Reply #27: OK, I'll bite..........

[Pert_UK]

A HELL of a lot of people on here (often with little knowledge of the UK police and restricted access to decent news coverage of the events) immediately leapt to the conclusion that the police were lying about everything.

Moreover, a number of people started making accusations about a completely "racist / fascist police force/UK government" and officers just DESPERATE to put some bullets in a brown person.

Some DUers (amongst them some UK DUers) suggested that maybe we should wait for more evidence before we leapt to conclusions and labelled an entire country and/or its police force as fascist. We also questioned whether it is right to automatically assume that people in authority are always lying about everything.

IF, as you claim, the police have been lying in this instance, I still don't agree that it was justified to pre-judge them as per the comments on here. In addition, IF there have been serious breaches of procedure then the massive investigation into the shooting ought to establish them and punish those responsible.

Some of the attitudes and comments displayed had the sickening feel of a lynch mob, with many people unable to even imagine that just MAYBE the cops had been left with no choice in this matter. I was hoping against hope that maybe people would wait for more information before forming such strong judgements.

I would have nothing but condemnation for any police officer who has abused his role and position and ended up killing an wholly innocent man, but the entire British police force was being painted as a bunch of blood-thirsty, racist killers. No matter what the result in this particular tragic event, I still refuse to accept the wholesale criticism of the British police force. For example, consider how many armed police have encountered backpack-wearing tourists since the 7th July bombings, and on only one occasion firearms have been used...One innocent life lost is one life too many, but you can hardly assert that there is a killing spree going on.

To conclude, as far as I know we STILL don't have an independent report on what happened at the tube station - we have the comments of the victim's relatives. We should add these to the evidence before us. I'm happy to have my opinions changed by evidence. This seems to be more than a lot of people around here, who prefer to decide on their opinion up-front and then stick with it in the face of conflicting opinion and facts.