"The judge ordered the police to pay a £175,000 fine and costs of £385,000" - it's not really such a large fine. In fact the fine is only a little bit higher than Cressida Dick's annual salary (£122,000, according to the Telegraph). Perhaps she could take a year and a half's worth of unpaid leave to make up the difference.

"the difficulties shown in this trial were those of an organisation struggling, on a single day, to get to grips with a simply extraordinary situation - its greatest operational challenge in a generation"

A man left his residence, got on a bus, got on a tube, where he was executed for looking a bit like a man who was somehow "linked" to the July bombers.

The only thing extraordinary is the incompetence of the police in this matter.

John

So Sir Ian Blair will make sure that the Met will learn the lessons about not pumping a whole clip of hollow point ammo into innocent civilians' heads while using Israeli extra-judicial assassination tactics? Oh I'm very comforted by that.

Will he also be a little more contrite over the allegedly desperate need to extend detention without trial in spite of the fact that neither the Met nor anyone else in the securocracy can provide any evidence based on real cases that it is necessary? We shall see.

What I think is stupid, is fining the police. Let’s take money out of something with Tax payers have to pay for. Why should I pay for a mistake the police make? Ridiculous, how is a fine going to change anything!

Chef of Police: "Oh we better not shoot anymore innocent people; otherwise we might have to pay another fine"

</rant>

Wow I mean just wow.

Really they spend £560,000 on a court case and charge it to the thin blue line.

Granted the police are not above the law and justice needs to be thourough but couldnt the police have just said "yes we screwed up" rather than dragging it out for over 2 years.

The only thing this has paid for is family peace of mind and I cant help but to think that councelling and therapy would have cost less than half a mill ?

It STILL hasn't sunk in with the Met that there was no extraordinary situation outside their own heads! They're STILL saying "the public were in danger". We weren't in danger from Mr de Menezes, only from the Metropolitan Police.

They didn't learn anything at all from their shooting of the innocent man with the chair leg, and they're determined not to learn from this killing either. Is there anything we, as citizens, can do about it? We aren't even allowed to stand outside Parliament with a "Blair must go!" placard.

What's the difference between this and a police state?

"As far as we know, this is the first time that such legislation has been applied to fast moving police operations where the public are in danger."

From the evidence in the public domain only one person was in any form of danger on the 22nd July 2005 and that was Mr de Menezes!

The family are not happy and still want more costs in manslaughter charges.

It doesnt seem like they will be happy till the police are broke or non-existant.

Bring on the therapy for them.

We pay for the Police.

We pay for the trial.

We pay the fine and costs.

The Police get away with murder.

SNAFU

Why should this have even made it to court?

If they guy had of been a terrorist and the police hadnt acted then there would have been enquiry after enquiry as to why the police didnt stop him and why innocents were allowed to be put in danger.

What happens now? Noone does anything cos of the possible repercussions regarding this? No we cant do anything because of what has happened?

The authorities need to understand that these people dont play by the same rules that we have to, and hence the rules HAVE to adapt to the current environment.

On a slightly different point, if I remember rightly the visa that he entered the country on had expired so he was an illegal, although this doesnt make this better, if the guy had gone home when he should have done then he would still be alive now.

Yes, in danger from MetPlod!

An innocent man was killed, deliberately. No-one was jailed or otherwise punished. A body that is publically funded had some of it's budget removed and paid to another publically funded organisation. (Tell me again, how is this "punishment"?)

All I can say is, next time there's a terrorist incident in the UK, we'd all better stay at home in case someone looks vaguely like a possible suspect. The message from today is that in those circumstances, the police can shoot people and nothing bad happens to any of them.

Can't believe these comments implying that this 'illegal immigrant' somehow did it to himself, or that the police shouldn't be fined, or that the family's dissatisfaction with the outcome and desire for another trial is somehow hard to understand.

