London council tax payers must now pay out over half a million pounds after a jury convicted the Met of health and safety failures in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005.
Based on today’s verdict no-one person is responsible and sackings are unlikely. The only losers are those who, largely through an accident of birth, already face some of the highest levels of council tax in the UK.
The decision to prosecute is illogical, police officers were acting with the sole intention of protecting the public in the wake of suicide bombings in the capital.
It’s regrettable an error was made and that an innocent man had been wrongly identified as a wanted terror suspect but that’s all it was – an error.
In the two years since a lot of effort has gone into attacking the motives and actions of the MPS and individual officers by people who do not have to make split second decisions over whether to pull the trigger.
At the centre of criticisms of the events of the day is a distasteful but obvious dishonesty. Had the police not pulled the trigger and a suicide bomber then been able to carry out his ‘mission’ with the inevitable loss of life that would entail none of those attacking the police would today be applauding the decision not to fire.
