Indeed. The whole thing is very sad. I hope the investigation is thorough.

Ah, and reading a news report this morning, I see that they were plain clothes cops, a detail which had previously eluded me. No fucking wonder he ran.

The other detail I missed at first was that he had simply emerged from an apartment building under surveillance. For some reason, my first impression was that he emerged from a house under surveillance, which is quite a different thing, if you're looking for grounds for reasonable suspicion.

Plainclothes cops?! Holy god; hadn't seen that.

I wonder if we're going to see the "ubiquitous London security camera" footage that undoubtedly exists of the whole thing. Including the part where they shoot the guy they have pinned down (because, um, he might detonate his bomb with his navel).

Maybe they should issue public transit users an outfit of see-thru plastic, to wear whenever they use the tube. Drastic measures are required in this time of war.

Well, I'm not sure how easy it is to detonate a bomb in those circumstances. So I'll be agnostic for now about how great a threat he would have presented had he been wired to blow up.

The thing is, if you had asked me recently, "Should police kill someone who is highly likely to detonate a bomb in public and kill a bunch of innocent bystanders," I think I might well have said "yes". That's because I do think that someone who attempts to kill a bunch of innocents, and can only be stopped with that kind of force, has forfeited his right not to be harmed in virtue of his attempt to harm others.

The problem, obviously, is that even if that is right in some abstract and general way, it doesn't tell us what sort of standard operating procedures we need to prepare in advance of this kind of situation. Those present a new challenge, since we have to evaluate policies by looking at how they're likely to be actually implemented (by panicky cops, acting on less than perfect information, perhaps biased by prejudices of various sorts, etc. etc. etc.). And I think this shooting gives us a clue that guidelines which might have seemed morally justified in the abstract are in fact not justified when we take into account what came of attempting to follow them.

By the way, the best way to come up with plausible guidelines is public debate. I notice that this was quite absent in this case.

Here's another point: I've read a few well-off white people making some pretty harsh judgements about the decision this fellow made to run. It might be useful for them to think about how their own experiences with police have influenced their judgement in this case, and how very different experiences might have led to a very different judgement.

Plus, setting aside the particulars of this case, there are plenty of petty criminal activities that might incline you to run from the cops -- none of which warrant summary execution.

I completely agree with what you said about promulgating principles that work in the abstract. And notice how closely that resembles some of the arguments made to make us comfortable with torture. Imagine you've captured the guy who knows where the suitcase nuke is, and imagine he will tell you the truth if tortured -- wouldn't it be ok to torture him then? Similarly, imagine you're facing a guy who you KNOW is wired for suicide bombing and ready to push the button -- wouldn't it be ok, even required, to shoot him in the head? These are appealing abstract moral questions; golly, what would it be right to do? But making policy based on them is bad freaking news.

I think it should be pointed out that this happened the day after a bombing attempt and 15 days after a major attack on London.
Running away was not a sensible option. The real question is this: Would he have been shot even if he had stopped running? That is a much more serious consideration. Indeed, once the police consider you a suicide bomber is there anything you can do to avoid being shot? This is what needs to be debated before another tragedy occurs. Lets never forget that this only happened because of the activities of murderous individuals set on the deliberate killing and maiming of travellers.

Micheal, yes, of course this only happened because of the activities of murderous individuals set on killing innocents. But I don't think Anne's point was to minimize the earlier attacks or to suggest that the police weren't acting under terrible pressure.

I do agree that we need a public debate about this. My own intuitions on this are conflicted, frankly: on the one hand, it does seem reasonable to kill someone bent on such an act, and on the other, it does not seem reasonable to institute a policy that is likely to result in a lot of false positives.

I think I'd like to get much clearer on this myself - another benefit of a bit of public debate.

Michael, I agree that that question (once they think you might be a suicide bomber, is there any way to avoid getting shot in the head?) is now the pressing one.

In fact, I was wondering -- given that this guy ran in among crowds and in a subway station, and *didn't* blow himself up during the chase, why didn't that count as evidence that he *wasn't* a bomber?

And obviously: these bombings are terrible evils, and London didn't pick this fight. But now, as civilized people, Londoners must decide how to face the threat of *mass killers who look like everyone else*. That's what I'm interested in discussing - what the hell should the response be?

