THE POLICE, according to a Sunday newspaper yesterday, fear a “backlash in the Muslim community” after the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian electrician, at Stockwell Tube station on Friday. What the police should fear is a backlash from the entire civilised community. Yet there is no evidence that either the politicians or the public will provide it. The theme has been that this was a tragic “mistake”, but one which was unavoidable, even inevitable, in the current climate.

The breadth of the coalition of “Oh dear, but . . . ” in this instance is astonishing. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who can normally be relied on for controversy, has declined to condemn either the specifics of this event or the shoot-to-kill strategy behind it. The Liberal Democrats, whose purpose in life, surely, is to defend civil rights in difficult times, are similarly reticent. Muslim Labour MPs, such as Khalid Mahmood have urged caution. Even Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, has given warning against a “rush to judgment”. It has been left to the Brazilian Government to express anger about the manner in which Mr Menezes died.

It should not be angry alone. I am a hardliner on the War on Terror and remain a hawk on the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. But if al-Qaeda has created an atmosphere in which an ordinary person can have five bullets pumped into him by the police, and society shrugs its shoulders, then the terrorists have already won a modest victory.

The inconsistency bordering on callousness of Scotland Yard has been breathtaking. It was initially suggested that Mr Menezes was under surveillance and had been approached after he walked from his residence in Stockwell to the Tube station. It is now clear that he started his trip from Tulse Hill, where he had stayed at someone else’s home, was watched, was noted wearing bulky clothing, yet was allowed (despite the slaughter at Tavistock Square on July 7 and the attempted blast on a double-decker at Hackney last Thursday) to board a bus for a 15-minute journey and was challenged only when he sought to buy an Underground ticket. Why was someone whom the police continue to insist was a “potential suicide-bomber” no menace on the No 2 bus, but an urgent threat who had to be taken out when moving in the direction of the Northern Line?

And then there was the attempt to “spin” this situation to suit the police immediately after the shooting. It must have been obvious within minutes that the man concerned had no explosives on him and it is highly likely that he had identifying documentation. Yet for hours on Friday police sources were briefing that this shooting was “directly connected” to their inquiries into the botched bombings of July 21 and over the weekend the implication rumbled on that he had lived in, or perhaps near, or somewhere quite close to, multi-occupancy accommodation that had been deemed “suspicious”.

This attempt to blame Mr Menezes for his own death continues unabated. It was hinted that he might have been an illegal immigrant, as if that justifies what occurred. It has been argued that it was “irresponsible” of him to wear a quilted jacket in July, as if that were a crime. There are, furthermore, “no excuses”, it is intoned, for the fact that he ran when armed plainclothed police officers shouted at him.

I don’t know about you, but if I found myself minding my own business on the São Paulo metro and was suddenly confronted by men wearing no uniforms but wielding weapons, screaming at me in Portuguese, I too might choose to bolt for it. It was not merely the police but their victim who had to make a split-second decision.

At a minimum, the Metropolitan Police should be expressing something a little stronger than “regret” and admitting unambiguous, if partially understandable, responsibility for this outrage. Yet the spirit in which they are operating was summed up by Lord Stevens, the former Commissioner of the Met, in his News of the World column yesterday. Now Sir John Stevens, as he was, was an admirable public servant and he does make a number of compelling points about the pressure that the police are under and the unique dangers posed by suicide bombers. Even so, to dismiss this death as an “error” that should not result in the shoot-to-kill policy being reviewed verges on the sadistic. “My heart goes out,” Lord Stevens wrote, not to the Menezes family, but to “the officer who killed the man in Stockwell Tube Station.” Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.

There should be three consequences of this terrible tragedy. The first is that every aspect of the investigation that will be conducted by the Independent Police Complaints Commission should be published. There must not be the slightest possibility that the Metropolitan Police might be covering up its embarrassment by, for example, citing “operational reasons” why the decisions taken last Friday morning cannot be scrutinised. The second is that the shoot-to-kill policy has to be re-examined. There is a world of difference between a plainclothes policeman finding himself riding on the Tube and spotting a man with a large bag behaving in a manner that makes him a potential suicide bomber and shooting him, and chasing a person on to a train carriage and firing at him.

The final and most important aspect relates to Mr Menezes and his loved ones. This man was, in effect, as much a victim of the London bombs of July 7 as those who died then. It is inconceivable that he would have been killed by the police if those terrorist atrocities had not happened. His name should be included among those who will be supported by the fund that was set up to help those left behind after those murders. We must be honest about how his awful death took place and be ready to learn the lessons.

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