IPCC ignores De Menezes inquest jury's narrative verdict
Discussion
The family are taking the case to The European Court For Human Rights.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33066098
Almost ten years gone now!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33066098
Almost ten years gone now!
I appreciate there's a grieving family who want to channel their emotions, but this isn't the way in which to do it.
"They claim the test applied by the Crown Prosecution Service - that there should be sufficient evidence for a "realistic prospect" of conviction - is too high a threshold."
So what should the threshold be? If it's not realistic, then surely it's unrealistic by definition. Should we be sending people to court where there isn't a realistic prospect of conviction? I don't think so. Could you imagine how a lower threshold would work alongside the other articles in the HRA? 'The right to liberty and security', 'The right to a fair trial' and, 'No punishment without law'? It wouldn't, so this is a bit of a tangled mess and seemingly rather contradictory within the same legislation.
"They claim the test applied by the Crown Prosecution Service - that there should be sufficient evidence for a "realistic prospect" of conviction - is too high a threshold."
So what should the threshold be? If it's not realistic, then surely it's unrealistic by definition. Should we be sending people to court where there isn't a realistic prospect of conviction? I don't think so. Could you imagine how a lower threshold would work alongside the other articles in the HRA? 'The right to liberty and security', 'The right to a fair trial' and, 'No punishment without law'? It wouldn't, so this is a bit of a tangled mess and seemingly rather contradictory within the same legislation.
How to you advise they go about it.
I would be fuming if the police 'mistakenly' killed a member of my family through a series of mistakes and not one person was punished for it.
Its easy for you to say thats not the way to go about it since it wasnt your son/dad/uncle/brother that got 7 to the dome.
I would be fuming if the police 'mistakenly' killed a member of my family through a series of mistakes and not one person was punished for it.
Its easy for you to say thats not the way to go about it since it wasnt your son/dad/uncle/brother that got 7 to the dome.
It appears the usual suspects are not happy that the Menezes family are not going to stay quiet about the execution of their innocent son by armed police officers.The coroner prohibited the inquest jury from returning an unlawful killing verdict and no one has yet been indicted for the murder. It is very telling that the Menezes family cannot get justice from an English court and must go to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the decision of the CPS not to prosecute the offenders. Almost 10 years is a long time to wait for justice but I hope their long wait ends soon.
Eclassy said:
How to you advise they go about it.
I would be fuming if the police 'mistakenly' killed a member of my family through a series of mistakes and not one person was punished for it.
Its easy for you to say thats not the way to go about it since it wasnt your son/dad/uncle/brother that got 7 to the dome.
They need to find closure / coping techniques in ways in which their expectations match reality. The legal system is a long and costly road to try and force your will upon it. The Duggan family are going along the same fruitless route. I would be fuming if the police 'mistakenly' killed a member of my family through a series of mistakes and not one person was punished for it.
Its easy for you to say thats not the way to go about it since it wasnt your son/dad/uncle/brother that got 7 to the dome.
davidball said:
It appears the usual suspects are not happy that the Menezes family are not going to stay quiet about the execution of their innocent son by armed police officers.The coroner prohibited the inquest jury from returning an unlawful killing verdict and no one has yet been indicted for the murder.
And the usual suspects come along with no understanding of our legal system, just like when you decided that the Duggan shooting was unlawful. Your judgement isn't better than the entire legal establishment, even if you think it is. You have a strong, superficial interest in police firearms usage / topics, but apparently no desire to actually learn anything useful about the law and processes. That's some serious ignorance. The family had the option to legally challenge the Coroner but decided not to. If only they had you to advise them rather than their legal teams.
And no-one will be indicted for the murder because no-one committed the offence.
davidball said:
It is very telling that the Menezes family cannot get justice from an English court and must go to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the decision of the CPS not to prosecute the offenders. Almost 10 years is a long time to wait for justice but I hope their long wait ends soon.
They aren't challenging the decision per se (regardless of what the article says), they're challenging the threshold in which global decisions are made. A subtle difference that you appear to have missed. Can you not see the wider implications of this? It means the CPS could take people to court where there's not a realistic prospect of conviction. That's why it won't happen. I would also suggest there's an indirect acceptance that there isn't a realistic prospect of conviction from the family, thus the angle of the challenge. Essentially, in order for them to obtain a prosecution, they need the people involved here to be treated uniquely within the justice system to anyone else.
I had sight of the disclosure of the case against a number of police officers after the shooting of an unarmed man.
It was clear from an early stage that there was no realistic possibility of a conviction. Indeed, a judge suggested during a pre-trial hearing that there was no realistic possibility of a trial going ahead, but failed to stop the prosecution.
