update...

The man shot by British police may not have been involved in the terror attacks...

More when I know it.

UPDATE: Yep.

It is tragic.  But there is a lesson to be learned here, a lesson that might save your life:

If, while walking along in a city that has just been subject to two separate bomb attacks, police officers with guns drawn and aimed at you tell you to stop: put your hands up, kneel on the ground, and for God's sake, don't try going over a security fence!  They will kill you.  And rightly so.

If you are innocent, they will find out soon enough, when a quick search shows that you aren't carrying a bomb under your heavy coat (why you were wearing a heavy coat during a record heat wave is beyond me).  But if you resist and try to run, then they are right to view you as a threat not just to them, but to hundreds of people around you.

I am sad that an innocent person has been killed, but the police acted properly.

What if he was carrying 20 pounds of C4 under that coat?

What if he was carrying bags of anthrax spores?

Give me a badge, hand me a gun, put me in front of a suspicious person during a terrorist investigation -- if he runs, I'm taking him down, and I will not have a second of remorse, even if he ends up being innocent.

I hope the London police officers realize this.

Comments

[Peter]

I'm thinking the guy was either dumber'n a pile of hammers or was a decoy. Either way it's just a little Clorox in the gene pool.

[Richard Hall]

Your compassion is overwhelming, Peter.

[Gullyborg]

Decoys are quite possible, and a real problem.

If the islamofascists are smart, in addition to recruiting more suicide bombers, they will also recruit some martyrs whose only function will be to play "suicide by cop" in an attempt to cause outrage and dissent when seemingly innocent, and certainly un-bomb-laden, people are gunned down.

It could put an end to the already shaky support for racial profiling.

[Bob Mulroy]

You have to remember that, in London, only gangsters are allowed to be consistently armed. The poor SOB saw three plainclothes guys chasing him and assumed they were thugs.

Nasty business.