If I got on a tube train, pinned down a guy and blew his brains out at point blank range, I'd be pretty surprised to be accused of manslaughter, let alone a breach of health and safety regulations! Isn't that a bit like trying gangsters caught burying a corpse in the desert with fly tipping or littering?

All this talk of systemic failures, poor communication etc. is a smokescreen too; would it really have helped if the police on the platform, in what has been described as an agitated state, were in radio contact at that stage with people who knew nothing helpful?

I'm not saying that I know exactly what went on or who is to blame, but imagine this was a member of your family, people - maybe then you'd understand why the family are not content with a fine for a health and safety breach.

<< "...using Israeli extra-judicial assassination tactics..." >>

Oh, no. The Israeli's would've made a proper job of it, not the dog's breakfast that the Met made. De Menzies would've been dead within feet of his front door. Still innocent, mind you, but without the circus in the tube.

because to suggest that somehow de Menezes brought it on himself by overstaying the terms of his visa is pretty dam' low; there's thousands upon thousands of people in this country working contrary to terms of their visas, or without visas at all. Do they deserve to be shot because of this? I think not.

But that's not really the point that I want to make. It's interesting to not that the Police defence, quite apart from the slurs on the victim's character and the doctored photos, has excused what happened on the basis that the Police couldn't possibly be expected to co-ordinate all that information and that Cressida Dick (and she really is one even if she hasn't got one) didn't have the necessary information *at her fingertips* (sic)

So what exactly have we giving the cops millions upon millions more every year to do? There's CCTV all over London, it's quite possibly the most camera-filled city centre in the world, we have all the so-called experience from the IRA bombing campaigns, there's all the *intelligence* that our delightful US friends share with us after they've tortured it out of Gitmo prisoners in the name of freedom and demawcracy, and so on - yet the Met with all it;s resources and training and so-called *professionalism* can't establish the identity of one Brazilian electrician.

factoid 1 - when he was spotted coming out of the flats where he lived, he was identified by cop survelillance as Western European/Mediterranean male, but somewhere along the line this got turned into North African. This has not been satisfactorily explained yet.

factoid 2 - when he got off the bus at Brixton tube, he found the station was closed and got back onto the bus after phoning his friend. The copper following him didn't notice that the station was closed, and the phone call and re-boarding the bus were thus deemed as "suspicious" - if a supposed cokehead foreign electrician could notice that a Tube station was shut, I don't think it's unreasonable to hold that a supposedly highly-trained (but definitely overpaid) surveillance plod should have noticed that as well, if he was doing his job properly.

factoid 3 - he wasn't challenged. Armed officers burst into the carriage shouting "Armed police!" but didn't directly challenge de Menezes, the surveillance man grabbed him before he could respond, threw him down onto a seat so that the trigger-happy thugs of SO19 could pump dum-dums into his head.

But then, no-one's actually personally responsible, are they? I hope none of the officers concerned takes a holiday to Brazil soon, I'd imagine that Mr Menezes family might want to take a little personal revenge - I know I would. It's his own dam' fault for overstaying his visa and being a darkie, after all? Isn't it? Couldn't possibly be the Met's fault, could it?

but it WAS. And the real tragedy is that it will just happen again, and again, and again, and we'll here the same excuses over and over just as we've heard them every time in the past. It's perfectly ok for the cops to f*ck up and pump innocent people full of bullets because after all, they're protecting us, so it's ok that they f*ck up.

The state to which the UK has sunk is nothing short of disgusting. Never mind whether they want to be in the EUor not, just kick them out, because they don't deserve to be in any organisation of civilised nations.

The percentage does seem disturbingly high. They're frequently waving their machine guns outside a court near where I work, and ex forces folk in the Office don't seem to rate their weapons discipline particularly highly.

Laws protect nobody.

Police only protect each other.

...........come the revolution ...........</rant>

So back to business as usual at the MET after the crocodile tears have flowed forth in a fake torrent !

