England's Israeli suicide zombie policy

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Anyone else have Living Dead flashbacks reading this in the NYTimes (or wherever it originated)?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/international/europe/25london.html?

---Instead, for the first time, police used special aim-for-the head tactics under a plan adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The plan is described on the official London police Web site as a four-stage "coordinated response to suicide attacks."

The police declined to discuss the guidelines used, but they are based partly on those used by Israel in stopping bombing suspects.

Lord Stevens, Sir Ian's predecessor as the London police commissioner, wrote in an opinion piece in Sunday's News of the World that he had sent teams for training to Israel and other countries hit by suicide bombers. There, he said, he had learned that, "There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfill his mission: destroy his brain instantly, utterly."

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Monday, 25 July 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)

why not just play coldplay to his head?

― ken c (ken c), Monday, 25 July 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)

News of the World, another paper of record.

― N_RQ, Monday, 25 July 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)

And it works on non-suicide bombers too!

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Monday, 25 July 2005 15:23 (twenty years ago)

I blogged on Saturday on the theme of Israelization.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 25 July 2005 16:04 (twenty years ago)

Taking responses to problems from Israel = great fucking idea

― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Monday, 25 July 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

Isn't aim-for-the-head also dangerous because it's easier to miss and critically wound an innocent bystander?

― geyser muffler and a quarter (Dave225), Monday, 25 July 2005 16:42 (twenty years ago)

Not if your victim is being held down on the floor.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Monday, 25 July 2005 16:55 (twenty years ago)

If the police shoot for the body, they risk detonating the (suspected) bomb and killing a swathe of innocent bystanders. If they wound a suicide bomber he can still detonate his bomb. The head-shot policy is unpleasant to think about but I can't come up with any real argument against it.

― dasein, Monday, 25 July 2005 22:05 (twenty years ago)

i have no issue with the policy if it's definitely a suicide bomber and not, say, an electrician.

― gear (gear), Monday, 25 July 2005 22:11 (twenty years ago)

Don't you guys mean homicide bomber?

― Tumililingan (ex machina), Monday, 25 July 2005 22:24 (twenty years ago)

I thought that this was Israel's suicide policy. Says nothing about shooting in the head.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 25 July 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

Wow, blaming Israel for idiotic British cops and a failure of British police policy = great idea!

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 25 July 2005 23:22 (twenty years ago)

BTW, there have been plenty of news stories about actual bomb-belted Palestinian suicide bombers stopped, alive, by the Israeli army, so I doubt the headshot thing is really their policy.

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 25 July 2005 23:23 (twenty years ago)

I've come to the conclusion that I've been hearing a lot of supposed experts talk an awful lot of shit over the last couple of weeks.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 25 July 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

Speaking of ducking responsibility

"Had the circumstances been different and had this turned out to be a terrorist, and they had failed to take that action, they would have been criticized the other way." (T.B.)

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 25 July 2005 23:28 (twenty years ago)

Jumping well off from this topic: is it maybe time to give some serious thought to the proper uses of plain-clothes policemen? It seems that the vast majority of "accidental" police shootings and beatings and probably arrests, too -- the vast majority seem to come down to an individual fleeing from a group of armed men he may or may not properly understand to be police. New York, London, Paris, Munich: is it any wonder that the victims of accidents like these are disproportionally immigrants? I.e., people who may not have the local frame of reference to easily distinguish police from thugs, are even less likely than natives to recognize police challenges when scared shitless of a gun-wielding bumrush, and may well come from places where it's not unlikely for a gun-wielding bumrush to be executed by, you know, non-police? (In a New Yorker got rushed by armed men in Guinea or Burkina Faso, or a Briton got rushed by armed men in Brazil -- what would the equivalent reaction be?)

There are plenty of times when plain-clothes policemen are necessary and better suited for a job -- but isn't there something that can be done to solve for this? I haven't read up on the London story, but if police were ahead of the game enough to track their electrician out of a suspect residence, would it have helped for them to bring out at least one uniformed man for the approach?

― nabiscothingy, Monday, 25 July 2005 23:41 (twenty years ago)

Interesting point. The one jury I served on regarded a case of 3 large, intimidating-looking plain-clothes cops and one small Chinese (non-English man). Luckily, as his crime was peeing within the subway, a shoot to kill policy was not enacted. Also, judging by their testimonies, these cops were not particularly blessed in the IQ department.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 00:23 (twenty years ago)

I meant, non English-speaking, not non English, though that too, obv.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 00:24 (twenty years ago)

http://www.skynewsgreenroom.co.uk/common/uploads/imageLibrary/Shaun-of-the-Dead_L.jpg

"Remove the head or destroy the brain"

― kingfish (Kingfish), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 00:39 (twenty years ago)

in the states, plain-clothes cops still have an id badge displayed on their person, usually.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 01:19 (twenty years ago)

Like prominent enough to easily pick out? I mean, I'm thinking of cases like Amadou Diallou and the guy in the Chelsea warehouse -- wasn't the conclusion in both cases that the men honestly thought they were being attacked or mugged or whatever else? (Funnily enough this was dude from Broken Social Scene's excuse: "I thought it was some kind of shakedown where they take you someplace and make you give up your bank card number.")

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)

not to conjure really gross visions of people in great pain or anything but why couldn't police just shoot elephant tranquilizers into people's faces? Sure, their faces'd get all fucked up, but nobody who gets hit with an elephant trank is gonna have the energy to pull a ripcord even one second after it hits; the force of the blow knocks 'em down (nb they'll fall if shot in the head with regular ol' bullets, so the question of impact on the explosives is moot), and fucking up somebody's face, while unpalatable, must certainly be thought of as more humane than killing them

unless it's like some supermodel suicide bomber or something, that'd be totally tragic to shoot that guy in the face with a gigantic dart

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 01:35 (twenty years ago)

You don't know shit about elephant tranqs.

― Tumililingan (ex machina), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 02:10 (twenty years ago)

http://www.childrensyoga.com/images/tryyoga/elephant.gif

"You don't know shit about elephant tranqs."

-Scolding Elephant (scoldingelephant@hotmail.com), July 26th 2005

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 02:12 (twenty years ago)

This is good:

http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/57867

It should not be written that he "failed" to obey police as failure may be construed as meaning that there was some other possible reason for his not stoping than presumed guilt. Avoid passive associations by describing his actions only with action words commonly associated with guilt such as "refused" or "resisted".

Bury the information that the real bombers are still on the loose by mentioning some vague arrests but do not give details as those arrested in the early days of such crises invariably turn out to be innocent.

Assert that the way in which the suspect "dived or fell to ground" was cause for suspicion in itself. Never connect this to the simultaneous shouting by armed police for every one to "get down" as this may contradict prior assertions that he refused to obey the police.

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 02:47 (twenty years ago)

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