Sunday, July 24, 2005

5 shots to the Dome (Dead Wrong)

Man I can’t believe it. The London 5-0 shot the wrong man. This is what happens when you adopt a shoot first ask questions later policy. An innocent man gunned down by trigger happy cops. When I first read the news on Friday night, I was a bit suss on the whole thing, since the only facts the police had were that he emerged from a house under surveillance, he had a thick coat on and ran when the police told him to stop. I know its summer in London, but is it a crime to wear a coat? I know its wrong to run from the po-po but is that worth killing someone? Maybe he had committed a minor crime, had a parking fine, was an illegal immigrant, or had a fear of police. These all reasons to run but not reasons to be shot. I guess it is easy to look in hindsight but do we now need to live in fear of terrorists and the police??

We do live in a time of heightened fear. Front page news is all about the bombings these days. Another 75 people were killed in Egypt. But do we need to live in this police state? There must be an appropriate balance between the rights we give up to live as citizens of a safe society balanced by the enforcement of those rights by the police. But this has gone too far. When an innocent man pays the price for living in country of fear. Operation Krakos? More like Operation “shoot any man that runs”.

Peace.

1 love.

3 comments:

nayfon said...

summer in London is sub 20 degrees so the jacket is excusable. The thing is why did he run? I'm sure the police would've been yelling at him to stop.

Anonymous said...

He shouldnt have run, but when heavily armed and armoured cops in black start yelling and pointing guns at you, sometimes you might just run out of instictual fear rather than take the safe, logical, common sense approach of "I've done nothing wrong, so I have nothing to fear".
Its a shame all around.
This bull about random bag searches on public transport is such a load of shit. If someone is intent on blowing ppl up on public transport, they're not gonna be put off by the chance that their bag will get searched. If someone tries to search them, they can just blow up everyone in the vicinity.
Whereas, the vast majority who have nothing illegal in their bags will be further delayed by this pointless exercise. Please don't let it happen.

starbury3 said...

Yo Check this! I bought the paper that day, and on the FRONT PAGE was a picture of a plain clothes po-po holding a MP5 fully automatic machine gun. The 5-0 were not uniformed, they were undercover.
The guy was brazilian, prolly didn't understand the cockney british accents, and just saw some mofo chasing him down with a dayum machine gun!!! Hell I woulda run if i didn't understand the guy. Man if I see some guy packing heat like that, I don't care what he says or what kind of badge he flashes, I'm getting the fuck out!!
Dang, 5 times in the head? No open casket funeral now....