This news has been all over, so I won’t bother with a link. However, I do want to post my thoughts on the incident.
Armed police used to be the exception here. The common-garden miscreant and the bobby on the beat had an unspoken agreement: I’ll come quietly if you find me, says the burglar; I won’t brutalise or shoot you if you come quietly, says the cop. Truncheons were used only in crowd control or subduing violent drunks.
We will never know why that Brazilian man ran from the police. He was a legal resident here, able to work, and unknown to them previously. He had a heavy coat on in the summertime. However, a lot of the streetpeople I see have all their possessions, including their winter coats, on them all year round. They don’t get shot by the police.
I’ll bet that he didn’t know they were police (they were in plainclothes) and only saw that they were chasing him. Perhaps he thought he was going to be mugged, and tried to escape in the Tube station. In any case, he’s now dead andthere are two enquiries starting here into the circumstances. His relatives in Brazil are likely to sue the Metropolitan Police.
While it’s a difficult question, I think that this incident should make the cops pause when chasing a suspect using deadly force. They should also make an ex gratia payment of a substantial amount to the Brazilian man’s relatives, establishing a precedent of sorts.
The rest of us need to be cautious. Not only do we need to look out for unattended bags, we need to look out for groups of armed plainclothes cops chasing us and ordering us to stop.
I’m still planning to move out there, undeterred. As soon as I get that Italian passport….