[So far this incident is following the familiar trajectory seen stateside in, say, the Amadou Diallo and Bernie Goetz cases. Which reminds me:]
Winner says stop 'playing cricket' with terrorists
By Philippe Naughton, Times Online July 22, 2005
For many people this morning's shooting at Stockwell Tube must have sounded like a scene from a Hollywood movie: a man chased down a subway escalator by armed police, cornered in a train and shot five times at close range.
For Michael Winner, the film director who sent Charles Bronson out to clean up the streets of New York 30 years ago in Death Wish, it was a sign that Britain is finally coming to terms with the challenge of terrorism.
Terrorism experts said that the South London shooting was an unavoidable use of lethal force, the first result of new rules of engagement given to the security forces to deal with the threat of suicide bombers: shoot for the head, not for the body, in case you detonate explosives on the suspect's body. If officers thought the man was carrying explosives, they had no choice.
Mr Winner, chairman of the Police Memorial Trust, went further than that. He told Times Online: "I think the police shooting the terrorist was absolutely right.
"Our whole approach to terrorism is absurd. We need new laws to detain people without trial - we are at war. We are playing cricket and they're playing mass murder. Police powers should be massively increased, as well as police numbers." ...
Mr Winner ... [added]: "The so-called politically correct liberals have on their hands the blood of many of our citizens already. Tragically, the number will vastly increase before anything sensible is done about it."
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1704603,00.html>
Carl