Sovereign society, A Letter, Bob Bauman

Date:   8/18/2005 11:39:40 AM ( 19 y ago)

COMMENT: British Police Testilying?

Dear A-Letter Reader:
"Shoot to Kill" was the title of my Comment in this space (July 26) that
concerned the death (by eight police bullets) of an unarmed,
27-year-old, dark-skinned man in a London subway who was judged by the
policeman who killed him to be a possible terrorist suicide bomber.

It was widely reported at the time that the officer had good cause to
believe the "fleeing" suspect might detonate a bomb and take the lives
of others, just as London bombers killed nearly 60 people in days prior
to this police shooting.

I was deluged with e-mails attacking my protest of what I theorized
might be a new trend in anti-terrorism -- death on the spot, as police
act as instant accuser, investigator, judge, jury and executioner - all
in one split-second; a sort of streamlined anti-terror system of
'justice'.

Most of my e-mail correspondents took me to task because they relied on
the police version of what happened and believed that justified the
killing;

1) that the man wore a bulky winter coat that might have concealed
explosives;

2) that he ran from the police after being told to stop;

3) that he jumped a turnstile and ran into a train car.

The only trouble is that none of the above ever happened. He wore a
thin denim jacket, he did not run nor did he jump a turnstile. A NY
Times dispatch from London yesterday reports that an investigation by
the London police concluded that the above statements were unsupported
by facts. In other words, someone in the UK police force lied to cover
up their brutal mistake. (Police lying is nothing new. In New York City
it was an established NYPD tactic, used to hide similar blunders, and
it even had an NYPD in-house name - "testilying" - as compared to
truthful testifying. Hundreds of similar cases of police lying under
oath are a matter of record all across America).

Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian living in the UK, is dead. Perhaps
one can justify what the London policeman did as an understandable
mistake in the turmoil after the horrific subway bombings. On the other
hand, UK police "shoot to kill" rules may have given him what he felt
was license to act in a novel way police usually don't act.

But at the risk of riling vigilantes among readers as I did last time, I
remind you that due process of law requires notice before deprivation
of life, liberty, or property, an opportunity to be heard and defend
one's self. All these rights are guaranteed explicitly by the US
Constitution and implied in British common law.

Think about it good readers; what this trigger happy policeman did is
being replicated in less dramatic ways in the US and the UK in millions
of anti-terrorist, anti-drug, anti-money laundering, anti-tax avoidance
actions by police and government agents at every level, every day.

Perhaps this politically sanctioned lawlessness hasn't touched you yet,
but the odds that it will are increasing every hour of every day.

It was the late Walt Kelley's Pogo, of comic strip fame, who nailed it:
"We have met the enemy -- and it is us."

That's the way it looks from here.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor



 

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