Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair spoke on the BBC's Question Time special, condemning the "risk" West Midlands Police had taken in using Tasers in their apprehension of wannabe Suicide Bomber Yasin Hassan Omar last Wednesday.
"If there is a bomb on that body, then the bomb is going to go off...It may have been that they [officers in Birmingham] were clear there wasn't a bomb. I don't know what the situation was. There is only one way to stop someone who is a suicide bomber which is to kill that person."
The next day, West Midlands Police issued a statement defending themselves:
"Every situation in which firearms are deployed is unique. The shooting of Mr De Menezes in London and the arrest of Yasin Hassan Omar in Birmingham may appear similar but they were separate incidents. The information and intelligence would have been different, the threat levels to officers and the public was different."
So, what does this all mean? It means of course that the Met wanted the collar and there's a certain amount of sour grapes down at Scotland Yard that the yokels up in Brum managed to get to one of the Bombers first.
No matter that the information Mr Fucktard Omar gave led to the arrest of the other bombers. No matter that it was just after dawn, all reports suggest that a backpack was thrown out of a window before Omar was Tasered, that obviously the West Midlands Police are actually a professional body and don't need the Met Commissioner telling them what to do without being in full possession of the facts. In short, I bet most of West Mids Polce were telling Sir Ian to fuck off by lunchtime last Thursday.
Did you also notice all the crowing that was done when the other three were actually arrested? Did you notice the pride in the announcements that this was the largest armed operation that the Met has ever conducted?
Because of course only London is allowed to deal with Terrorists and everyone else should just butt out, obviously.
Wouldn't have happened thirty years ago, when the Police was run by the Masons. Would have been a pat on the back and a promotion back then. Sometimes I wonder what benefit the purges of the 70's have actually had.
* * * UPDATED because I found some links! * * *
