The policy is to deprive them of function

Aside from watching Gordon the only other entertaining television I caught this week was BBC’s Panorama documentary explaining ‘what really happened’ when that JCdM got shot in Stockwell tube station last year.

This is all getting a bit silly now.

The findings of the IPCC investigation, the investigation that was going to find out what happened, quickly and honestly, still haven’t been made public but the police have been spinning like bastards.

And the State Broadcasting Company did its part magnificently this week. Apparently, one of the major factors why JCdM got shot was because the police radios didn’t work in the underground. The Panorama documentary waffled about this for ages…

But even as late as the last few minutes of his life, Jean's death might have been avoided. As the surveillance officers followed him down the escalator and onto the tube, they may have finally realised that he was not concealing a bomb.

Jean was not carrying a bag and was only wearing a denim jacket that was unlikely to conceal explosives.

But they had no way of transmitting the message. Their radios did not work underground.

That would be the same surveillance team who fingered JCdM in the first place and pointed him out to the execution squad on the train.

Utter crap.

As is the suggestion that a trained surveillance team mistook a Brazillian electrician for an Ethiopean suicide bomber, even after fucking about with pictures of the two in Photoshop for a while months after the event.

The amount of chaff being thrown up is truly impressive. What isn’t clear to me is how many concerned members of the public are being fooled by it.

Are people that gullible? Does anyone really care about the implications of what happened that day and since?

I liked the little touches in the filmed reconstruction, especially the bit where JCdM stood up suddenly when faced by the execution squad, in spite of the fact that eyewitness accounts state clearly that he was dragged from his seat before being executed.

I also enjoyed the way the documentary dealt with, or rather didn’t deal with, the missing house surveillance footage, the missing CCTV footage from the station, why we were being told he was a terrorist even when the police knew he wasn't, the crooked witness statements broadcast that day about unseasonally heavy coats and crap like that or, quite simply, why a lightly dressed bloke with no baggage was fingered for execution at all. Quite peculiar for a documentary that claimed to account for what went down that day.

The intriguing part is that nobody would be asking any questions about the deceits in the police account if the police had managed to get any real 'dirt' on JCdM at all. And for the first 24 hours or so after the shooting the police behaved as if they expected to find some. Let's not forget the crude early attempts by government and the police to suggest that JCdM ran when challenged because he had a bent visa or because he had been mugged a few days before.

He didn't run anywhere. He was dragged from a train seat and deliberately butchered.

I also found the account of officers calling on JCdM's immediate family in London at 2.00am the next morning, sixteen hours after the execution, and grilling them for three hours before telling them JCdM was shot to be particularly sinister.

Our police have taken to knocking on the doors of the innocent relatives of innocent victims without explaining themselves in the wee small hours now.

Nice...

The comedy highlight of the show occurred when the Assistant Commissioner spokesperson representing the police was asked whether the London Police are operate a shoot to kill policy or not. It went something like

Interviewer: So, the police are in effect operating a shoot to kill policy

Policeman: No, that is not the case. We are most definitely not operating a shoot to kill policy

Interviewer: But the policy is to kill suspected suicide bombers

Policeman: The policy is to deprive them of function

Interviewer: … by killing them

Policeman: Not by killing them. By shooting them in the head

I swear to Christ I’m not making that up. I couldn’t