To not or not to not, that is the question
Via Alex again, we have this excellent analysis from The Register’s mighty John Lettice on the events leading up to Jean Charles de Menezes getting his marching orders.
This jumped out at me:
The report notes that the ground surveillance team all appeared to believe that they did not have a positive sighting, while the control room believed that they did. It looks very much as if faulty filtering and Chinese whispers effectively manufactured this situation, helped along by individual officer’s fears of the consequences of making a mistake. This would tend to make them extremely cautious of saying that it definitely wasn’t Nettletip [the police codename for Hussain Osman], meaning the possibility that it was him was pretty well embedded in the system. These doubts would be filtered upwards, and the same fears would lead superior officers to give undue weight to a single claim of ‘might be’ over half a dozen of ‘probably isn’t’. The claims of CO19 [the firearms officers] that they heard “definitely” illustrate that direct monitoring in the control room isn’t the answer either – nobody admits to saying that, and they may simply have missed the word “not”.
Now, I’m no expert on counter-terrorism, but when I was at journalism school, we were given a handy tip to avoid getting into trouble when reporting court cases. At a case’s conclusion, it’s deemed sensible not to use the terms ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ in a dictated or written report.
The person taking the dictation might miss the ‘not’ or a harassed and on-deadline sub-editor, busily cutting and pasting at your copy might accidentally remove the ‘not’. Then you’re in trouble because you’ve given the not guilty person in your report an action for libel. Much better to use ‘acquitted’ and ‘convicted’.
So, the next time the Met have a team of tooled-up Bodies and Doyles hurtling towards an identified or unidentified target, instead of saying it’s ‘definitely’ or ‘definitely not’ him, why not try, say, ‘affirmative’ or ‘negative’? Why it hasn’t been considered before is something of a mystery. I know I’m a mere blogger and not London’s top cop, and it’s a crazy plan, but it might be worth considering. They could even ask ’should we convict or acquit?’ for that snappy action-movie dialogue vibe if they like.
Posted on November 12th, 2007 at 6:21pm under T.W.A.T., The home front
No, I don’t cruise the web looking for my name, honest…
It occurred to me that this could be viewed as another example of the unprofessional nature of the Met’s radio communications. A military unit would use clear, concise and readily understood codewords with a specific operational meaning. The Met’s failure to do so indicates they haven’t thought this out properly at all – with, in the case of the meaning of the words STOP HIM, fatal consequences.
Don’t they already do that though? At least I thought they did when I used to watch the Bill.
Actually, you’re not meant to use “affirmative” or “negative”, rather “affirm” or “negative”, as a broken radio communication of “-ative” could be either. If or why the Met didn’t use Home Office radio procedure I don’t know; perhaps because the officers involved don’t use their radios on a day to day basis as response and comms officers do?
There’s another fundamental contradiction as well,. One ‘Andrew’ acting Chief Super at the time
… told the court: “The bullet flattens on impact and immediately incapacitates the target.“This is a more effective bullet in the context of dealing with a suicide bomber as there is more chance of incapacitating a subject with a single shot.â€Â
Times Online
As I understand it then, the police were issued with ammunition that would be illegal for military use, because with ordinary ammunition the ‘bomber’ might retain consciousness and control long enough to detonate his bomb. OK. But then
Times again
not one of the 17 witnesses on the Northern Line train could recall hearing armed police identify themselves as they rushed into the carriage. However, eight police officers who were there said that they remembered either shouting out who they were or hearing others do so.
Ignoring the conflicting stories; if it’s judged so vital not to give the guy the fraction of a second extra consciousness he might get from a conventional bullet because he might trigger the bomb – what are the police doing yelling at him as they run towards him? “You there! Suicide bomber! don’t detonate that bomb or we’ll shoot!” Huh? If the rules say they have to identify themselves before shooting and there are no exceptions under any circumstances – then what was the point of the hollow point bullets?
A radio reporter who used to cover Oxford United games told me that rather that write “the Us”, which he might, thoughtlessly, read out as if it were the first person plural, he used to write “the Ewes” instead.
Carry on…
Incidentally, aren’t the police normally very, very clear that you should use clear terms on the radio, which is why they have all the Tango Charlie stuff?
Back in the mid-Nineties, a friend of ours occasionally used to run half of West Midlands police from my parents’ front room, which was interesting and instructive (he was a reasonably senior copper and a thoroughly nice chap, actually). Obviously it was all done by radio.
In the course of all this, however, he taught us a very useful bit of non-confusing terminology, to be used when driving fast with someone giving you help with your lookout – say if you’re pulling out onto a main road – they should say ‘Clear Left’ or ‘Clear Right’ rather than ‘OK’, ‘Right’ or ‘Go’, which are potentially confusing (‘Right’ could mean ‘All right, off you go’ or ‘there’s a car coming from the right’ or ‘turn right now’, ‘OK’ or ‘Go’ subconsciously sounds like a direct order, which is dangerous as the driver should still be in ultimate charge of the vehicle).
All of which rather reinforces the idea that the police are well aware of the potential for confusion when verbalising in stressful situations and take steps to ensure people transmit with maximum clarity in the minimum time, so why the fuck-up here? The more you look, the murkier it is. Perhaps the politicisation of senior Met coppers teaches them that language exists to manipulate and mislead rather than clarify and explain?