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Introduction
ON THE MORNING OF JULY 22, 2005, JEAN CHARLES DE MENEZES, A 27-YEAR-OLD Brazilian electrician, was shot and killed by police on a tube station in South London on his way to work. The shooting happened the day after failed suicide bomb attacks on three London tube stations and a bus, and 15 days after the July 7,2005, suicide bombings on trains and a bus killed 52 and wounded many others. Jean Charles was in no way connected with the bombings or attempted bombings. The fatal shooting was in line with firearms tactics developed to deal with suspected suicide bombers afterthe September 11 attacks on the United States. Adoption of these tactics demonstrates the extension and consolidation of militarized law enforcement. They continue the established history of differential policing and the criminalization of racialized "others." Moreover, they signal the incorporation and spread of law enforcement tactics considered to be more typical of a colonial context. The shooting of Jean Charles and the philosophy and tactics it reflects stand as exemplars of an intensifying relationship between neocolonialism and the institutionalized racism demonstrated in more "traditional" modes of policing.
That the shooting of Jean Charles was represented as a "regrettable necessity" for which no one is held accountable underlies the low value placed on the lives of "suspect others" sacrificed in the pursuit of "national security." Media comments that Jean Charles was the "57th innocent victim of the London bombings" (Evening Standard, July 25, 2005), and that he was killed "accidentally" (Radio National, June 5,2006) construct his killing as "collateral damage." The failure to prosecute his death as a crime, announced almost a year after his killing, fits with the pattern of impunity in cases of police shootings and deaths at the hands of the state more generally (Hogan, 1988; Green and Ward, 2004). The relegation of the killing to the status of collateral damage echoes the war's international front, where the death of civilians at the hands of coalition forces led by the United States in Iraq is not even considered worthy of official tally.
This article describes the circumstances of Jean Charles de Menezes' death and the incorporation of police firearms tactics from Northern Ireland and Israel. It explains how these tactics are emblematic...