Oh well now we know that twice people with the surname "Blair" in high office go around and willingly tell only absolute propaganda rather then the truth at all times !

For true justice to have been done the trigger men should be doing twenty to thirty years minimum on the Isle of Wright for murder and "The Commish called Blair" should have been sacked on day one for failing to preserve and protect the innocent public from incompetent stupid policemen armed with guns and unofficial illegal Dum Dums !

As for their boss and support team all should be reduced to the minimum rank placed on permanent foot patrol for the balance of their careers and all files permanently marked "prone to panic attacks , not competent enough to carry loaded fire arms" period !

But as always another sad case of the continuing failure of the British Justice System failing to do the right thing !

over this genuine fk-up than for the deliberate murder of 50-odd other innocents a fortnight earlier.

It really is a screwed up world...

Oh yes, this is stupid.

The next time police stand aside and let someone drown, if any of the people here complain, can we please shoot them in the head? Because the effect of applying H&S laws to the police causes deaths via political correctness.

This isn't a comment on the incident, it's a comment on H&S laws.

Also, incidentally, it's perfectly legal for police to use dumdum bullets. The army, no, police, yes.

I can't help but wonder when those at the top of the heap say that their chunky salaries are fair recompense for the responsibility they bear.

In cases such as this and unending corporate manslaughter the responsibility some are so well paid for suddenly falls off sloped shoulders.

Where does the responsibility lie?

>The family are not happy and still want more costs in manslaughter charges.

>It doesnt seem like they will be happy till the police are broke or non-existant.

>Bring on the therapy for them.

Frankly, in the town I live, that'd suit me high. The police in the town I live in (in the US) have shot someone because they mistook a phone he was talking on for a gun, after breaking into his workplace. nothing was done. As for usefulness.. well, they were flat out told what bar a serial mugger hangs out at, what he looks like, and clothes, but did nothing; they did not put out anyone undercover despite all the muggins happening on the same street. They enforce speed limits at random but don't stop red light running. They hassle people for public intoxication as soon as they walk out of the bars at closing time (the student newspaper had people walk out stone sober and still get taken in.) In short, yes, in my town having the police taken out of the picture would only improve things. And, frankly, if they screw up as badly as shooting random people, maybe they should be.

Long Live The Gestap......err, I mean Metropolitan Police. <cough>

What gets me is that the Met's defense was crying about "living in a world that wants to place blame". I guess they're so busy falsifying evidence on everyone else that they were actually quite shocked that there was real evidence pointing at them for a change.

So - it wasn't anyone's fault but the establishment. Cost $3 Million of taxpayer's money (current exchange rates apply) to figure that out and, oh - you'll owe us another $1.2 million of taxpayers money in fines. Nice one. Thank You. Cha-Ching!

Looks like the British Government might have much more in common with our old friends from the Rheinland than they would actually like to admit. While the Yanks were stealing rocket and aircraft technology from a conquered Germany back in 1945, the Brit's were boning up on Nazi doctrine. Time to sell the country to Russia, Argentina or some other bloody useless Dictatorship... - at least you KNOW these thugs in Government are pirates and don't hide behind the vestiges of human decency.

It is a screwed up world indeed; the iraq was was fundamentally - if you take a week or so in your spare time to collate independent reports, you'll see it's all about oil. I have two PhDs and have learned over many years to balance points of view that I'm given based on biased opinions and other factors.

Anybody reading this will be quick to say 'yes we must reduce our oil usage', which doesn't just mean petrol/diesel, but everything. Yet we all still put an enormous amount of plastic in our bins, which end up getting burned, or being shoved under our arses in the ground, as well as us driving around.

At the end of the day the unfortunate Mr.M case shows how hypocratic our country has become, we are ultimately becoming very much like America - a country that is definitely not the land of opportunity or freedom anymore - which is why Menezes ended up dead. The officers were incompetent, and should be punished; I don't agree in people auotmatically resigning, but in this case Blair should be long gone. It's laughable that a publically funded institution is fined a sum of money to be paid by the tax-payer.

