Just Keep Banging Away

The Metropolitan Police Authority reports that Scotland Yard is still unable to give an adequate explanation of the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes three years ago. Despite the continued non-resignation of Sir Ian Blair, despite the promotion of Cressida Dick, and despite a criminal trial resulting in a fine which, thanks to the taxpayer, has left comparatively few firearms officers in fuel poverty this year, the Metropolitan Police remains complacent, overly sensitive to criticism, and disinclined to make a detailed analysis of the events which led to the killing. After all, the officers involved had thirty-six hours to agree on their story and write their accounts, a practice which the Authority says with charming understatement "is open to misinterpretation". The Authority also claims that there is "on the one hand a recognition that undertaking a comprehensive debrief is important and that lessons need to be learnt, and on the other hand a complacent acceptance that, in this case, it has not happened and is unlikely to in the future". Fortunately, a spokesbeing from the Metropolitan Police was on hand to counter this vile slander: "All the officers involved were doing their best to handle the terrible threat facing London on that day: a race against time to find the failed suicide bombers of the day before", which, as usual, serves as both explanation and expiation of the fact that they instantly and utterly shot an innocent man and then sat back and let the press defame him. The usual "range of measures" has also been implemented "to minimise the risk of a similar tragedy repeating itself", as, despite the sterling efforts of our boys in blue, similar tragedies are so inconsiderately prone to do.