25 signatures reached
To: Teresa may ( home secretary )
commemorate the death of jean charles de menezes (22nd of july 2015)
Dear Theresa please could you hold a commemoration service for John Charles de Menezes in the same way you did for Stephen Lawrence . His life was tragically taken by police who had made a fatal mistake. I would like to know his family has support and that he may be remembered for the amazing man he could have been.
Why is this important?
Jean Charles de Menezes (pronounced [ʒeˈɐ̃ ˈʃahlis dʒi meˈnezis] in Brazilian Portuguese) 7 January 1978 – 22 July 2005) was a Brazilian man shot dead by the London Metropolitan police at Stockwell tube station on the London Underground after he was misidentified as one of the fugitives involved in the previous day's failed bombing attempts. These events took place two weeks after the London bombings of 7 July 2005, in which 52 people were killed.
Contemporaneous and later police and media accounts contradicted each other, specifically regarding Menezes's manner and clothing as he entered the station, and whether there had been any police warnings before they fired. The death sparked an intense public debate over a shoot-to-kill practice known as Operation Kratos. The codename was dropped in 2007, but the policy continues.
Police put under surveillance the communal entrance to a block of flats in Tulse Hill, south London, in which Menezes was living, and saw Menezes leave the building. Plain clothes officers, armed with pistols, followed him as he took a bus to Brixton tube station, before boarding another to Stockwell because the tube station at Brixton was closed. Specialist firearms officers were called to Stockwell. Just after Menezes entered a train, several officers wrestled him to the ground and fired seven bullets into his head at point blank range. The train was still at the platform with its doors open, having just been evacuated by officers.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) launched two investigations. Stockwell 1, the findings of which were initially kept secret, concluded that none of the officers would face disciplinary charges. Stockwell 2 strongly criticised the police command structure and communications to the public, bringing pressure on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair to resign. In July 2006, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers, although a corporate criminal prosecution of the Metropolitan Police was brought under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This alleged that the police service had failed in its duty of care to Menezes. The service was found guilty and fined. On 12 December 2008 an inquest returned an open verdict.[1]I feel that because of the way he was taken from life that it is the least that can be done. I pass the memorial at stockwell and look it to his young eyes and it makes me upset that he was killed so brutally .