All the items I've mentioned are linked to one another, I feel our option is to welcome immigrants here, up to a cap, but cease these pathetic formal links with countries, such as Saudi Arabia and America, and with a bit of investigation, I am certain the majority of people would agree that good old Britishness can pull through independently without the idiots who rule/govern other countries which our politicians seem to think we desperately want to mimic. In saying that, we follow the traditions of these countries

I understand why people died in the London bombings, I understand why kids (and many women it seems...have you noticed?!) are very overweight, I understand why Menezes was shot. The London bombings and 9/11 in NY were *nothing* when you discover we've killed hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children in iraq. Can you even imagine the 200,000 bodies of children and women? No. Can you imagine 2000 from 9/11? Yes. Our brain can't understand high numbers, and it's insane to think that people will be outraged that someone can consider 9/11 and the London bombings 'not much casualty wise' compared to iraq. Many muslims in the middle east hate us, I really can't blame them, I am now utterly ashamed to be British.

What has this all got to do with Menezes? Everything is linked, and it's the stereotypes and unhappiness between many countries that caused the unfortunate killing of an innocent man. These things are driven by economic and political reasonings by everybody.

Remember:

"To understand is not to condone."

Killing someone in cold blood, with pre-meditation is first degree murder. Just because the killers were part of the police doesn't make it right. These people should be in jail. Also, please avoid the "kill one innocent to potentially save many others" argument. This is simply not morally justified.

Hopefully, the HSE will now use its powers to force the police to change their policy. If they can close down a restaurant for health violations, they can certainly bar the "shoot to kill" policy.

I'm not usually the one to say it, but... And the relevance of this to IT is?..

Politically and morally its relevant to all of us. This was the first assassination organised and run by the mainland UK police (it can't be a murder, more or less because the police say its not). It was not uncommon in Northern Ireland for the police to run their own Loyalist death-squads, which were implicated in the deaths of nearly 100 UK citizens, and the deaths and wounding of hundreds of Irish citizens but its certainly a first for the real world.

De Menzies was assassinated because, in part, he was talking on a mobile phone and travelling through the London transport system. Given the working conditions of most people in the IT world that's going to be a key issue for all of us. Its not unreasonable to suggest that sooner or later, if the Met's insane "Die Hard 4 based" policy does not change, its going to be one of us.

Who do people think should take the blame/be prosecuted over this. The person who fired the shots? The people who misidentified him? The people in the control room? The head of operations on that day? The head of the Met?

Last major screw up by the police was shooting a guy with a table leg in a bag - they thought it was a gun.

This time - they thought he was someone else.

Bottom line, they aren't accountable, we pay their fines, their court fees and their sick time for police.

Until this is treated as murder - meant or not and someone is held accountable its going to keep happening - an acceptable loss as they say.

They have taken this guys life & his future, no small thing. One shot in the head, maybe two I can see - but seven is someone panicking. They should be jailed.

The family are completely entitled to sue - I don't think this should even get as far as court before its settled as the ignorance of the police stops them realising that dragging this out is doing more damage and lowering public opinion of them. Another fine example of how they don't obey the law they uphold it.

"Mr.M case shows how hypocratic our country has become", if that was true I would expect our health service to be booming.

On a serious note, I can't stand people who say, well now they might not shoot a terrorist because they're scared of repercussions. Yes, maybe they won't, but it will definitely mean they think twice before shooting an innocent person. I would have thought that in an operation like this, if you don't have enough information you should CALL OFF THE OPERATION. I do feel for the men who killed him, they were quite obviously being given pretty conflicting advice and information, and were probably being 'adrenalined' up, especially if they were being told they were confronting a terrorist (I would expect they would say 'possible terrorist' rather than 'someone who had possible links with 7/7'). I wouldn't blame them, but the information that they were given and poor poor training. If indeed it was because they couldn't remain level-headed in such an 'exceptional' situation it's the police force's fault for not training them well enough.

