">> Moat's brother is now bleating about the use of a taser
"If a taser was used when the man was pointing a cocked shotgun at his own head, then I think the brother has more than a point. If they had just shot him dead when they found him, as they might have done in America, everyone would have known where they were. Doing whatever was done in private after a long standoff, and then refusing to say what happened until an official version has been prepared, is just asking for hostile or paranoid speculation.
"It's true that people's families quite often have a lot to answer for in cases like this. But there seems no particular reason to blame other people for Mr Moat's condition without considerable inside knowlege, which we haven't got. It isn't very like other cases of this sort. There are oddities. Moat appears better respected and more articulate than the general run of berserkers."
The above is a post I made in the closed thread on this matter. It still seems relevant to me. I think people seem to be making assumptions about this man's family that they aren't entitled to make.
I absolutely agree that mad-dog gunmen should be neutralised promptly without any wimpish nonsense about their rights. But that wasn't what happened here. I don't think the police PR was well managed. The big media, notably the BBC, drowned the story with overkill. The correspondents were bored, uncomfortable and embarrassed. It wasn't anyone's finest hour to tell the truth.
My own experience as a journalist is that when something becomes a big story it is ruined for everyone and becomes sleepless drudgery in a snarling scrum of not-best-pleased hacks. If that doesn't sound a bit of a nightmare, it should.
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