electrician trying to support his family in working class Brixton, England.
A public apology doesn’t mean that the authorities are vowing to be more careful the next time. It means exactly what Sir Ian says: it could happen again in the interest of making everything right.
The police and authorities exempt themselves from the education and experience necessary not to make these mistakes, killing innocent lives. The state produces fear on such a widespread level that inundates the very executors of this policy. The menial authorities designated to carry out the state’s work have lost the plot. They have become submerged in the very fear they are tasked to exercise on the people. They have become trigger happy as they shoot to kill.
For those who understand and have taken the time to learn the patterns of atrocity perpetrated by police brutality, such as those exercised against Rodney King, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and Prince Jones, there is a common understanding that racial profiling plays an essential role in ‘mistaken identity.’ And, post 9/11, the media has failed to name one S. Asian or Arab brother in the same way that police brutality victims, largely Black and Latino, were highlighted prior to 9/11. Because, we live in an era where our civil liberties are suspended and we excuse these cases of mistaken identity, where innocent people are killed, tortured for information they may not possess, deported and stripped of their rights and we don’t question it because we are ignorant. Everyday on the news we hear ordinary people, of all backgrounds, attesting to wanting to adhere to strict security measures if it means we live in a safer, terrorist-free world. So, if that means an ‘arab looking’ individual, innocently caught in the wrong place at the wrong time is accidentally shot in the head, before any line of questioning, the general public is fine with it because it means law enforcement is doing all it can to make some people safer, at the cost of terrorizing other people.
Let’s not forget, what makes the case in London particularly noteworthy—Menezes was Brazilian. He was not Pakistani, Indian, Middle Eastern, Muslim. And, had he been, would it have been excused as mistaken identity? Wouldn’t they still be trying to make a connection between an innocent man and a terrorist organization? Would there even be a deaf apology?
Police brutality in the 1990s and early part of the new century was not just executed by white police officers. There were black and latino officers who also pulled the trigger. Racial profiling, as a mandate, was carried out by all authorities, regardless of their own race. A black officer, admitted on television, that damn straight when he walks through parts of the Bronx, his hand is on the trigger. It’s beyond racial profiling. The very intense pressure that British Foreign Secretary Straw refers to is simply fear.
And let’s not forget, the officers who shot unarmed and innocent Amadou Diallo 41 times, were acquitted of all charges. Something tells me, the Menezes case may not even get so far as to question the authority’s culpability in his death because we live in a world where terrorism grants a carte blanche to the executors of the state’s ‘rule by fear’ policy. Furthermore, for any of the detained South Asians and Arabs sitting in Guantanamo Bay, there’s not even a chance, in this moment in history, that the state is even considering saying sorry.
So, when the shoot to kill policy of suspected terrorists (potentially innocent civilians) remains in effect what good is an apology these days? Maybe Sir Ian Blair and Jack Straw should rephrase their statement: “Sorry, Mrs. Menezes, but if we had to do it all over again, we would.”
Leave a Reply