.. licensed to kill.

Large fine.. not. Take it out of their wages I say, and bust a few more of them to the ranks. And there are few sights more repulsive than that of overpaid incompetents hanging on to office.

The glorious 'Independent' police complaints commission look as useless as all the other ombudspeople, regulators, drones and hangers on.

Apart from the incompetence, what about the lies & deceit ?

eg (but not limited to)

- wearing puffer jacket

- running

- jumped barriers

- doctoring photos

- Lying about when they knew they'd just killed an innocent bloke

Ah well - the fine should teach them a lesson.

Yeah right...

</rant>

Quote:"More anger...over this genuine fk-up than for the deliberate murder of 50-odd other innocents a fortnight earlier."

What a stupid and obnoxious, not to mention illogical, comment.

Firstly, the vast majority of British people were/are far more outraged and angered by the murderous actions of suicide bombers than by the killing of De Menezes. Secondly, outrage at the one doesn't somehow preclude anger at the other.

I despise and hate the insane islamist scumbags who blew themselves up on the tube. Like any right-thinking Briton, I want to see these filthy muslim murderers brought to justice. But that doesn't mean I also want the Met's heavily-armed adrenalin-fuelled killer squads gunning down innocents in crowded tube carriages. Nor does it mean I want Commissioner Blair to lie through his teeth about it.

Using lethal force to prevent mass murder isn't the issue. Despite certain media outlets attempts to generate it, there was very little genuine public outrage when SAS soldiers gunned down three murderous IRA cowards in Gibralter - careful planning and close surveillance had ascertained that the suspects were known Provos and had a car stuffed with explosives that they intended to detonate on the rock.

The De Menezes case was an entirely different kettle of fish. Flawed and wafer-thin intelligence, slapdash procedure, cock-ups and a poor command structure meant the Met shot an entirely innocent person.

When I use public transport, I don't want to be blown up by madmen. But I don't want to be shot dead by the police either.

Why not just give the de Menezes family the money they seem to want?

I also fail to see how an HSE hearing into a fatal shooting could have had any other outcome: these are people who would classify a Claymore wire-operated anti-personnel mine as a trip hazard.

Its a very small consolation that the it hasn't been a complete whitewash and the Met have been held legally responsible for running an out of control death squad on the streets of Britain. But how pathetic the only way it could be achieved was under the legislation that's designed to give a company a mild slap on the wrist for not putting up a sign saying lifting heavy objects may give you a bad back.

The individuals concerned in this chain of tragedy that need to be held to account, and not in the least Ian Blair for the outrageous lies and attempted cover up. He should be stripped of his job and his title immediately. Otherwise we can have no confidence in this country's police force, and the real victory goes to the terrorists.

It is irrelevant as to whether Menezes was correctly or incorrectly identified as a terrorist.

How on earth can the manager of the operation possibly hold their job knowing that they permitted the person to get on a bus twice, enter a tube station *twice* and get all the way down to actually entering a train before ANY OFFICERS attempoted to stop him?

It does not take a huge effort to stop one man when you have him under survellance by no fewer than four officers within ten feet.

Mrs Dick should be fired for extreme incompetence, and Blair should be tried for corporate manslaughter.

If that individual they had been following really had been a terrorist, then he had already reached a likely target on no fewer than three occasions before the police action, and would have had time to detonate in the final place as well.

And an eyewitness says that they thought it was a gangland action?

Way to go Metropolitan Police - we now have less than zero confidence in you.

""I want to make clear the people of London should have full confidence in the Met's ability to deal professionally with dangerous and difficult situations".

Except for those it kills, of course.

I'm at least slightly hopeful for the future, based on the fact that the majority of comments here indicate I am not alone in my views.

I believe in everything that is written here about the culpability of the met police force, the ridiculous - shifting of taxpayers funds - "punishment", the doctored photographs.

