Morning:
8°c
Menezes chief: We could kill another innocent
Rob Singh, Evening Standard7 Oct 2008
Another innocent person could be killed by police in similar circumstances to Jean Charles de Menezes, the officer in charge of the operation which led to his death told an inquest today.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick made the admission during her second day of evidence as she was being cross examined by Michael Mansfield QC, who is representing the de Menezes family.
Ms Dick - then a Commander in the Met Police - said police aim to reduce the risk to the public but admitted it can only be done to a "less than perfect extent" when terrorists are on the run, making a repeat of the events that ended in Mr de Menezes's death possible.
Ms Dick oversaw the operation on 22 July 2005 when police officers attempted to establish whether the Brazilian electrician was an on-the-run suicide bomber the day after the failed 21/7 attacks.
The 27-year-old was mistaken for one of the four suspects, Hussain Osman, and shot in the head seven times at point-blank range by two police marksmen after he got onto a train at Stockwell Tube station.
Asked by Mr Mansfield whether it could happen again, Ms Dick said: "I am afraid I do believe that something like this could happen again.
"The nature of these operations are incredibly high risk to all concerned and that is because of the nature of the threat we face from suicide terrorists and the difficulty there is in dealing with such a threat and the very fast time scale in which these things could happen.
"Our job is to reduce the risk to everybody as best we possibly can all the time. That is what we set out to do but I do fear that in the future a bomber might not be prevented from setting a bomb," she said.
"There would be a huge amount of scrutiny why we did not manage to prevent that, and equally I pray it doesn't happen again, but it is possible an innocent member of the public might die in circumstances like this."
Mr Mansfield said the operation was "spiralling out of control" under her command and he accused her of "sprinting to catch up with something that had not been properly organised that morning." A visibly uncomfortable Ms Dick answered: "I follow it, I do not accept it."
The inquest also heard that Ms Dick told another senior officer at the end of the day that the first hour of the operation had been "appalling".
The policewoman said she was referring to the lack of structure which is common in the early stages of responding to unplanned major incidents.
Mr Mansfield asked her: "Are you telling the British public that the average big operation starts with an appalling structure?"
Ms Dick replied: "You can't get everything in terms of planning right immediately so there is always a period of needing to get the structure right."
She told the inquest she was not surprised to learn that two specialist police marksmen had fired nine or 10 shots at Mr de Menezes's head.
Mr Mansfield asked her how she reacted when the firearms team commander told her this. She answered: "I don't think I had any reaction, sir. He was giving me information. I was not surprised."
Mr de Menezes's mother, Maria Otone de Menezes, who has flown over from Brazil for the inquest, sat with her head bowed as the courtroom was shown a police sketch of the Tube scene where he was shot dead.
Mrs de Menezes, 63, looked on as Ms Dick was questioned over the picture from a log of events, which showed a man lying on the floor.
The inquest at the Oval Cricket Ground continues.
