Still, thats besides the point. That wasn't the reason that the police conducted the raid in the first place so in terms of whether the raid was justified is neither here nor there. While it may be true that had the raid not taken place the images would never have been found the two incidents are otherwise unconnected, and should be treated as two seperate incidents.
I suppose it depends on what grounds the police and intelligence services deemed him suspicious. If they had tracked him over the internet, then perhaps terrorists use the same shady offsite file stores as paedophiles, hence the police go in expecting to find a terrorist and find a kiddyfiddler instead. The presence of these pictures might also explain why an “innocent” man allegedly put up such a fight and got his brother shot.Just speculation and wild at that – but until the police investigation of the incident is completed there is nothing but speculation and heresay. The police apology was aimed mostly at calming the local community and shouldn't be over-interpreted.
ok, so the reason for the raid was for one thing and they got lucky with something else, good on them!The truth behind it all will evetually come out, why struggle to get the fire arm (if true) if you are totally innocent of something and surely there was something suspicious about that amount of cash in the house!
They are heros that take risks with their lives as a daily part of their job and as Tom has said before it is not reported when sonething goes right
Yes, if the allegations turn out to be true it could certainly help to explain why incident evolved the way they did.And you make an interesting suggestion about possible intelligence triggers being similar. But the claims made by the metropolitan police seemed fairly specific, and I would also hope they lead raids based on more information than Internet logs. (Although that doesn't exclude such logs backing up faulty sources from elsewhere)
They got lucky this time yes, but that won't always be the case. (And indeed hasn't always been the case)As Sanescientist suggested above it might be that several actions associated with any child pornography use (And possibly the sums of money) were picked up and flagged up as possible associations with terrorism. It is possible that this information backed up the 'faulty' sources and provided enough evidence to authorise the raid. If this is the case then it would possibly increase the frequency of 'getting lucky,' but so far this is only conjuncture.
However, the police intelligence that lead to the raids was faulty. The fact that they 'got lucky' is irrelevant. I'm not saying we should knock the police, but I am saying that we should question the protocols that lead to this situation occurring so as to try and reduce the rate of such incidents.
I can't believe people here are still knocking the police over this. What this story proves is that the media jumped on the “poor innocent victims of the police raid” story, without knowing all the facts. We still don't know all the facts and this little insight shows just how much more the police could know but cannot say just yet. Yet still people are standing up and condeming their actions.I can still remember the “victims” tearful appearance on national t.v. … and some of you still feel sorry for these guys ?… hmmm I wonder if they have been nominated for an oscar yet.
But the “rate of such incidents” is amazingly low.For every Forest Gate or Jean-Charles Menezes, there are hundreds if not thousands of police raids and operations involving the same intelligence systems and firearms officers that go off without a hitch. No shots fired, person guilty of exactly what they were supposed to be guilty of, legal system chugs away.
But that doesn't saturate the media.
Yes, the one or two situations have occurred and that is regrettable, and it gets investigated. But to demand absolute perfection and infallability of a force that comes down to humans doing their best to protect others is unreasonable. Nothing is perfect, we can only make sure it's as good as it can be.
If this news is true (and frankly I find it difficult to take anything in this case at face value) then how, if the police and security services were monitoring these people, could they confuse the downloading of child pornography with terrorist activity?It reinforces the complaint that they maybe had some information, didnt investigate it competently or thoroughly, jumped to conclusions and as a result someone got shot.
It just makes the police or security services look even more unaware of what was really going on.
They went in looking for an *explosive belt* that they had been 'reliably' informed was in the house. If, purely by co-incidence, they find evidence of any unrelated crime, they may not even be able to bring charges as the original raid may have been illegal. I don't think knocking the police helps, but I don't think some copper-blogger claiming 'look, we found something else, surely that justifies us!' is much to be happy about.
The integrity of the victim of the shooting is an issue if you are really trying to decide which story to believe about the circumstances of the gun going off.We badly need people who will look at things with open minds — and that includes being open to the idea that the police sometimes tell the truth.
