Original article, by Paul Bond, via World Socialist Web Site:
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced Friday that no police officer would face trial for the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. The CPS had reviewed the case following the open verdict given in December by an inquest jury, who rejected the police account of events. De Menezes's family has announced that they will sue Scotland Yard for damages.
You may remember the shooting of De Menezes. He was a passenger on the London underground, where he was pulled from his seat, held down and shot. This was two weeks after the July 7, 2007 bombings of the undergound.
In the immediate wake of the killing there was a flood of media reports suggesting that de Menezes was a known terror suspect whose behaviour had been suspicious. It was reported that he was wearing a bulky jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and that when challenged by the police at Stockwell station he had leaped the ticket barriers and run onto the train.
You can imagine the state that the British were in at the time. They had just had the undergound bombed, and they were on heightend alert for any suspsicous characters. Of course...
This version of events was revealed to be entirely false. In fact the police had not even clearly identified him as the man they thought they were following, Hussain Osman. He was not wearing bulky clothing, and did not vault the ticket barrier at Stockwell station to evade capture or otherwise. He had, rather, picked up a free newspaper and walked down to the platform before taking a seat on the train. Eyewitnesses said that he was not challenged or warned by the police before being held down and killed.
So, out of fear, an innocent was dragged from his seat, held down and shot. All of this in the name of keeping the population at large safe. The question arises, was de Menezes kept safe? No.
Read the rest of the original article. You will find that London police had shoot to kill orders, more specifically a head shot for suspected bombers. Read it and weep. Realize that this sort of thing isn't happening only in Britain. Police are able to use tasers against people who haven't done anything. Police killings of innocents have happened time and again here in the US (often times because of botched searches where they break into the homes of innocents). Don't be surprised that the officers are getting away with it, either. We're all suspects. Period. We have to struggle to see that justice prevails in each case of a wrongful death. That's true for those in Britain, as well as here in the US.