South Asian Man Shot 5 Times in London

Things are getting pretty crazy in London. Two weeks after the first attack in London, and 1 day after the second attack, the london police have shot a man near the tube for "wearing a large coat" and fleeing when pursued. They shot him 5 times, apparently at close quarters, once he fell down.

The developing story can be tracked here and here. There's an eyewitness report on BBC here. This is pretty crazy, and if he was truly trying to blow something up, that's one thing, although this seems pretty gruesome, and to my knowledge, London police were famous for not carrying guns, so this is indicative of a much more aggressive, and perhaps extremely dangerous, approach towards Homeland Security. We haven't even had a shooting by officials in the United States in 4 years since September 11th, so, this is pretty severe.

Not to mention that if it ends up that he was not a bomber, or up to anything wrong, then this is a new level of state-sanctioned violence that has to be stopped. I am not very familiar with the British system of justice, but I do hope that this is sorted out soon, and that we have more news about this dreadful development.

I just hope that commuting while brown isn't the new terror in Britain, and I hope that copycats don't have a field-day with this example. Let's sit and wait for more news.

But regardless, this feels eerily reminiscent of the Amadou Diallo case, with multiple shots to take down a suspect, though this was in the middle of the day, in front of witnesses. Actually, we'll have to wait for the facts on this one, but I don't want to make the mistake of drawing analogies that shouldn't be drawn.