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Article Excerpt
Introduction
ON THE MORNING OF JULY 22, 2005, JEAN CHARLES DE MENEZES, A 27-YEAR-OLD Brazilian electrician, was shot and killed by police on a tube station in South London on his way to work. The shooting happened the day after failed suicide bomb attacks on three London tube stations and a bus, and 15 days after the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings on trains and a bus killed 52 and wounded many others. Jean Charles was in no way connected with the bombings or attempted bombings. The fatal shooting was in line with firearms tactics developed to deal with suspected suicide bombers after the September 11 attacks on the United States. Adoption of these tactics demonstrates the extension and consolidation of militarized law enforcement. They continue the established history of differential policing and the criminalization of racialized "others." Moreover, they signal the incorporation and spread of law enforcement tactics considered to be more typical of a colonial context. The shooting of Jean Charles and the philosophy and tactics it reflects stand as exemplars of an intensifying relationship between neocolonialism and the institutionalized racism demonstrated in more "traditional" modes of policing.
That the shooting of Jean Charles was represented as a "regrettable necessity" for which no one is held accountable underlies the low value placed on the lives of "suspect others" sacrificed in the pursuit of "national security." Media comments that Jean Charles was the "57th innocent victim of the London bombings" (Evening Standard, July 25, 2005), and that he was killed "accidentally" (Radio National, June 5, 2006) construct his killing as "collateral damage." The failure to prosecute his death as a crime, announced almost a year after his killing, fits with the pattern of impunity in cases of police shootings and deaths at the hands of the state more generally (Hogan, 1988; Green and Ward, 2004). The relegation of the killing to the status of collateral damage echoes the war's international front, where the death of civilians at the hands of coalition forces led by the United States in Iraq is not even considered worthy of official tally.
This article describes the circumstances of Jean Charles de Menezes' death and the incorporation of police firearms tactics from Northern Ireland and Israel. It explains how these tactics are emblematic of the type of preemptive tactics that have emerged as key strategies in the "war on terror." The article argues that domestic mobilizations of these firearms tactics suggest significant continuities with tactics used in colonial contexts that consolidate and intensify the already established trend toward more military styles of policing in liberal democracies. Firearms tactics for suspected suicide bombers embody religious and racial profiling in ways that tolerate "mistakes" and embrace collective punishment as "deterrents." The military philosophy underpinning domestic firearms tactics in the "war on terror" collapses the idea of suspect identity with guilty acts to legitimate race-based coercion and punishment, including extrajudicial killings.
Shot and Killed on the Way to Work: A Regrettable Necessity?
On the day of the fatal shooting, Jean Charles de Menezes left the flat where he lived with his two cousins, just after 9:30 a.m., walked to a local bus stop, and caught a bus, alighting near the Stockwell tube station just after 10 a.m. The three-story block of nine flats where he lived was under surveillance because a man living in another flat on the block had been linked to the attempted bombings the day before. Jean Charles was followed by a surveillance team when he left the block of flats for work. As he left, he was assessed as fitting the "description and demeanor" of the bomber suspect (Guardian, August 18, 2005). CCTV footage from the station shows him calmly entering it and picking up a free newspaper, and passing through the ticket barrier, before going down an escalator. Witnesses reported that he began running near the bottom of the escalator when he heard a train coming. Apparently unaware that he was being followed, he entered the train; there, members of Scotland Yard's elite firearms Special Operations unit SO19 overcame him. They shot him eight times, seven times in the head and once in the shoulder (Cowan, Campbell, and Dodd, 2005).
Nearly 30 years ago, when advising on Australia's counterterrorist arrangements, the former commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, Sir Robert Mark (1978: 16), wrote that the killing of "terrorists" by armed police "should always be portrayed as a regrettable necessity." After the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting, apparently heeding his predecessor's advice, Metropolitan Police Chief Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, stated publicly that "any death is deeply regrettable, but as I understand it, the man was challenged and refused to obey instructions" (Guardian, August 18, 2005). Within hours of the killing, Blair addressed a press conference at Scotland Yard, where he said Jean Charles was "directly linked" to the antiterrorism investigation (Cowan, Dodd, and Norton-Taylor, 2005). Blair's statement helped to create the impression that Jean Charles was a suicide bomber. That evening and the next day, the newspapers ran headlines that reflected this inaccuracy: "One down and two to go" (The Sun); "Bomber shot dead on the tube" (Standard, cited in Hillyard, 2005). Other misleading or false information put into the public domain included the suggestion that he was wearing a "bulky coat," that he fled from police, refused to obey police instructions, jumped over a ticket barrier, and was shot five times (compared to the actual eight times) (Guardian, August 18, 2005).
An immense public debate took place immediately after the shooting, all on the basis of faulty assumptions (Wistrich and Peirce, 2005). It took 24 hours for police to admit that Jean Charles was not connected in any way to the suicide bombings or to any other antiterrorism operation (Ali, 2005: 59). In the case of fatal shootings by police, initial reports commonly exaggerate the danger posed to police and the public by the deceased (see, for example, McCulloch, 1996). In particular, the implication in...
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