Its not been that long since this entry http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/10/2096547.htmlWe need to keep an open mind on this matter at the moment it is a rumour repeated in a slightly dubious newspaper. Which has been reported in good faith by Inspector Gadget. At no point does he explicitly confirm or deny the contents. He also reports a rumour related to the case. One that makes more sense than what the brothers state happened. However we have the word of an 'CPS source' against that of the suspects. Personally I don't trust either of those and will be waiting to see if anything official comes out of it
I was initially suspicious as well especially when the BBC, Google News, The Indie, and the Grauniad failed to turn up the story. Howevet the Telegraph suggests that they confirmed it with the metropolitan police, which makes me slightly more inclined to trust the story.The telegraphy story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/31/nraid31.xml
hmmm, let me see how is – loading a bullet into the chamber, taking off the safety catch,and then discharging the weapon an accident? – to me, that's 3 deliberate actions
That's just plain silly.As per standard procedure they entered the house with a loaded weapon, with the safety off. It then went off by accident. That's one action.
What do you expect them to do – enter the house with an empty gun then fumble around for bullets should they come up against an armed assailant?
ok – for starters you “don't fumble for bullets” that's what the magazine is for, but you're missing the point, Guns do not go off accidentally – don't put one up the spout, take the safety off or pull the trigger, and the bloody thing won't go off, so therefore the officer took deliberate actions to override the 3 safety features of a weapon, you talk to anybody in the military – there is no such thing as an accidental discharge
i very much doubt it, but i'll keep your recommendation in mind :pi doubt if forensic could prove if it went of as you put it accidentally, i'm not going to argue the point, its a bit of a waste of typing – but interestingly forensics weren't able to prove that as was put about that the brother casued the discharge by interfereing with the weapon- as you're a CSI fan you'll realise he would have left something behind if he grabbed the weapon “alledgedly”
ok, so for example the careless driver who approaches traffic lights a little bit too fast, didn't think the car in front would stop so quickly, instinctively looked as the mobile bleeps for a text message, and is a little too tired to brake in time to avoid hitting the car in front DELIBERATELY causes a road traffic collision?OK so maybe the series of actions were each deliberate, but the outcome (dead innocent person) wasn't.
Still, thats besides the point. That wasn't the reason that the police conducted the raid in the first place so in terms of whether the raid was justified is neither here nor there. While it may be true that had the raid not taken place the images would never have been found the two incidents are otherwise unconnected, and should be treated as two seperate incidents.
I suppose it depends on what grounds the police and intelligence services deemed him suspicious. If they had tracked him over the internet, then perhaps terrorists use the same shady offsite file stores as paedophiles, hence the police go in expecting to find a terrorist and find a kiddyfiddler instead. The presence of these pictures might also explain why an “innocent” man allegedly put up such a fight and got his brother shot.Just speculation and wild at that – but until the police investigation of the incident is completed there is nothing but speculation and heresay. The police apology was aimed mostly at calming the local community and shouldn't be over-interpreted.
ok, so the reason for the raid was for one thing and they got lucky with something else, good on them!The truth behind it all will evetually come out, why struggle to get the fire arm (if true) if you are totally innocent of something and surely there was something suspicious about that amount of cash in the house!
They are heros that take risks with their lives as a daily part of their job and as Tom has said before it is not reported when sonething goes right
We should appreciate them not knock them
Yes, if the allegations turn out to be true it could certainly help to explain why incident evolved the way they did.And you make an interesting suggestion about possible intelligence triggers being similar. But the claims made by the metropolitan police seemed fairly specific, and I would also hope they lead raids based on more information than Internet logs. (Although that doesn't exclude such logs backing up faulty sources from elsewhere)
They got lucky this time yes, but that won't always be the case. (And indeed hasn't always been the case)As Sanescientist suggested above it might be that several actions associated with any child pornography use (And possibly the sums of money) were picked up and flagged up as possible associations with terrorism. It is possible that this information backed up the 'faulty' sources and provided enough evidence to authorise the raid. If this is the case then it would possibly increase the frequency of 'getting lucky,' but so far this is only conjuncture.
However, the police intelligence that lead to the raids was faulty. The fact that they 'got lucky' is irrelevant. I'm not saying we should knock the police, but I am saying that we should question the protocols that lead to this situation occurring so as to try and reduce the rate of such incidents.
