Can the Police win these days?

[Scotman84]

Acting on intelligence, they search a house (albeit shooting a poor innocent guy in the process). If they don't find anything they will be pilloried by the public and local councils for being racist and OTT. If, howwever, they DO find something, they will want to know where the info came from. If they don't find it, and it is detonated somewhere' possibly because it was moved before they could act - they will be blamed again !! They can't win !!

[Dolly1308]

nO BUT i HOPE THEY KEEP TRYing to get rid of the scum .

[undercovers]

of course they can win - all they have to do is not shoot innocent people, pretty simple really i should think.

[jedda]

no they can't win, whatever they do or however they tackle a situation, it needs people like some of us who have had enough of it to shout louder than the do-gooders.

[vehelpfulguy]

We do not know if they are innocent yet.

[Peter Pedant]

erm I am sorry - we DO know if they are innocent....they have not been convicted of any crime, and so are innocent until proven guilty.

These are basic rights for all of us and should not be given up because we are afraid of terrorism

The lesson of theBirmingham bombers -people who did NOT bomb Bham spent twenty years in prison - should not be forgotten - for the simple reason that we will just spend time relearning it. Oh and the Guildford SIx, I think an eleven and a thirteen year old spend five or ten years in prison totally innocent and needlessly.

[sp1814]

Another excellent response from Undercovers...and no, I'm not being sarcastic.

Can the police ever win? Yes...but let's give them room to finalise the investigations into this particular case before we start paying the bus conductor on the bandwagon that Dolly seems to be driving.

[sp1814]

By the way, when you say that you want them to "keep trying to get rid of the scum", do you mean all those who are found guilty and convicted of terrorist atrocities, or simply anyone who they flag up through surveillance?

Does this include Brazilian electricians?

Should we just widen the net to everyone who isn't white, lives in Hertforshire and wears Laura Ashley?

Basically, the only people who are safe under your proposed regime are Margaret Thatcher, Judi Dench and that woman off Keeping Up Appearances.

[jno]

lol sp1814, but actually they seem to have slipped something into Margaret Thatcher's coffee too.

[brachiopod]

Well, Dolly1308, let me have your name and address and I'll plant a bit of "intelligence", so that when your house gets raided in the early hours of the morning and you get shot, I can say that it's worth it just to 'get rid of the scum'.

Likewise, jedda, if you got shot in a police raid, I won't raise a voice in protest, or to support you, nomatterwhat the facts, just in case I am labelled as a do-gooder.

As someone who lives in East London, (not very far from Lansdown Road at all), talk of 'scum' and 'do-gooders' does not help.

Let's wait (and wait?) to see if they find anything first. After four days , I don't think they'll find anything myself.... apart from a deadly toxin and an explosive substance, which I'm sure 95% of us have got in our cupboards. (Kidney beans and flour), but then, most of us don't have 250 armed police storming tjrough our house at some ridiculous time in the morning.

[sp1814]

Whilst not wishing to add fuel to this particular fire...has anyone noticed something really strange with this story?

The papers are now saying that Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot by his brother in the confusion of the arrest.

Now...there are armed police in this house at 04:00am, and one of their suspects fires a gun...and not one officer fires back.

I can't wait to hear the explanation for that one.

[Grunty]

I think what they were saying, sp1814, was that there was a scuffle between the brother and an armed officer, during which the gun went off. But that's better than one of the television news channels during the first few hours. The reporter didn't seem to know the difference between 'shot' and 'shot dead', which I imagine was quite important to the people involved.

[bug123]

I just get the feeling that the police are damned if they do and damned if they don't at the moment! You just know that if another terrorist attack happened they would be accused of being negligent, ignoring information etc. Personally, I feel happier for the police to be over cautious at the moment - we are living in dangerous times. It does make me very angry to hear people criticising the police. Being in the police force is a very difficult job and we should support and respect the officers, instead of trying to criticise them every 5 minutes. So in response to your question Scotman , no, they can't win!