Police officer who shot innocent man dead on holiday paid for by Met Police

[edam]

BBC Online is saying the police officers who shot Jean Menendes, the innocent man killed in Stockwell, are on holiday at our expense.

"The officers have been moved to non-firearm duties for the duration of the IPCC probe, expected to take several months.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "An officer has had a break paid for by the Metropolitan Police, authorised by the commissioner, to allow him to take his wife and family away from the family home."

One of the other officers is already on a family holiday."

Full story here

Wonder what everyone thinks? I can see why they are on leave - but not sure Met (we) should be paying for the holiday itself. Wonder if the Met, or the Home Office, will be contributing to the man's funeral expenses - it won't be cheap to repatriate his body to Brazil. Or his father's cancer treatment - apparently he was sending money home to help his family. If we are paying for the holiday, don't we equally have an obligation to pay funeral expenses?

Well said Bubble.

Indeed Bubble... but someone, somwhere has made a huge cock up here...

or have they?

Lamb + Sacrificial spring to mind.

(I am getting very paranoid it has to be admitted)

(better not say any more)

to quote sw

Would love to know what you mean, Unicorn!

I don't think anyone woke up that morning and thought "Woohoo, today I get to kill a Brazilian guy" - did they?!

Personally, I just think it is all very suspect - just gut stuff- no evidence.

Don't tell me the guys who shot him were SAS...

(and if he were that dangerous - surely it was a case for the SAS?)

Again... Intelligence - surely a matter for?

I think as well, we can all comfortably say "well he might have been a suicide bomber and what were the police supposed to do" but we wouldn't think that if it was our son, our brother, our dh. The old Jane Austen quote about people dying in the Napoleonic wars springs to mind - something along the lines of "How terrible it is that so many young men are dying. And how glad one is that one is not acquainted with them". And that's the difference I think - an awful lot of people simply can't imagine how they would feel if that man had been their son. And that's why they're willing to sacrifice him. If they imagined their son's in his place, I doubt if they'd be so unequivocally supportive of the shoot to kill policy.

well said that (debauched) Roman Emperor.

Caligula, if all policy was made on the basis that we might be related to the people it affects, I don't think we could function.

If a plane is hijacked, for instance, the UK will not make deals with the hijackers. But if people who were personally related to those on board could make the decision to deal with them, to trade their loved ones' lives, of course they would.

I hope this doesn't sound callous - it's not meant to. I have every sympathy for this man and his family, of course I do. And of course emotion has to inform policy - we're not robots.

so.. it begs the question HM...
if your dd/ds was possibly -( or possibly not) holding hostage a planeful of people... would you say shoot to kill.

deals are made all the time HM...

Surely the IRA is one such recent example.

Unicorn, my exact point is that I wouldn't and shouldn't be in a position to make that decision as I would be too emotionally involved. Of course my decision would be to say don't shoot - but I don't think that that would necessarily be the right one in the long run which is why I would not be the right person to be making it!

Agree on the hijackers issue. But the difference is, that when a plane is hijacked, you know for sure that the hijackers are wrong'uns. But when a bloke walks out of a house under observation with no suspicious circumstances about him at all, except for the fact that has walked out of that particular block of flats (not even a house) and he's wearing more clothes than his observers would find comfortable and that he doesn't stop when they shout "stop! armed police!" (either because he doesn't believe them - understandably - or doesn't register it), then I think we have the right to feel alarmed about how safe we are. So far, no statement has been issued which details the reason this particular man was felt to be such a serious threat that he had to be killed. I just find that quite terrifying.

Caligula, love you loads, but ... .

Caligula as the days pass and no further statement's made regarding why they thought this man was a definite target, I wonder too...

...poss back to my Sacrificial Lamb idea?

(btw if I suspiciously disappear from MN please follow up...paranoid - moi?)

sacrificial lamb? nuts!

do you mean 'let's pick a foreign looking guy and shoot him in the head 8 times just so the public think we're looking after them'?

bizarre

No I don't think that. That's why I'd like some info about why that guy was a suspect.

And so far, the silence is deafening.

an electrician... coming from a flat under surveillance...

well who knows? perhaps not a lamb ... but,I am waiting to hear their 'Intelligence'

Surely we (and the family more importantly) deserve that?

we know they got it wrong - they've admitted it - we may never know the full reasons why and what purpose would it serve? he's not coming back unfortunately.

the answers I'm more interested in hearing are the ones from the 4 people arrested. why do want to kill and maim innocent people in our cities? why do they want to harm a country that took them in, housed and educated them when their own country offered nothing but fear?

damned if I know!

But don't you think it's important that the reasons "WHY" they got it wrong are discovered, and hopefully the same mistake won't happen again???

One of my best friend's DH's works in London - and gets the train everyday from Wellingborough - he's from Senegal, and on Thursday just gone he was stopped and searched before boarding the train - apparently 'random' searches - but none of the others also searched were white.

(But it should be added we've got a strange few policemen up here - they decided that a Swastika (sp) drawn on the car belonging to a black man recently moved into the areas wasn't racially motivated )

Caligula, My Mum, Sister, her partner, and my niece (15) and nephew (7) all live in a Peabody flat in central London. I'm just glad it wasn't their block. They're just opposite Selfridges and a spit away from the American Embassy - a far better target.

I would like to feel they're all being protected, and if that means asking someone to come out in their underpants, then so be it.

And yes, I do find it terrifying.

I would have thought anyone - in these difficult days - would not object to being searched whatever their ethnicity - its for everyone's benefit

But if your sister's partner wasn't asked to come out in his underpants, if he was just followed and then shot dead in case he was a suicide bomber, how would you feel? (And how would she feel?)

As Edam's pointed out, all the suspected bombers are in custody, and not one of them have blown themselves up or had to be killed to prevent that. The only person who is dead is some Brazilian bloke with whom none of us is acquainted, but who can reasonably safely be assumed not to be a suicide bomber.

Yep - agree again Caligula.

could it be a lesson learned?

I don't have the answers - they made a massive mistake - no-one disputes it but we have to move on in 'the war against terror'

(sorry I know that sounds cliched but its true)

Don't see the relevance of your reference to your Senegalese friend QoQ.

And to quote you 'TBH that's not what this thread's about - it's about the officer's holiday'.

and the lesson learned is......?