Knowing that police officers are HUMAN (brave but amped and maybe scared/angry, smart but not immune to error, prejudice, jumping to conclusions), what orders do you give them? Knowing that if you're chasing an innocent guy, he might be confused, scared, act inappropriately, what kind of responses do you categorize as worthy of "shoot-to-kill-to-protect"?

It seems to me that in these circumstances, giving a standing shoot-to-kill order is likely to bring more harm than good.

If a guy is a real suicide bomber, will you be able to get a nice clear shot at him, standing still, before he sets off the bomb? How long can you wait on the platform, drawing a bead on him, trying to get a clear shot? Should you just shoot through the crowd, hoping to get him before he gets on the train? If you hit a couple of other people on the platform, that's still better than 70 people killed and hundreds maimed, so probably you should just go for it.

If they bombed my city and you gave me a gun, put me in charge of protecting people, and had me follow some guy for blocks, and watch his every weird move, wondering whether this would be it... would I take that shot across the platform? It seems possible. And once I had the guy down maybe I'd fire a few extra rounds for good measure.

But probably better than 10% of the people on the subway on any given day are weirdoes, or suspicious in one of the ways I described in the post, no? So, there's me, with my gun, brave and smart but amped and angry and scared, and I've been assigned to be on the lookout for suspicious types. And the bombers have been assigned to blend in, to look like normal Londoners.

It just seems to me like a recipe for innocent people killed, the police put under a cloud of suspicion, the public more nervous, and no bombers actually caught. I don't know what the right answer is, and I don't envy the guy with the thankless job of deciding on a policy. But man, blanket shoot-to-kill is not it.

actually, i think quite a lot of us would run if suddenly confronted by plain clothed men with guns outside their apartment building. especially in a skittish city 2 weeks after a terrorist attack. the big question in my mind is whether the cops ever identified themselves before they pulled their guns.

well, noz, i'm conflicted. i think running from the police is generally a bad move, though plain-clothes details could easily be mistaken for terrorists. in that scenario we have people who might be mistaken for terrorists mistaking other people for terrorists. that's an unnecessarily complicated situation, one almost certain to result in violence.

and yet... i have no idea what it's like to sit on a bus in jerusalem next to someone planning to blow himself up. i don't know what it takes to stop such a person. i don't know how easy it is to detonate a bomb. taking a chance on wrongly killing one person who might kill scores of others... i just don't know. it's scary, but doing nothing is scary too.

there's just no clear answer here, and the question we face was inevitable. someone pulling a suicide bombing in a grocery store in akron would bring this debate to the top of the agenda in the states, and i have no idea where it would lead. i agree that it's past time we have a direct dialogue about this, and i have no idea what to do other than ask questions. i don't understand, but i would like to...

from what i read this morning, it sounds like they did identify themselves as police. his family thinks he ran because he was accosted by a english gang the week before. it sounds like they probably did announce themselves as police but he didn't believe them

but i guess given all the press this is getting, the next guy in menezes' shoes will probably believe the cops and stop.

Or the police have said that they yelled "police" and that it was obvious because the alternative is too awful. Eye-witness accounts seems to suggest that they didn't properly identify themselves. And even if he had, they might well still have shot him. After all, if they thought he was a suicide bomber, weren't they supposed to?

I've read so many conflicting things that I'm trying to reserve judgement. Hopefully a proper inquiry will clear some of this up.

Agreed - I'm hearing too many conflicting things, and hope they do a thorough and public inquiry. Seems like the least they could do for this guy's family. (Police chief said "the best we can do is offer our deep regrets". Well, no, that's not the best you can do -- explain exactly what the hell happened and if your guys fucked up, say so.)

The way I'm imagining it, though, is as a person who's just innocently going to work, and suddenly guys are running behind you with guns (shouting "police", in a best-case scenario). Maybe initially you think, wow, I'd better get the hell out of the way; whoever they're chasing must be up to no good. Then you think, yikes, what the hell? I haven't done anything, but it looks like they're chasing *me*. They can't really be police, since there's no reason for the police to be after me. I'd better head to somewhere crowded - they won't try anything in a crowd.