Shoot to Kill Controversy Flashcards
Controversy 2 - surveillance cover-up - police able to brush off official footage. Media discourse. -Finn and McCahill, 2010
Finn and McCahill, 2010
1) official CCTV blank - tube employees said working.
2) CCTV allows for a modern synoptic view of the police.
3) official synoptic views are able to be brushed off by the powerful. Officers are referred to as such in the media. Reinforces their status on the hierarchy of credibility.
4) even when powerful caught on video this may not be enough.
Controversy 1 - secrecy and Kratos being undemocratic - Punch, 2010
Punch
*APCO created a new policy which transcended the established principles of the police use of firearms.
Firearms discourse - officers tightly lipped - secretive.
Home Office - refused to provide data on firearms policy.
No debate about Kratos - not discussed in the HP. APCO creation of Kratos = undemocratic
Unelected officials have no place in deciding such controversial policies.
Controversy 2 - cover up - official vs unofficial surveillance -Coleman and McCahill, 2011
Coleman and McCahill, 2011
1) who is surveilled is based on asymmetrical power relations.
2) the powerful shape surveillance and risk discourse - powerful define risk thus who is watched.
3) powerful are able to resist surveillance - Protection of Harassment Act - powerless unable to do so.
4) risk discourse determines who is a risk and who should be surveilled.
5) the social order determines different experiences of surveillance.
6) CCTV favours the state over the public - disclosed to whom?
7) images can be useless, destroyed,images retained by the police, unspecified reasons for the controllers not handing over surveillance.
Controversey 2 - official surveillance - counter surveillance -Coleman and McCahill, 2011
Coleman and McCahill, 2011
1) investigating bodies do not usually draw on such surveillance.
2) Counter Terrorism Act - police can confiscate recorders if they are recording a police officer - must be suspected of terrorism - claims usually dubious.- counter surveillance is situated in a asymmetrical sphere of power - the police can avoid an unwanted gaze.
3) state interest in protecting the symbolism if the police - sousur goes against this - state tendency to side with police when they are investigated - cop culture and solidarity can help deflect both external and internal challenges. -police discourse that too much surveillance can be detrimental to institutional goals.
Controversy 3 - state violence - militarisation of police and war on terror - McCulloch and Sentas, 2006
McCulloch and Sentas, 2006
1) shoot to kill - symptomatic of police shift towards militarisation
2) ‘war on terror’ consolidated and intensified this shift
3) such policies exacerbate police disproportional treatment against others based on race and ethnicity.
Controversey 4 - othering -McCulloch and Sentas,2006
McCulloch and Sentas,2006
1) media attempted to link demenezes with violence. - draw on preexisting associations between immigrants and crime. Creates hostility. Reproduces othering (van Dijk, 1993).
2) Israeli weapons tactics - foundation of Kratos - based around the arab enemy.
3) police use indicators of ‘risky types’ - faux scientific basis for identifying a suspect - indicators provide a post event justification for the killings.
4) Zander argues there is a discourse that there is a dangerous other which we need protection from.
5) these indicators are problematic - reinforce suspect communities - protection by the state from terror is based on insecurity, suffering and the deaths of the other.
6) Hassan argues such profiling works to define the targets of the war on terror.
7) minorities and the nonwhite other have long been associated with criminality - guild is based on identities,descriptors or profiles which are manifested in policies of reasonable suspicion and police discretion.
8) such views are perpetuated by the war on terror or the war on drugs
9) racism is amplified under counter terrorism
10) war on terror constructs enemies
11) logic of preemption gives licence to new ways of seeing and acting - punishment based on perceived identity, identity, fears and suspicion grounded in race and religious difference. - militarisation and thus kratos set out to destroy these constricted enemies.
12) de menezes was killed as a result of this prevention paradigm - risk is based on a lethal concoction of fear and prejudice.
13) there is no tactical solution to political and religious violence - pre-emptive measures deepen state terror and racial violence - prevention should be based on political solutions.
Controversy 5 - state investigations - Squires and Kennison, 2010
Squires and Kennison, 2010
1)kratos went beyond the law - questions crime and laws - did the police commit a crime by transcending a legal boundary?
2)IPCC rules kratos did not result in de menezes death - kratos requires order to shoot from central command - this wasn’t there - yet on a formal level this may be true but in reality the theory and practice of Kratos influenced his death.
3) IPCC said the suspect was not positively identified - officers should not have shot unless absolute justification
4) IPCC identified multiple failings - CPS didn’t prosecute individual officers.
5) de menezes family dissatisfied with this.
6)accountability is sidestepped for an emphasis on future reduction of risk. IPCC identified failures which were not used to prosecute individuals but to improve future policy. There is a learn by mistakes approach.
6a) despite the ipcc stating de menezes was falsely identified as a result of misinformation and miscommunication.
Me:is this justice?
Controversy 6 - legitimate views - Squires and Kennison, 2010
Squires and Kennison, 2010
1) different treatment of witnesses by the IPCC - civilian witnesses seen as unreliable - police were given 36 hourse ro consolidate their views of the events due to emotional stress - no such privilege was given to civilian witnesses.
Additional consideration -Should criminologists take sides
Becker, 1967
1)We should take sides
Me
2)criminologists should not merely seek to explain crimes of the powerful but promote social justice. The ‘shoot to kill policy’ and the wider counter terrorism framework arguably resulted in the death of an innocent man due to its creation of the hostile other. Furthermore failure to hold the killers to account is part of a wider framework of power which must be discussed criticised and exposed by the criminologist in order to promote social justice.
Additional consideration - the war on terror -McLaughlin, 2006
McLaughlin, 2006 - WOT
4) inherently bound up with state crime which is worse than the original act of terror
5)open doors for more authoritative legislation - side steps human rights -counter terrorism is a state harm
Me: Or state crime if we use a definition based on human rights.
6)widnes punitive net - activists can be detained
7)counter terrorism results in an amplification of state violence.
Controversy 3 - state violence - militarisation of police and war on terror -McLaughlin,2006
McLaughlin,2006 - WOT
3) draws on Nasr - Israel violates human rights which is veiled by counter terrorism.
4) draws on Hillyard - war on terror -is a terror of prevention
Controversey 4 - othering - McLaughlin, 2006
McLaughlin, 2006
1)Intel replaces evidence - gathering of this Intel tainted by racial prejudices and the construction of the ‘other’
Controversy 5 - state investigations - Coleman and McCahill, 2011
1) 1000 deaths in police custod forty years upto 2006 - 30 shot dead in 15 years running up to 2005.
2) there have currently been no police prosecutions for these killings.
