Irish Independent: London Olympics 2012: Anti-terror police blow up tourist's broken down car Oops... I rarely drive in or around London...was the anti-terror police's reaction a bit much? Of course, I probably would not have wandered off to Buckingham Palace if I had a car problem!
What? That's a case of wanting and having. Amazing that they blow up his car but equally amazing that he leaves his car unattended. As for that ticket for illegally parking? Of course the car must from now on only decide to breakdown in official allowed parking spaces! Overall a somewhat sad story from either side! One side thinks it's OK to leave the car and visit Buckingham Palace and the other side which over reacts IMHO!
A sad reality of the world today. Unfortunately the reaction may have been the same at the white house. I have to think that anyone who would leave the car uattended in that situation is oblivious to life as it exists today.
Just think about the chaos and economic that the bad guys could cause by simply abandoning stolen cars in "strategic locations" in some cities. Or empty suitcases in airports or public plazas.
Does anyone understand the logic behind blowing up suspicious objects? What if the abandoned car indeed contained explosives, deadly germs, or a toxic gas? Then a police-initiated explosion would be exactly what the "terrorists" had intended. Maybe the state thought they would come out ahead either way. If the car contained explosives and leveled Buckingham Palace, the embattled prime minister would suddenly turn into a glorious leader defending his country. But blowing up an innocent object can still be spun in the media as a tough and vigilant stance. I still hope there's a better explanation for that nonsense.
Slim chance - more like no chance. Sovereign (state) actions are usually excluded from most insurance contracts.
I recall that CC benefit policies all have similar exemptions: acts of God, war, law enforcement, court orders, etc. I don't save them, so can't quote the exact language.
In addition, if a crime actually was being committed, the police were deliberately destroying evidence and contaminating the crime scene. Any good defense lawyer could make great use out of that.
Recall London in the early 80s when IRA bombings were fairly regular affairs there? Vehicles serving as bombs is something the UK police and population are all too familiar with. Knowing this, would anyone here want to have opened the door to see what happened? I was in he AF lounge at CDG and there wasn an untended valise. The airport police came, cordoned off the area, and had a containment box which they put around it and created their own explosion. While perhaps an extraordinary by US standards, actions like this are not uncommon in much of Europe.
So I am sitting in a coffee shop here in a mid-sized California town right now. 20 ft away from me are a bunch of cars parked on the main street. What would happen if a bad guy put a bomb in one of those and blew it up? Let's say they do it three or four times in different cities. Are we then going to completely ban parking in cities?
Something like that. If such a series of events occurred, it wouldn't surprise me if some degree of additional parking restrictions were put in place for a period of time, particularly in sensitive areas. After the attempted vehicle bombing in Times Square a few years back, there were additional restrictions as to where you could park and much more searching of vehicles.
But I am talking about Main Street America here, not Times Square. Can't shut them all down, can you?
If people keep trying to blow them up with bomb-laden cars, then, yes, I think you'd see "no parking" signs pop up on Main Streets all around the country.
I actually have some training on this - a controlled, low-powered explosion is done in multiple steps and is intended to remove the detonating capability of a suspected explosive device (so the investigators can do their work). If removing the detonating capability only cannot be done easily, then the contents of the entire device might need to be dispersed / separated from the detonation capability.