The thing that REALLY annoys me is that people just sit on the internet and talk about these things, people really should make the government sit up and listen.

But then... they would be the terrorists right? they would be arrested and slapped with asbo's for demonstrating (although now it is ILLEGAL to demonstrate outside of parliament anyway - so theyd probably get slapped with a custodial sentance for doing so).

Makes me ashamed to live in this Daily Mail reading oppressed island of the 'free' that we call England.

Whilst I agree whole heartedly with Richard Neill and the comments @Igor there is no way to close 'Pandoras Box' short of full scale revolution, there are too many people protecting their own backs to do it any other way. The results of that may be even worse with the advent of undercover death squads???? Remember Dr Kelly???

The alternative is to bog off to another country where human life is valued and respected ..... if you find one let me know but don't tell anyone else.

Oh BTW make sure they have an immigration policy that will let us in first would you??

... so what does the Met have to do wrong that would lead to Blair tendering his resignation? Clearly this cock-up wasn't a big enough cock-up to be considered worthy of such a act of contrition, so what is?

The guy just beggars belief. My jaw hit the floor a year ago and said that maybe we should have a public debate about whether the police should operate a shoot-to-kill policy. What? a) They clearly do operate such a policy, and did so even before he made that comment. b) We hadn't had a public debate about it at the time de Menezes was shot, and we still haven't as far as I can recall. The only conclusion I can draw is that the police decided of their own accord that this is what they are going to do, and then went and did it. Last time I looked the police were supposed to do what we wanted, not the other way round. We give them the license to operate such a policy, not the other way round. We can revoke that license at any time, eg. if we feel that they're making poor or inappropriate use of it. The decision has already been made, so the "public debate" would be nothing more than an exercise in PR spin to try to persuade a couple of the newspapers that this is a good idea (with the usual nudge and a wink, *cough*illegal immigrants*cough*, and of course your average white bloke isn't in any danger of getting shot).

The way this is being spun, by Ken Livingstone amongst others, is that the police simply made a mistake in shooting de Menezes and that their ability to protect us from terrorists has been compromised as result of the conviction.

In fact, the prosecution got a result on 19 "mistakes" by the Met, which include staking out a building supposedly occupied by terrorists without having any plan for what to do if one of them came out, and allowing a suspected terrorist to board 2 buses, either of which could have been a target for a genuine bomber. By the time de Menezes boarded a train, the Met were in full-scale panic mode and had to shoot him in case their luck finally ran out.

The IT angle is that the Met's communications, deployment and surveillance systems failed totally under pressure.

So if the police improve their systems and actually develop a half-way competent plan for dealing with a building believed to house terrorists, London will be better protected. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen.

It's not unreasonable to bring up the fact Menezes was here illegally, if he had been here legally as part of his visa his existence and whereabouts would've been in the national immigration database and hence it would've been easy to find out who he actually was.

When someone with similarities and who exists off the grid comes out of a building where a possible escaped suicide bomber from the day before is thought to have gone it's not hard to imagine how he was mistaken for said suspect.

To suggest there was any malice involved is absolutely unfair on the police and the fact the police have become so demonised is horrible when they do a very tough but extremely important job. I don't disagree that lessons need to be learnt but is wasting over £4million in tax payers money the way to do it? I hardly think so, I'd rather have seen that £4million invested into research/training on better surveillance techniques for the police, or extra staff so that they don't have any issues of being undermanned in situations like this.

If you punish the police by decreasing their resources then it's foolish to come crying next time they make a mistake and then again when they make a mistake because their morale and resources have again been decreased further by the last "punishment". It truly was a mistake and it's ridiculous to suggest any individual was at fault, the surveillance guy thought he'd found the target but was unsure, the ops team were under pressure, the firearms officers were told they were dealing with a potential suicide bomber that could blow himself up at any second and Blair himself had nothing to do with the operation directly. There's the argument for punishment because of the cover-up but again, if you knew you'd fucked up with this attitude displayed here from everyone suggesting these guys should be tried for murder, lose their jobs and such what would you do?

