So, whose fault was it really? I guess that’s the only question you are left with at the end of Suspect. And I wish I was able to give you a simple answer, but unfortunately, there aren’t any. As I see it, the Disney show isn’t just depicting the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Instead, it tries to explore the reasons why the London Metropolitan police kept lying till the very end and never really acknowledged that they had indeed committed a grave mistake. However, before moving forward to my explanation behind the reason why the authorities tried their best to cover up the unlawful shooting, I just want to point out that all my assumptions are based on the facts presented in Disney’s Suspect, and my opinions are centered around the characters of the show and not their real-life counterparts. This article is written entirely based on the show and not the actual events.
Spoiler Alert
An Itch for the Interview
Whenever I see a person in power struggling with the burden of responsibility bestowed upon them, a popular quote from Spider-Man often comes to my mind. “With great power…” I guess you know how it goes. At the beginning of Suspect, soon after the bombings of 7th July, 2005, the Home Officer asked the Met commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, not to speak to the media until the picture became clear. Well, that’s the protocol everyone should follow so as not to spread any rumors during such a crisis. But the show’s version of Blair wanted to “put himself out there” so that the people of Britain would know that the Met police was doing everything in their power to take control of the situation. He came up with different ideas to explain his “interviews to the media,” but if you look closely at the pattern, it isn’t hard to understand that the show’s version of Blair was just trying to protect his own image in the media. He hardly cared about the department or the Home Office. He just didn’t want any reporter to point fingers at him. You may have noticed that throughout the series, whenever a news channel ran a report on the Met Police, Blair listened to it all quite defensively as if they were speaking about him and not the entire department. And that’s some problematic behavior.
In episode 1, the authorities weren’t certain about the actual number of explosions on 7th July, yet Blair went on camera and informed the media that there had been six explosions on that fateful day. Obviously the numbers were inaccurate, and it only makes you wonder, what was the urgency to give the specifics to the media when you could have just said, “We are still investigating?” You see, the shooting of Jean Charles wasn’t an independent event. It was the result of the police commissioner’s own obsession with taking charge of the narrative because of the tremendous pressure he was under from the media and the public, or at least that’s what he felt. A similar thing happened in Jean’s case when the show’s version of Blair, some five hours after the shooting, held a press conference telling the media the suspect in question had refused to obey the instructions of the armed police, which was why they shot him down on the tube. At this point in time, none of these details were confirmed or verified by the authorities, yet the urgency to report to the media and the public created a mess of the situation. Brian Paddick, introduced as DAC of the Met police, felt that his senior’s words insinuated that Jean was a terrorist, which once again was a false accusation. However, it didn’t stop many legacy newspapers from publishing a front-page report saying, “Bomber shot dead on the tube.” The thing I am trying to say here is that every action has a reaction, and when you are in a position of power, you have to choose your words and the information you reveal quite precisely, because you never know how people are going to interpret and twist it to suit their own interests. The newspapers and the media channels kept calling Jean a terrorist, and no one ever came up with an apology.
The Authorities Covered It Up
One can fill pages if they start pointing out all the errors the police had committed on the day of Jean’s unlawful shooting (based on the series). To name a few: their comms wasn’t working, and the armed officers weren’t given a clear identification of the suspect, Hussain Osman. The surveillance officer present outside suspect’s house, was relieving himself when Jean came out, because of which he wasn’t sure if he was the person the authorities were looking for. The CO19 was briefed as if the instructor himself wanted the suspect dead and not arrested. The thing is, you can’t pick a single person who was at fault here, because it was a doomed mission to begin with, and everyone should be held accountable, not just the people in charge of the operation. Even when Blair was informed of the shooting, he was quite taken aback because he wasn’t really expecting an execution. This was the moment when the assistant commissioner misinformed him that the suspect jumped the barriers in the tube station and was even confronted, but the suspect refused to obey police instructions. To be clear, none of this was actually true, but a bunch of lies told by parties involved in the shooting who just wanted to cover up their mistakes.