So a number of officers were held for a period of years under threat of a substantial length of prison sentence when, had the charged persons not been police, many (which would include everyone who read the disclosure, such as the judge) believed that the case would not have gone to court. I was a prosecutions officer and would have approached a senior officer with recommendations to drop the prosecution even before submitting it to the CPS.
For whatever reason or reasons, the CPS decided to go ahead against, literally, the evidence. As the trial opened, the judge threw the case out with criticism of the decision to charge, let alone prosecute.
Mistakes were made, although not as many as suggested by the press, and oddly enough those mistakes were not highlighted by the media.
There was a thread on here recently about a pursuit which ended in a crash for a £50 theft. The consensus there, at least of police officer, was that the proper decision was probably not to pursue. The police were concerned about injuries to the innocent.
The police cannot be right 100% of the time. Mistakes will be made. If these mistakes showed no criminal intent then what should be done about those who were doing their best in such circumstances?
In the case I know about and mentioned above, the mental health of a number of officers was damaged, due to the fact that they knew they had a defence but were still under threat from the courts. There defence team kept saying that at the next stage the case would be turfed out, as had happened where the defendants had been civilians, but this did not happen. So when the same lawyers said that there was no case to answer, the guys could not believe them.
The norm is that there is a lower threshold of evidence required to prosecute a police officer. We have recently seen a case where a judge had criticised the decision to charge a serving officer.
A small pint: as mentioned, the heading is disingenuous. The IPCC has not ignored the jury's verdict. This was made clear in the article.
A number of posters on here have suggested that there is one law for the police and one for the hoi poloi. I'm afraid this is all too true. However, the balance does not favour the former. If only there was a level playing field.
I have not seen the detail of this case but I see no reason to suspect that the same police officer prescribed limit would have been applied in this case.
By the way, a couple of police officers sued the force for damages. They were stopped from doing so for reasons that would not have applied had they been civilians at the time.
Got to laugh, haven't you.
It was clear from an early stage that there was no realistic possibility of a conviction. Indeed, a judge suggested during a pre-trial hearing that there was no realistic possibility of a trial going ahead, but failed to stop the prosecution.
So a number of officers were held for a period of years under threat of a substantial length of prison sentence when, had the charged persons not been police, many (which would include everyone who read the disclosure, such as the judge) believed that the case would not have gone to court. I was a prosecutions officer and would have approached a senior officer with recommendations to drop the prosecution even before submitting it to the CPS.
For whatever reason or reasons, the CPS decided to go ahead against, literally, the evidence. As the trial opened, the judge threw the case out with criticism of the decision to charge, let alone prosecute.
Mistakes were made, although not as many as suggested by the press, and oddly enough those mistakes were not highlighted by the media.
There was a thread on here recently about a pursuit which ended in a crash for a £50 theft. The consensus there, at least of police officer, was that the proper decision was probably not to pursue. The police were concerned about injuries to the innocent.
The police cannot be right 100% of the time. Mistakes will be made. If these mistakes showed no criminal intent then what should be done about those who were doing their best in such circumstances?
In the case I know about and mentioned above, the mental health of a number of officers was damaged, due to the fact that they knew they had a defence but were still under threat from the courts. There defence team kept saying that at the next stage the case would be turfed out, as had happened where the defendants had been civilians, but this did not happen. So when the same lawyers said that there was no case to answer, the guys could not believe them.
The norm is that there is a lower threshold of evidence required to prosecute a police officer. We have recently seen a case where a judge had criticised the decision to charge a serving officer.
A small pint: as mentioned, the heading is disingenuous. The IPCC has not ignored the jury's verdict. This was made clear in the article.
A number of posters on here have suggested that there is one law for the police and one for the hoi poloi. I'm afraid this is all too true. However, the balance does not favour the former. If only there was a level playing field.
I have not seen the detail of this case but I see no reason to suspect that the same police officer prescribed limit would have been applied in this case.
By the way, a couple of police officers sued the force for damages. They were stopped from doing so for reasons that would not have applied had they been civilians at the time.
Got to laugh, haven't you.
Einion Yrth said:
singlecoil said:
It's a great shame that some people hate the police so much that everything the police do has to be interpreted in the worst possible way.
There's a "nice" way to interpret the execution of an innocent man?http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/07/hil...
It's a great shame that some police officers seek to smear people.
From what one reads it seems as though 'on the day' the Police were between a rock & a hard place.
They obviously believed that the person shot was a suicidal terrorist. Why they believed this may not be fully explained, but the commander at the scene certainly believed it.
So 'what's to do'? Hope that he is not and simply follow him and take the consequences if he is carrying explosives which he can ignite in a fraction of a second inside an underground train or, as they did, take him out before he can get into a train?
