Menendez firearms officer involved in 2nd shooting death.

One of the police marksmen who killed unarmed Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes has shot dead a suspected armed robber, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Weeks after returning to firearms duties, the officer opened fire on a man allegedly taking part in a robbery on a building society in Kent.

The incident led to a wave of crisis meetings at Scotland Yard amid claims that the marksman should not have been on the front line so soon after the death of Mr de Menezes, who was mistaken for a suicide bomber at Stockwell Tube station in South London in July last year.

On Tuesday night, one of the officers was involved in an operation to prevent a robbery on Romney Marsh in East Kent.

An as-yet unnamed man aged 42 was shot and died in hospital after the incident at an office of the Nationwide building society in New Romney at around 8pm.

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad, supported by armed officers from CO19, were conducting what they called a 'proactive operation' to prevent an armed robbery and arrest those believed to be involved.

Source: Menendeze officer involved in 2nd shooting death

You can bet your life this one will be picked apart with a fine tooth comb even more than usual. Then again, and this is something i find very strange in the UK in this day and age.......there were no CCTV cameras about.

I live in a tiny quiet peacefull village in the forest, population roughly 3000, and ALL of our banks have CCTV.

Sky News has reported that a firearm was retrieved from the scene, by that i guess they mean the suspects weapon. Who knows, maybe after the tube fiasco the firearms teams are carrying spare weapons to plant incase of another Menendez incident?

Another point, one local who lives nearby seemed suprised that there had been a shooting as no shot had been fired, stating that maybe a silencer had been used. Last time i heard it was just James Bond who used silencers in public, maybe she just did'nt hear properly, i mean it is possible to not hear things like this.

"I thought it might be children doing trick or treat. I wasn't too worried. I was very surprised when I heard there had been a shooting. I didn't hear a shot being fired.

"Perhaps they used a gun with a silencer, I don't know. I would have thought I would have heard a gun being fired."

On the other hand, with the amount of incidents that a firearms team reacts to every day, it must be pretty likely that you just may have to shoot more than one person in your career. Just very unlucky for this particular officer what with the amount of attention this is going to attract.

CX.