I was watching the BBC Panorama investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the man killed on the London Underground because he was, apparently, mistaken for a terrorist*, and there was this hilarious exchange with an Assistant Commissioner from Scotland Yard:
QuoteTaylor: When you strip everything else away, Operation Kratos, in the end, is about a shoot to kill policy, isn't it, because the point is, you've got to kill the suicide bomber.
Steve House: No, I can't agree with that. What we train our officers to do is what we call immediate incapacitation.
Taylor: Which is aiming for the head?
Steve House: Which is aiming for the head. I understand why it is that people say that's a shoot to kill policy but it is not a shoot to kill policy. We do not recruit and train our officers to shoot to kill, and that's not what police firearms officers do. They shoot to incapacitate.
Operation Kratos here is the codename under which armed units are deployed to counter immiment terrorist threats. So they shoot to incapacitate...in the head. But that's not a shoot-to-kill order, because policemen don't shoot to kill. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, really.
*HOW Menzes was mistaken for a terrorist is still a good question which has not been sufficiently answered. While the building he was in put him in contact with Hamdi Adus Isaac, the two men don't even look similar:
(http://houseofthrillers.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/hussmenezsplit1710_468x353.jpg)
And Isaac was being tracked by British intelligence, namely GCHQ, who were tracking his calls while fleeing to Italy.
Nor was how the surveillance on Menzes suddenly became a kil-, uh,
incapacitation order really ever explained. Or indeed the composition of the Kratos Unit, though it's strongly suspected, based on weapons and conduct that they are likely special forces seconded to Scotland Yard command, either SAS or Special Recon Regiment.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the doublethink ability required to successfully equate bullet in the head with not shoot to kill and I'm usually pretty good with head games but I'm drawing a blank. Is this some kind of armed forces training NLP bullshit or something?
It's like the ultimate Zen Koan of the Police State. Once you understand it, you obtain Horrormirth Enlightenment, and hit yourself in the balls with a keisaku
Quote from: Cain on March 23, 2014, 07:08:06 PM
It's like the ultimate Zen Koan of the Police State. Once you understand it, you obtain Horrormirth Enlightenment, and hit yourself in the balls with a keisaku
:horrormirth:
It's clearly a matter of intent. They train their officers to suspend disbelief so hard that they can fire at your face and believe it will temporarily immobilise you.
Well, its up to the person's choice to die or not from a headwound, since the police only has fuzzy warm intentions to incapacitate, and thats what matters, good intentions.
The road to headshots is paved with good intentions :argh!:
Quote from: The Johnny on March 23, 2014, 09:15:56 PM
Well, its up to the person's choice to die or not from a headwound, since the police only has fuzzy warm intentions to incapacitate, and thats what matters, good intentions.
[/b]Exactly!
Since the intent was to incapacitate, and the most effective way to incapacitate is a well executed headshot it logically follows that such acts primary goal is incapacitation, the death that just happens to take place is irrelevant.
The justification is quite tedious too. You need to shoot incapacitate them in the head because otherwise they may still explode the bomb they may be carrying. Perfectly reasonable.
It's hardly surprising that innocent people get shot when you are working on dodgy assumptions with lethal tactics.
What never fails to surprise me is that no bomb carrying terrorists seem to have created any kind of dead-mans switch. I have to either assume this has already happened because it's the perfect counter-device. I seem to recall more bombers, particularly children and the more easily influenced were being detonated by remote control so that's another interesting possibility for the future. The logical police response to this would probably be something along the lines of "Incapacitate them from a distance".
There's chaps in the Ukraine auditioning for these jobs.
A dead man's switch does, however, make calling off an attack impossible beyond a certain point, and does increase the likelihood of an accidental or premature explosion. I assume most bomb-makers could make such things, but given the low probability of interception before an attack, deem it an unnecessary extravagance.
Plus, y'know, hand grenades.
In the case of Menzes, the police claim doesn't even stand up to scrutiny or common sense anyway. The police wrestled him to the ground before shooting him seven times in the head. Which says to me, they knew he didn't have a bomb. You don't tackle someone when you think he has an explosive around his waist or in his backpack, and if you do, you should be able to subdue them in such a way to prevent detonation and allow for an arrest.
The whole event stinks.
I suspect a lot of it comes back to the wisdom of using our military in the domestic theatre. Trigger happy talking apes, programmed to kill, being given orders to "incapacitate" targets.
Maybe this was a simple matter or command protocol? Like someone in the control tower used the word "neutralise". Any time they've given that command before, some bobbies have wrestled someone to the ground and tied their wrists together. Give that same command to the SAS, however and biology, architecture or geography becomes instantly reduced to their component molecules. :lulz:
"You get the sort of cops you'll put up with."
- TGRR, 2006.