Well,
The Observer (London) reports that the London Police are saying that not only did they kill Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes as he traveled on the London tube, but that they offered his family a little bit of money to make nice.
Now THAT went over real big with the family!
I can almost understand why the London police nearly immediately chose to try and settle with the grief stricken family, but why the whole thing went down the way it did is harder for me to accept.
Senior sources in the Metropolitan Police have told The Observer that members of the surveillance team who followed de Menezes into Stockwell underground station in London felt that he was not about to detonate a bomb, was not armed and was not acting suspiciously. It was only when they were joined by armed officers that his threat was deemed so great that he was shot seven times.
In all likelihood, the police frightened Menezes into movement, and thereby created the situation that caused them to shoot him.
But for the entrance of armed police into the train, as a three man team sat with the unarmed worker, de Menezes may have made it to work that morning.
But that was not to be.
The Observer now understands that seconds before the firearms team entered the tube train carriage, a member of the surveillance squad using the codename Hotel 3 moved to the doorway and shouted: 'He's in here.' De Menezes, in all likelihood alarmed by the activity, stood and moved towards the doorway. He was grabbed and pushed back to his seat. The first shots were then fired while Hotel 3 was holding him.
It appears that a man traveling mass transit to work was killed by police because he scared them.
Do we feel safer yet?