Police dealing with incident on London Bridge amid reports of shots fired

Man of Honour
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To be honest, I suspect the police officer could be in trouble here, the public have subdued the guy and then the police have dragged them off and double tapped him.

I can't see him being anything but cleared.

Couldn't taze him - Was wearing a bomb vest to the best of their knowledge. You really don't want to be pulsing high voltage electricity into what could be unstable homemade explosives.
By the looks of it, he was on the ground surrounded by officers. They'll be wanting him to stay there. He tried to get up... Wrong move.

There will be an investigation, some newspapers will praise the officer, others will say he's the spawn of satan who once got drunk at a christmas party and mooned a young woman and is all that is wrong with the world.
 
Soldato
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Fake vest, that he didn't detonate (obviously) even when he was basically piled on by a group of 12+ members of public. It should be enough for a police officer to suspect that it's a fake, especially when he now proceeds to clear the site and ultimately dragging a couple of guys off him, all the while he still doesn't detonate the vest before shooting him

Seriously?
 
Soldato
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Fake vest, that he didn't detonate (obviously) even when he was basically piled on by a group of 12+ members of public. It should be enough for a police officer to suspect that it's a fake, especially when he now proceeds to clear the site and ultimately dragging a couple of guys off him, all the while he still doesn't detonate the vest before shooting him


Because they saw the vest(not knowing it was a dud) and stopping him\it from detonating it. Yes there was a witness that saw the vest.
 
Caporegime
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I can't see him being anything but cleared.

Couldn't taze him - Was wearing a bomb vest to the best of their knowledge. You really don't want to be pulsing high voltage electricity into what could be unstable homemade explosives.
By the looks of it, he was on the ground surrounded by officers. They'll be wanting him to stay there. He tried to get up... Wrong move.

There will be an investigation, some newspapers will praise the officer, others will say he's the spawn of satan who once got drunk at a christmas party and mooned a young woman and is all that is wrong with the world.

No paper is going to say he's the spawn of Satan for a split-second decision, this isn't de Menezes. Though a brief investigation would still be wise.
 
Caporegime
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The police are on the scene for at least 40s before they shoot him.

And it's safe to assume it's fake after 40 seconds? You've got a dead body, and a bad guy being restrained by numerous people. He is wearing what appears to be a suicide vest and you've pulled everyone off him who has was restraining him. It's then a split second decision.

I can't see any sense in assuming it's fake. If you're wrong you're dead, your colleagues are dead, all the members of the public that have just restrained him are dead. Sensible decision was made.
 
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Soldato
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Fake vest, that he didn't detonate (obviously) even when he was basically piled on by a group of 12+ members of public. It should be enough for a police officer to suspect that it's a fake, especially when he now proceeds to clear the site and ultimately dragging a couple of guys off him, all the while he still doesn't detonate the vest before shooting him

So, what if he has another knife? People have no idea how fast things go from zero to 100, people can pull a concealed weapon and attack people within seconds, its split second decision making.
 
Caporegime
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I can only speculate but the cop may have been thinking that there was still a chance the suspect could detonate in the belief that the vest was real.

Awful call to make but without question the right one.

For sure... I mean just because he's wearing a vest doesn't mean he had the switch/detonator in his hand etc... he was holding a knife before, then he's still on the floor after being pinned down... police arrived on the scene and get people to get back then get the last guy off him and they shoot him pretty soon after that.

They don't know that he's not about to reach for the switch/whatever and detonate the thing.
 
Caporegime
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I'd like to see how realistic the vest looks, if it had any electrical wires hanging out then I wouldn't blame anyone for believing it was real.
 
Associate
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I feel bad for the police, with some people they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If he'd blown himself up and they hadn't shot him it would have been "why didn't they shoot???" and now they've decided to take the shot for fear of him blowing himself up and everyone around him they're also somehow in the wrong. In a highly charged situation like that they're just going with their gut and their training and I think they 100% made the right call. Sure if they had half an hour to sit down and think about it and have all the facts in hand they might have changed their minds but that isn't possible during a crisis.

Also if I had several policemen aiming guns at me telling me to stay on the ground I wouldn't move an inch. Everything that happened to this murderer was his own fault.
 
Caporegime
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I feel bad for the police, with some people they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If he'd blown himself up and they hadn't shot him it would have been "why didn't they shoot???" and now they've decided to take the shot for fear of him blowing himself up and everyone around him they're also somehow in the wrong. In a highly charged situation like that they're just going with their gut and their training and I think they 100% made the right call. Sure if they had half an hour to sit down and think about it and have all the facts in hand they might have changed their minds but that isn't possible during a crisis.

Also if I had several policemen aiming guns at me telling me to stay on the ground I wouldn't move an inch. Everything that happened to this murderer was his own fault.

It's not about being in the wrong, it's about making sure it was the right decision and was consistent. Which it seemingly was going by the information. It may be annoying to some, but we cant be complacent as a society and caution should be welcomed so that the police continue to strive for the best option, even if it's the last one available. (rather than the first... like in the US on occasion)
 
Associate
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The fact that people are questioning whether the officer was correct in shooting the guy is quite frankly astonishing. You really have no clue do you. I'm surprised they didn't put a few more bullets in his head after the initial 2 because you can still see him breathing.


I saw a video of emergency service performing pretty frantic cpr on a person, its removed now but the person looked in a terrible way. It's awful.
 
Soldato
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Frankly, if someone wants to run around going stabby stabby to random civilians, then shoot them in the head, twice.
Society has no place for those crazed enough to carry out such random attacks, nor do we have the public health resources to deal with the mental crisis involved in those who do it through illness.
Our NHS is utterly underfunded, and incapable of dealing with madness on this levels.
Shoot twice through the head, quick investigation, clear the officer. Move along.

I don't care who he is, where he is from, what his motivations are, i don't want him in my society, and if a firearms trained officer is happy to shoot him, good.
They're well enough trained, stabby stabby can **** right off and stop wasting my taxpounds.
 
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