The threat of anti-terrorism

On Friday morning, a man was shot in a raid on an East London house. By this morning, a reasonable picture of what happened is beginning to form; the Sunday Times story reports:
"Scotland Yard sources said that the “specific intelligence” which had led to the raid suggested that a single bomb overlaid with cyanide was being prepared at the address in Forest Gate...
Scotland Yard said yesterday that despite intensive searches of the terraced house in Lansdown Road, Forest Gate, nothing of substance had been found, raising the suspicion that at least some of the intelligence that led to the raid was inaccurate.
A 23-year-old man, named locally as Abdul Kahar Kalam, was shot in the shoulder when a Scotland Yard marksman fired a single shot during the pre-dawn operation.
According to his solicitor, Kate Roxburgh, police did not issue a warning before he was shot as he stumbled onto the staircase in his pyjamas.
“He wasn’t asked to freeze, given any warning and didn’t know the people in his house were police officers until after he was shot,” she said. “He is lucky still to be alive.”"

The issue is very quickly beginning to transcend "civil liberties;" the right not to be shot by the police seems to be eroding - particularly if you have the misfortune of not being White. It seems unlikely that the killing of Jean-Charles de Menezes can be put down merely to bad intelligence, although the IPCC will not release its report until legal proceedings are complete - the CPS is considering legal charges against Sir Ian Blair, today's Observer reports.

The Sunday Times story appends:
"An official report into the July 7 bombings will say that the response of the emergency services was partly hampered by poor co-ordination, poor radio communication and insufficient resources.
The Greater London Authority inquiry will praise the individual heroism of emergency services workers and injured survivors who struggled to save critically injured victims. But it will say emergency plans were inadequate and response times were slower than acceptable.
The report will also say the emergency services were stretched to the limit by the suicide bombs that killed 56 people, including the four terrorists.
The fire service, in particular, is said to have been hampered by a shortage of engines as the scale of the attacks unfolded. Fire engines were said to have been immobilised when they were accidentally cordoned off as police secured the scenes of the three Tube bombings."

With such pervasive incompetence in administration, do we really want to trust the police to use the shoot-without-warning policy wisely? Incidentally, it looks as though the latest incident was another big mistake if the reports are accurate. The procedures of "Operation Kratos" call for firearms officers to aim at the head, and shoot without warning, specifically to prevent suicide bombers from detonating explosives - this was the operational procedure which led to the killing of De Menezes. Yesterday's Guardian reports:
"Scotland Yard said officers involved in yesterday's raid were operating under regular rules for firearms incidents, rather than the Kratos tactics which allow them to shoot dead suspected suicide bombers without the need to issue a warning...
Official firearms policy says officers should shoot to incapacitate suspects, and aim at the upper body because it provides a large target and offers the best chance of shutting down the central nervous system."
If Abdul Kalam was not suspected of being within reach of whatever explosive devices he was supposed to have had in his home - but rather wandering downstairs in his pyjamas - and if he needed only to be "incapacitated" rather than killed, then why was he not warned before being shot? Again, operational confusion is a possibility, which would fit well with the picture of dire incompetence which has formed around the police's anti-terror measures in the last year.
The government will not consider redrafting legislation on these matters, appealing for 1967 and 1984 pieces of legislation which call for "such force as is reasonable in the circumstances to effect an arrest or to prevent crime" here at cols. 274-275 and here at col. 1760W- an utterly ludicrous position given that the Prime Minister is constantly defending his attempts to undermine civil liberties with his appeal to the extraordinary nature of the threat of terrorism since 2001.

Calls for some oversight, or even some thought about this situation are sure to be rejected with appeals to national security. How far do allow our security to be threatened before we reject this nonsense?