Until people stop crying for blood each time someone does something wrong no matter how minor or serious then don't expect things to improve. It's those of you who cannot accept that mistakes can happen, particularly under extremely stressful circumstances that are to explain for the whole debacle, because when you create such an environment where people aren't allowed to learn from mistakes and are sacked/jailed the second they do anything wrong then of course you're never going to see change. It's just sad that it's the attitude that the majority of Brits have nowadays due to papers like the daily mail and the sun making such a spectator sport of every mishap that the unintelligent majority out there in the UK live for it without realising that they are the problem.

We'd be asking why the police let him on two busses, into a crowded underground station and get on a train where he THEN blew up. We'd wonder "why didn't you stop him earlier?".

So even if he HAD been a suicide bomber, and even if he HAD been stopped, the police had STILL put the public at danger by letting him on three public means of transport. If they weren't sure enough of him to stop him before then, they weren't sure enough to shoot him.

i have to kind of agree with those comments....

if the police had done nothing at all and then it turned out he was a bomber everyone would be up in arms complaining the police are useless as they done nothing... their doing an impossible job made harder by the fact that terrorist dont play by any rules.. its guerilla warfare

you cant have it both ways... if you want to blame anyone blame the people who terrorise the free world and make these situations!!!

It's manifestly not all about oil, Mr Double PhD.

Research is good. Lots of research is very good. But when it was time to think about all those facts and stitch them together, did you start with a fresh canvas or a palimpsest? Did you make it yourself, or did you buy one off the shelf thinking it would just as good? Sure you bought it, but where from and who sold it you?

"I have two PhDs ..."

"...[this] case shows how hypocratic our country has become"

Two PhDs? I very much think not!

<<Oh, no. The Israeli's would've made a proper job of it, not the dog's breakfast that the Met made. De Menzies would've been dead within feet of his front door. Still innocent, mind you, but without the circus in the tube>>

Really, from current practice, they would have hit De Menzies Tower Block with several missiles from a helicopter gunship, preferably at night when everyone was in bed.

For those who see the fines as small and insignificant, well, thats a political outcome of the case. The Police are Guilty and that is the main outcome. They allowed an innocent member of the public to die because they were incapable of doing their job properly. Their job was to track and watch a known terrorist suspect. They knew where he was and what he looked like. Look what happened. It is a reminder to the Police that they uphold the law, but they are not above the law.

@1865

yes, we are angry at this situation. We are angry at the deaths of the 50 on 7/11. The difference is, 7/11 was caused by terrorists, enemies of human life, which is something that humans should hold sacred. De Menzies was killed by the very forces that were supposed to be protecting him and us from terrorists. The Police betrayed our trust. They failed De Menzies. They failed us. They may arrest and detain suspects and release them without charge later. But they can't give De Menzies back to his family.

<< "Really, from current practice, they would have hit De Menzies Tower Block with several missiles from a helicopter gunship..." >>

No, you're still mistaking... That's Israeli *military* assassinations you're thinking of. Israeli *extra-judicial* (i.e. not part of an ongoing war) assassinations are carried out by small teams of shooters who pump dozens of small-calliber (.22) bullets into their target. See the follow-up from the 72 Olympics fiasco for an example. Even when they sent their 'B' team (who screwed the pooch every bit as royally as the Met did), they managed to kill their (mistaken) target without endangering passers-by.

The decision of the court was that no single individual was to blame - in other words, the entire 'Met' organisation was at fault. This being the case, then surely the heads of the organisation must shoulder the blame? After all, it is their policies which govern the actions of their subordinates and they are therefore ultimately responsible.

Blair and his immediate junior Dick should go - just like the last 'B-liar' who is responsible for the loss of not just one life, but of around 150 of our servicemen.

I will be surprised if THIS Blair is still in his job by the end of the year...........