London Banter - View Single Post

Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604 · July 25th 05, 12:43 AM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

(Neil Williams) writes:

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 11:19:29 +0100, James Farrar
wrote:

If in doubt, when you get to the tube station, seek help from the
uniforms there.

And they'd be able to do precisely what?

I'm beginning to form the opinion that the problem here was that the
officers were not uniformed. I'd be supportive of a directive that
all armed police officers must be uniformed in future in this kind of
situation.

My thoughts exactly- If the dead man's perception was that the police
in England are unarmed, then it follows that his armed pursuers were
not police, in spite of what they said. And asking for help from a
uniformed, but umarmed, policeman was not likely to gain him any
safety, but just a policemen shot, too.

It works the other way, too. Locally we had an armed undercover
policeman killed by uniformed officers when they didn't believe what
he said.

I think his pursuers panicked when he went into the tube station.
A sad case.

Training and accountability is the only thing that will prevent this
in the future.