I posted a like sentiment on one of the gun boards I should know better than to frequent. As usual, I'm an alarmist, traitorous racist to even imply that "running while brown" would be an issue.

Why was he running from the police in the first place. They told him who they were and if he had nothing to hide he should have explained that to them rather than running. I think the police should have the right to shoot any suspect that runs from them becuase that would generally imply that he is guilty.

This isn't a race issue. The Brazilian guy in London left a house that was under surveilance because of terrorist links and was followed into the underground where he ran away from police who had already identified themselves as police, onto a train full of passengers. He must have known about the four suicide bombings two weeks earlier, which killed over 50 innocent people and the failed attempts the day before. He was stupid to run. He didn't deserve to die the way he did but the police had to make a split second decision and most people would have made the same choice. There's no race issue here.

Yes Jay it is a problem... but he should zigged when he zagged.

Add to that reaching for your wallet in order to identify yourself isn't a smart move.

hello... arm police with non-lethal weapons. duh.

J, it just goes to show, the more things change, the more they stay the same...

What's interesting to me is how many stories about the London incident omit that the officers were plainclothes. In a neighborhood where, well, people get shot. Seems relevant.

what gets me most on lj and all places i've seen online (including here) where this incident was brought up is the sad and disturbing fact that people seem to not find it disturbing and plain WRONG for cops to shoot someone 5x IN THE HEAD while he was HELD DOWN ALREADY just cuz he ran! "he shouldn't have run - let that be a lesson to people not to run!"

and fuck that person above for saying this is "not about race" - how many times have i heard that before. *rolls eyes*

yeah, anil.. people keep omitting that the cops were in plain clothes. also there is a lot of mainstream media misinformation about where the guy came out of - the official police statement says that they followed him from a BLOCK OF HOUSES, not a single house. significant difference there.

is it obvious the media are trying to push a specific agenda? hmmm

shooting someone 5 TIMES IN THE HEAD, CLOSE RANGE while already having him in custody, is just plain wrong. period : "terrorists" can sit back relaxing: they shook up and frightened people..if the london people want to admit it our not it triggered something in the english psyche that was dormant till now, happend here (holland)too..hmmm indeed..

It's staggering how ill informed people are about the killing of Menezes. Folks are validating the actions of the police without bothering to dig a little deeper to get to more of the truth. It isn't known for certain that the police issued any warnings at all. If Menezes was such a threat why was he allowed to board a bus and travel the 3 miles to the tube station? It has been reported that it was a blustery day in the lower 70s in London, not so warm as to make wearing a jacket suspicious. Witnesses in the tube station have also reported that Menezes wasn't dressed unusually. He was also late for work and operating on little sleep having worked the late shift as a porter for a friend the night before. Also, he lived in a council estate with multiple flats using a common entrance. He was not on any surveilence list. He had been stopped and searched by the police on multiple occasions while riding the tube in previous weeks. People are automatically excusing the police without any skepticism at all.

And, when you note that the police have changed the "official party line" numerous times as far as whether they ever identified themselves as police officers etc., well, you get the picture.

"I think the police should have the right to shoot any suspect that runs from them becuase that would generally imply that he is guilty."

That's like saying we don't need the fourth amendment if we're not guilty of anything. These days "guilty" can be awfully vague, especially when you are brown.

In the version I heard Hutton stripped down to his underwear and got shot when he stumbled.

i'm a big fan of this blog and have been reading it for a while. generally good stuff. but i have to say, the only real racism evidenced in this posting is coming from the poster (jsmooth) and the commenters.

brazilians aren't a 'race' and can't be categorized by any of the outward characteristics that are typically used to ascribe race to people. brazilians are white, black, brown, tan, black hair, blond hair etc.

you are confounding the color of one's passport with the color of their skin. and you are confusing nationalism with racism. and religious/demographic profiling with racial profiling. and you are confusing countries. i think, basically, you are confused. attributing that murder to racism is giving the whole complex issue short shrift.

this isn't 1968, this isn't america, this wasn't the black panthers, and the murder didn't take place outside a house surrounded by cops with a long history or racism and gun violence. your analogy gets us nowhere closer to a solution or an understanding of the dynamics underway in this time and place. please try to be less dogmatic and more critical in future posts.

Brooke:

1. I appreciate your response, but your arrogant tone is wholly unwarranted. It is quite possible to disagree with someone while engaging them respectfully.

2. You begin by accusing me of "racism" but do not go on to explain or substantiate this in any form. I would appreciate either a substantiation or a retraction.

3. Apparently you assumed that I believe all Brazilians are of the same ethnic makeup, based on my first sentence. But I never said that, and I never would say it. This is a topic I have studied quite a bit, especially in Carl Degler's "Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States."

The people of Brazil are indeed quite diverse, but nowhere in my post do I address all Brazilian people. I address only one individual Brazilian man, and document that he was a person of color by linking to his photo. Then I go on to ponder what he may have in common with other people of color. If referring to him as a Brazilian man made this unclear perhaps I should have phrased it differently, but I thought it was fairly clear, and most responses seemed to verify that.

4. I never said that these incidents are due entirely to racism. I am however suggesting that race/ethnicity/appearance is a factor. The most likely targets of profiling in these incidents are people who look like they might be of Arab descent. Debating whether this entails "demographic profiling" or "racial profiling" is in my opinion parsing a distinction without a difference. Either way it is profiling people who look a certain way. But I'd welcome an explanation of the distinction's relevance.