How many of those now criticising the Police would like to have taken that split-second decision, but it had to be taken.
Remember this was only very shortly after the terrorists had struck and killed a large number in London.
In any conflict, and we may consider the war on terrorism to be a conflict, there will always, sadly, be collateral damage.
I hope this doesn't sound callous, but we ask our Police Service to do a difficult and, in this case, dangerous job. We must support them when their decisions taken under extreme stress prove to be mistaken, as they were in this case.
They obviously believed that the person shot was a suicidal terrorist. Why they believed this may not be fully explained, but the commander at the scene certainly believed it.
So 'what's to do'? Hope that he is not and simply follow him and take the consequences if he is carrying explosives which he can ignite in a fraction of a second inside an underground train or, as they did, take him out before he can get into a train?
How many of those now criticising the Police would like to have taken that split-second decision, but it had to be taken.
Remember this was only very shortly after the terrorists had struck and killed a large number in London.
In any conflict, and we may consider the war on terrorism to be a conflict, there will always, sadly, be collateral damage.
I hope this doesn't sound callous, but we ask our Police Service to do a difficult and, in this case, dangerous job. We must support them when their decisions taken under extreme stress prove to be mistaken, as they were in this case.
Einion Yrth said:
singlecoil said:
It's a great shame that some people hate the police so much that everything the police do has to be interpreted in the worst possible way.
There's a "nice" way to interpret the execution of an innocent man?I'd of shot him in the head multiple times too.
He didnt help himself running from the police. Not a clever thing to do just after a terrorist attack when the police are on hightened alert and have itchy trigger fingers.
That one action of running cost him his life.
In the states people who run from the police then get shot generally get very little sympathy and rightly so. Our country seems to have developed a bit of a pathetic attitude where everything the police do is wrong and must be challenged when in reality we actually have pretty good cops compared to most other civilised countries.
He didnt help himself running from the police. Not a clever thing to do just after a terrorist attack when the police are on hightened alert and have itchy trigger fingers.
That one action of running cost him his life.
In the states people who run from the police then get shot generally get very little sympathy and rightly so. Our country seems to have developed a bit of a pathetic attitude where everything the police do is wrong and must be challenged when in reality we actually have pretty good cops compared to most other civilised countries.
I do not hate the police. I do hate the way the offenders are being protected by the establishment. From the outset there was misinformation about Menezes leaked to the press, contradictory statements about his behaviour, an inquest that left a nasty smell followed by a trial that was secret in part. Then no prosecutions. Were the officers involved even reprimanded? Were the shooters taken off armed duty?
The death of Menezes is one tragedy in a list of incidents where unarmed men have been shot and killed by police officers. It seems with impunity.
The death of Menezes is one tragedy in a list of incidents where unarmed men have been shot and killed by police officers. It seems with impunity.
Psycho Warren said:
I'd of shot him in the head multiple times too.
He didnt help himself running from the police. Not a clever thing to do just after a terrorist attack when the police are on hightened alert and have itchy trigger fingers.
That one action of running cost him his life.
In the states people who run from the police then get shot generally get very little sympathy and rightly so. Our country seems to have developed a bit of a pathetic attitude where everything the police do is wrong and must be challenged when in reality we actually have pretty good cops compared to most other civilised countries.
He did not run. He walked, stopped for a free paper, swiped his ticket, walked some more and sat down on a seat. He didnt help himself running from the police. Not a clever thing to do just after a terrorist attack when the police are on hightened alert and have itchy trigger fingers.
That one action of running cost him his life.
In the states people who run from the police then get shot generally get very little sympathy and rightly so. Our country seems to have developed a bit of a pathetic attitude where everything the police do is wrong and must be challenged when in reality we actually have pretty good cops compared to most other civilised countries.
The people observed running were the police, and the false reports of him running, in the media, were never corrected properly.
It's so bad, that the idea he ran, had a bulky coat with wires sticking out etc, has passed into generally accepted 'facts'. It even gets repeated on the internet every now and again.
davidball said:
I do not hate the police. I do hate the way the offenders are being protected by the establishment. From the outset there was misinformation about Menezes leaked to the press, contradictory statements about his behaviour, an inquest that left a nasty smell followed by a trial that was secret in part. Then no prosecutions. Were the officers involved even reprimanded? Were the shooters taken off armed duty?
The death of Menezes is one tragedy in a list of incidents where unarmed men have been shot and killed by police officers. It seems with impunity.
Well, you say that, but you don't come across that way. Quite the reverse in fact.The death of Menezes is one tragedy in a list of incidents where unarmed men have been shot and killed by police officers. It seems with impunity.
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