During the inquest into the shooting, the Met police department even came up with a photoshopped image of Jean and Hussain Osman to convince the jury that the two people looked alike, which was the reason why the surveillance officers got confused between the two. In reality, none of the surveillance officers was sure if the suspect that they had been following was Hussain Osman, and they informed the person in charge of the operation about this multiple times, but it all seemed like one big misunderstanding.
The root of the issue here is no one was willing to admit their mistake, and everyone who was called to the witness stand showed up with a rehearsed script, making all the testimony sound similar and robotic. The authorities maintained that it wasn’t their fault that Jean was at the wrong place at the wrong time. In the court, the judge didn’t find evidence against any single officer, which was why the jury had to decide between lawful killing and an open verdict. The jury gave it an open verdict, and the police department got away with a slap on their wrist. The Met police was charged for the breach of health and safety law, for which they were fined 175,000 pounds.
Someone Called the Home Office
This is one of the most interesting parts in Disney’s show, as Brian found out that someone from the commissioner’s office had made a call to the Home Office on the day of Jean’s shooting, informing them that they had shot the wrong man. This means the commissioner’s team or someone on his team was aware of the blunder they had made but held back the information from the commissioner before he walked into that public conference. You might be aware that the commissioner, during the “News of the World” interview, told the reporter that he wasn’t aware that the armed officers had shot down an innocent until the next day, that is, the 23rd of July. Based on his statement, one could assume that either the commissioner was lying, or he’d been purposely misinformed by his own advisors. Additionally, the assistant commissioner told Blair that the officers had retrieved a mobile phone from the scene. This again is half-information, because they had retrieved a wallet and the mobile phone. And the wallet itself had Jean’s identification card, which, if anyone had bothered to look in time, would have given away his real name.
According to Brian Paddick, at least 25 officers or civilian staff knew that Jean was innocent before the commissioner, which brings the question: why did no one inform the only person who insinuated that Jean was a terrorist? I mean, what was going on in that department? Brian likely realized that there was a lot of internal politics going on in his workplace, because of which he decided that it was better to leave than become a part of their crimes, conspiracies and cover-up. During his tenure, he confronted his seniors and tried to lead an internal investigation, but the higher-ups weren’t interested in going down that rabbit hole, as it would have only exposed the corrupt authorities, making people lose their trust in the forces that had sworn to protect them. In 2007, Brian resigned from the department.
Justice Was Denied
The series also introduced a whistleblower named Lana Vandenberghe, who, while working as an officer secretary for the IPCC, came across the spine-chilling evidence, which she knew would sooner or later be buried by the authorities to cover up their mistakes. The thing is, Lana was going through an internal conflict of her own as she wasn’t sure if she should take the lead and expose the truth to the world or stay silent like the rest of the folks in her office. The end goal of the Met and the Home Office was to divert the media attention so that the heat on unlawful shooting would slowly die down. Without the evidence in hand, no one would have dared to ask the questions, which was the reason why Lana risked her own career and her life to steal the evidence from her office so Jean could get the justice he truly deserved. And even though her act of courage made some noise in the public, it didn’t amount to much. Because no matter what lies we feed ourselves, we are still common citizens who cannot win a war against the giant. The authorities did their best to protect the members of their own clan, and the moment they were about to get defeated, they changed the “rules” of the game to safeguard the interests of their friends.
After finishing the show, one is left to wonder that if the Met police were so certain that they hadn’t done anything wrong even though they had made a mistake, then why did they try to tamper with the evidence? What happened to the CCTV footage from the tube and the bus on the day of the shooting? Why did they alter the surveillance image? And above all, why did they plant undercover met officers in the “Justice 4 Dean” campaign? Unfortunately, the parents who are still fighting for the unlawful killing of their son will never get answers to these questions nor the justice he deserved. In the end, no arrests were made. No one was held accountable, and all they did was pay the victim’s family out of the taxpayers’ money and get away with the perfect crime.