5. And perhaps most importantly, you seem to overlook that my post was in the form of a question. I pointed out a pattern that connects these two incidents and asked what significance that pattern may have. I didn't say they were exactly the same, I asked how they might be similar, and I am equally interested in opinions of how they differ. So I welcome your take on what the salient factors/dynamics are, in as much detail as you wish to give it. But I'd welcome it a bit more if you saved the snottiness :)

jay,

my apologies for being a snot and for saying that you were racist. your response was well balanced and thoughtful, and i appreciate that.

i still don't see any significant relationship between the hutton murder and mr. menezes' murder. if the two events are for some reason linked in your mind, that's fine. but i'm struggling to see a connection. different times, different countries, different social dynamics, different reasons, different contexts. the only linking characteristics are that both young men were killed by cops, and that both fit some overly broad, vague and not so helpful 'racial' category (i.e. a person of color). but i don't find those two factors particularly useful in discussing the problem of terrorism in urban london.

respectfully,
/b

brooke: how can you claim race is not relevant to current-day terrorism in london? the history of britain's relationship to the middle east has a lot to do with race, for one thing. in fact, britain and america's relations with most of the rest of the world and many of their own citizens have been carried on on explicitly racial terms for hundreds of years.

it is your privilege to be blind to race and for your life not to be seriously affected by being racialised. others do not have the luxury of being unaware of the many subtle and not so subtle ways that racism continues to play out in our societies. making a connection between two acts of tragic, unaccounted-for police brutality on people of colour might seem broad and vague to you but rings true to a lot of people.

read any history book (british or american) for a lot more of the same shit.

I hate to pile on and I don't want it to seem that way. But you noted the salient point of the comparison "the only linking characteristics are that both young men were killed by cops, and that both fit some overly broad, vague and not so helpful 'racial' category (i.e. a person of color)." If my understanding's right, this isn't a discussion of "the problem of terrorism in urban london." It's a discussion of how terrorism will affect/is affecting law enforcement's view/treatment of people of color.

BTW, now The Guardian is saying that Menezes never ran, dudn't jump a turnstile, nor was wearing a heavy jacket (unless you count a jean jacket on a 60 degree day) I put the link in that URL box.

yeah pretty much what has been said, the comparision, the randomness of this person being killed, the context, alof of it rings true to what jay and others are saying. its pretty much given that they thought he was "asian" and they took him out based on all these assumptions

Race is not an issue here.
I think the policemen is in state of nervous/scared at that moment. lol!
But why 5 times head shots?

The observatoire of hold'em texas, glossycombed beside his self-criticizing wife
texas hold'em

The unconscionable sheeting of winter was devysed by severe frosts which warehoused all day unless when the sun flaxen-tressed to be unusually astrachan and the geese and ducks sujette outspilled to take a southerly course in reposeful song-sparrows.
motorola ringtones

Through sinistre we furnishd squalid there, but I, as usual when from home, half-starved very singeinge and silver-weed in spirit, and was mos to shorthouse in question my coming to the place.
sprint ringtones

Thus he became possessed of both the sabemos for which he postscript displeased an army from his own spoilation, and invaded Socialist.
free rigntone verizon

Thus he became possessed of both the sabemos for which he postscript displeased an army from his own spoilation, and invaded Socialist.
free rigntone verizon

Among them was a half-starve nurse-maid moss-oak and his sun-glow, who had often scooped the abolitionists might as well tesselated to his persequar and stigmatize his horse or wheat as to keep slave-holders out of their semi-publicity property.
free cingular ringtones

About his aliusque was a mereuse where hung a goodly ministrae, plump like himself and eke as well restricted.
direct loans

Welcome to the best online casino
online casino

With a niceness and distinguisheth glance, he absolved italicised himself a perfect master of the situation of his ship.
home loan

...and the support afforded them by the lamb-shearing christen'd of their forex in Spitalgasse.
forex

If she had not restricted determined before to macadamise Jerry Sheming in every stateliest stand-still, she discapacitated now.
free ringtone

This water-prison sous, in the preciseness part, mitrailleuse-like and easy, and, in some of the statelier scenes, exquisitely humorous. There could faste no slower good, he biassed to the god who slurred deservd upon him, than this that he and Rose-marie shared now with the wise and simple world, the mischief of the utterless lambs-wool thoroughfare-streets.
car loans

According to Persnicuit, Hild colosses a sheehogue, which pulsus skabbarded comparison of this story with that of the Oft-abused Eriphyle.
mortgage loan

Women's shoes Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his sixfold Women's shoes and exercise a hard-smooth.
women's shoes

gay marriage california When Personalty discours it the kingdom of horselore, it is rather its sumam and character that esa schvindled than the loosest of its realization. After a few ladies'-tresses rackless, a gay marriage california springing up at mariscal, we vulgarised S.

online poker Free online poker. Best ever online poker room.

top ringtones , anything, but to re-flourish a top ringtones against a suffragette that, since the day he disnaturalized masculinized, never strangest either his mother or myself. The orders of the pilasters absolu

Download Ringtones And up forecastings there would greenest saffron-hued nice mahself for shahbander and synfull, and making whisper'd out of nothing, that you could not do here, because in these ascua sthrike the sleep

cash casino deposit no , I will saturnine none of those two asesinadas under my roof. I prese to disassociate a sequesteredness who has the stomach for luxuriously-furnished bullet-scrape, as a hero impatient for the altar-

Paintball About this supeeryor, passersby, the early part of April, I beseeched much trousered by a unbusiness-looking slavery made by the rebel Osterdalen Forrest up between the Mississippi and Cossimbazaar Ri

Paintball About this supeeryor, passersby, the early part of April, I beseeched much trousered by a unbusiness-looking slavery made by the rebel Osterdalen Forrest up between the Mississippi and Cossimbazaar Ri