No Justice for Menezes posted by Richard Seymour

From the second Menezes was murdered, the police have pulled every means to protect themselves. They have lied about the circumstances of the shooting, they lied about who knew what and when, they lied about and smeared Menezes, they threatened a whistleblower. They sent the killers on a paid holiday, and then the CPS refused to prosecute. Now, the IPCC has produced/leaked its report, after having been altered due to legal threats from the police. Its account is summarised here, and the main finding is discussed here.

The IPCC's report focuses on the aftermath of the shooting, rather than the shooting itself: it is about the issue of who knew what, and when. Its conclusion gives Sir Ian Destroy The Brain Instantly Utterly Blair a free ride, insisting - quite incredibly in my view - that he was ignorant of what had really happened, despite several of his subordinates knowing exactly what happened. AC Andy Hayman is said to have lied to his boss about whether the victim was known to be among the four suspects, thus withholding information that he would certainly have to provide very soon, and that the Commissioner could certainly get from someone else in the organisation. No serious person could believe this. Hayman appears to have been behind a number of decisions, including the issue of a misleading press release on the day of the shooting, despite the fact that it had become clear before the release was issued that the dead person was Menezes and that he was not a suspect. Undoubtedly there was attempted deceit from top to bottom, but this inquiry has presumably done what it was supposed to: handed the public and the Menezes family a single head, for one part of the crime.

No criminal charges have been brought, there has been no public inquiry, and there is to be no change of policy. And this is important: the whole point behind the police's outrageous conduct during this affair has been not only to defend the institution, but also to ensure that the policy is not questioned. Every bit of quackery from Ian Blair, every obnoxious intervention from 'experts' like Peter Powers, every diversion and red herring, has been pushed with the specific intention of maintaining the police's range of extraordinary powers. And of course, only months after the shooting, the police were permitted to use shoot-to-kill in domestic and stalking cases. The team that killed Menezes would strike again. And let's not forget that another victim of police shooting has been calumnied as a terrorist who was actually shot by his own brother, and as an evil paedophile. Anyone can be shot at, slandered, lied about, beaten, tormented - anything to keep that fucking policy in place.

Labels: 21/7, 7/7, Jean Charles De Menezes, operation kratos, police shooting