I can't believe people here are still knocking the police over this. What this story proves is that the media jumped on the “poor innocent victims of the police raid” story, without knowing all the facts. We still don't know all the facts and this little insight shows just how much more the police could know but cannot say just yet. Yet still people are standing up and condeming their actions.I can still remember the “victims” tearful appearance on national t.v. … and some of you still feel sorry for these guys ?… hmmm I wonder if they have been nominated for an oscar yet.
But the “rate of such incidents” is amazingly low.For every Forest Gate or Jean-Charles Menezes, there are hundreds if not thousands of police raids and operations involving the same intelligence systems and firearms officers that go off without a hitch. No shots fired, person guilty of exactly what they were supposed to be guilty of, legal system chugs away.
But that doesn't saturate the media.
Yes, the one or two situations have occurred and that is regrettable, and it gets investigated. But to demand absolute perfection and infallability of a force that comes down to humans doing their best to protect others is unreasonable. Nothing is perfect, we can only make sure it's as good as it can be.
If this news is true (and frankly I find it difficult to take anything in this case at face value) then how, if the police and security services were monitoring these people, could they confuse the downloading of child pornography with terrorist activity?It reinforces the complaint that they maybe had some information, didnt investigate it competently or thoroughly, jumped to conclusions and as a result someone got shot.
It just makes the police or security services look even more unaware of what was really going on.
They went in looking for an *explosive belt* that they had been 'reliably' informed was in the house. If, purely by co-incidence, they find evidence of any unrelated crime, they may not even be able to bring charges as the original raid may have been illegal. I don't think knocking the police helps, but I don't think some copper-blogger claiming 'look, we found something else, surely that justifies us!' is much to be happy about.
The integrity of the victim of the shooting is an issue if you are really trying to decide which story to believe about the circumstances of the gun going off.We badly need people who will look at things with open minds — and that includes being open to the idea that the police sometimes tell the truth.
Its not been that long since this entry http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/10/2096547.htmlWe need to keep an open mind on this matter at the moment it is a rumour repeated in a slightly dubious newspaper. Which has been reported in good faith by Inspector Gadget. At no point does he explicitly confirm or deny the contents. He also reports a rumour related to the case. One that makes more sense than what the brothers state happened. However we have the word of an 'CPS source' against that of the suspects. Personally I don't trust either of those and will be waiting to see if anything official comes out of it
I was initially suspicious as well especially when the BBC, Google News, The Indie, and the Grauniad failed to turn up the story. Howevet the Telegraph suggests that they confirmed it with the metropolitan police, which makes me slightly more inclined to trust the story.The telegraphy story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/31/nraid31.xml
hmmm, let me see how is – loading a bullet into the chamber, taking off the safety catch,and then discharging the weapon an accident? – to me, that's 3 deliberate actions
That's just plain silly.As per standard procedure they entered the house with a loaded weapon, with the safety off. It then went off by accident. That's one action.
What do you expect them to do – enter the house with an empty gun then fumble around for bullets should they come up against an armed assailant?
Here Here,Well said
ok – for starters you “don't fumble for bullets” that's what the magazine is for, but you're missing the point, Guns do not go off accidentally – don't put one up the spout, take the safety off or pull the trigger, and the bloody thing won't go off, so therefore the officer took deliberate actions to override the 3 safety features of a weapon, you talk to anybody in the military – there is no such thing as an accidental discharge
oh well gosh you know more than the forensic experts that proved it went off accidently .. guess u will be starring in the next series of csi then
i very much doubt it, but i'll keep your recommendation in mind :pi doubt if forensic could prove if it went of as you put it accidentally, i'm not going to argue the point, its a bit of a waste of typing – but interestingly forensics weren't able to prove that as was put about that the brother casued the discharge by interfereing with the weapon- as you're a CSI fan you'll realise he would have left something behind if he grabbed the weapon “alledgedly”
ok, so for example the careless driver who approaches traffic lights a little bit too fast, didn't think the car in front would stop so quickly, instinctively looked as the mobile bleeps for a text message, and is a little too tired to brake in time to avoid hitting the car in front DELIBERATELY causes a road traffic collision?OK so maybe the series of actions were each deliberate, but the outcome (dead innocent person) wasn't.