That is the charge against the Metropolitian Police in the trail for their murder of Jean Charles de Menezes two years ago: “failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare of Jean Charles de Menezes”. No individual police officers have been charged, just the Met as a whole. It’s not verys atisfying isn’t it, that the police can gun down an innocent man in the middle of London with the worst that they can expect for it some slap on the wrist for violating health and safety laws!
If you want to follow the trial, the Guardian has a good set of reports available, something they’re reasonably good at. Myself, I’m not sure I will bother, as the usual excuses are trotted out once again for the inexcusable:
“I have, since that time, constantly thought about what other potential tactics or strategy might have been available to me because of the outcome of this tragic set of circumstances,” Mr McDowell told the jury.
“I have done that on a weekly, if not daily, basis. “I remain of the view that I and we did our best that morning to mitigate what was clearly a threat to the public in very difficult circumstances.”
It’s the talk of a “clear threat” that gets me everytime. Because if there’s one thing that is clear, it’s that there wasn’t a threat. Jean Charles de Menezes was just a guy going off to work, not a terrorist, not involved in anything even remotely associated with terrorism and he was shot down in cold blood. If it could happen to him it can happen to anybody, and the policy under which he was shot is still in effect…