So, today's top news story...

[mrph]

Police guilty over Menezes case
London's Metropolitan police force has been found guilty of endangering the public over the fatal shooting of a man officers mistook for a suicide bomber.

Discuss.

Comments

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Good.

I still think disciplinary action should result. But at least they've been held to account to some degree.

[cyberinsekt.livejournal.com]

> I still think disciplinary action should result.

This will never happen. The IPCC has stated as much, and frankly they are on the wrong side of the wall of silence that has surrounded this case. It's the same any time one of our brave army lads, or gallant thin blue line act "completely out of character". Up goes the wall and somehow they're never at fault, it's always the system to blame: they were acting on inadequate information, they were only following orders, we are only civilians and cannot understand the situation in which they find themselves. They will always protect their own, for to do otherwise would expose the rest of the nation to facts of which we are better left unaware. Do we genuinely want to understand that our police exist in a state of perpetual hysteria, or that our military hold us in contempt, or that our politicians are simply power brokers? Of course not. So our blessed ignorance must be protected, otherwise we might see what it actually takes to keep a nation running. And we wouldn't like that one little bit.

[cyberinsekt.livejournal.com]

It's a safe verdict for the Met to take. It allows them to say, "Okay, collectively we may be a bunch of idiots, but none of our officers is an individual idiot." I love the way the jury went so far as to attach a note to the verdict affirming that Cressida Dick bore no personal culpability whatsoever. Because she was only, you know, in charge of the operation. And the Met promoted her afterwards, so she must have been doing a good job. It would be unbelievable if it wasn't all so effing inevitable.

[jorune.livejournal.com]

This case has illustrated the uncoordinated nature of the policing in a serious incident. For people who have experience of corporate hierarchies there are moments of organisational sickness when power goes up and responsibility goes down, when vital tasks are loaded onto the shoulders of those who cannot escape it. When they achieve the impossible the credit goes to the managers who kicked off the whole sad experience. Well done, you pushed the staff to the extreme and you got away with it. If the staff fail then there are harsh words, if the managers fail then they come out with phrases such as "We are where we are, let's put this beyond us and move on" or "We certainly learnt some lessons from this and I think that's made us a lot stronger than we were".

Annoying as that may be at least no one died. Such lack of coordination is a failure of leadership. Allowing managers to pass the buck downwards and then walk away hoping for the best is a failure of leadership. Has the intense focus of 24 hour media and political activity over the past 2-3 years (Cash for Honours and others) made the role of Met Commissioner impossible? How poisoned are relations inside the Met, and outside to local Govt and the Home Office?

[zotz]

It's no different from the general state of the law on corporate killing. Nobody was jailed over the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking, or over any other large UK corporate disaster I can think of. It's just not, as far as I can tell, a special case - it's just a more exposed example of something that's been known to be a shambling disaster for at least a couple of decades. Personally I tend to think that anyone who tells you different just hasn't been paying attention.

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

Annoying as that may be at least no one died

Surely the whole point of this is that someone DID die?

[sciolist.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a no-brainer. Surely they endangered the public by shooting at least one member of the public during an operation.

It's a horrific mess that's hard to find personal responsibility within. The guys pulling triggers were ordered to, and those guys have to trust that the control folks relaying the order to kill if necessary the Bad Guy is valid. The commander who makes that call is relying on several intelligence threads (hopefully) to draw together their assessment of risk. They have to trust that their intelligence is okay enough.

So, yeah. Regrettably tragic event and I'm glad they found them guilty of this. I very much doubt that there will be a prosecution for this death because of the difficulty of tracing any individual responsibility.

[jorune.livejournal.com]

Shall I wave the irony flag or note the ability of some managers to be drama queens?

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

I thought they had to be, and am glad of this result.