Quote:
The armed officer, codenamed C12, told an inquest into the killing that he did not feel he had any option but to kill the Brazilian, who he believed was about to detonate a bomb.
"I didn't believe I had any alternative and if I didn't act then members of the public would be killed, my colleagues would be killed and I would be killed," he said.
"I have a duty to protect the public."
This is taken from a statement made at an iquest by the armed officer who shot Jean Charles De Menezes.
This is also what I've been saying for weeks. If Mr De Menezes had been a suicide bomber then many more innocent people would have been killed. If he had been allowed to board that train then the team would have lost him and we would have been left with a high possiblity of another 7/7.
If he had been a suicide bomber and the police had lost him and he had detonated explosives on the train then, assuming the team survived, the public would have tracked them down, hung drawn and quartered them and paraded their dismembered bodies through the streets of London. He did what he was trained to do in the situation he was in. He sacrificed one life to save many. The team did not know whether or not he was the innocent he turned out to be. They did they best they could given the situation they were in, with the little information they had.
It's time we stopped crucifying them in the press and instead thought of ways that the response could be improved.
sky news
bbc news 
Oct 24, 2008 @ 15:33:13
