A commuter who was sitting near Jean Charles de Menezes on a Tube train has told his inquest that police gave no warning before killing him.

Anna Dunwoodie said she believed officers were “out of control” and gave off a “sense of panic” before shooting.

She claimed that the innocent 27-year-old appeared calm as a gun was held to his head.

Mr de Menezes was killed in 2005 in south London by police who mistook him for a failed 21 July suicide bomber.

Ms Dunwoodie was sitting two or three seats to the left of Mr de Menezes when he boarded the train at Stockwell Tube Station, south London on 22 July 2005.

She told the inquest that, at the time, she thought the firearms officers pursuing Mr de Menezes were members of a gang.

She said she did not hear officers shout any warning at the electrician.

“I would like to say that on whether I heard anything from police officers, I am very, very clear. I had absolutely no idea who they were and had they shouted I would have latched on to that,” she said.

She described the scene on the train as one of panic:

“I think it was the man, who I now know to be a surveillance officer, (who) really seemed to be frightened or hyped up and when he was calling the other men they seemed… you know, when people are full of adrenalin and they move quickly and their movements are a bit jerky.

“I felt they were a bit out of control, that’s what it felt like.”

‘Shaken up’

Discussing the moments before Mr de Menezes’ death, Ms Dunwoodie said he had closed his eyes and looked “almost calm”.

“I guess he had a gun pressed to his head and there was not anything he could do about it”, she said.

She told the jury at the Oval cricket ground that the police then shouted among themselves before the first shots “came very suddenly”.

“My first thoughts were that it was someone firing a stun gun.

“There was a break and it was my memory that there were more shots.”

She then explained how she was still “shaken up” when giving interviews to the police afterwards.

She said: “I was really under pressure to look at a memory that was very recent and frightening.”

A surveillance officer, using the code name Ivor, had previously told the inquest that Mr de Menezes had stood up and walked towards him as police challenged him.

But Ms Dunwoodie, who had been reading a book on the train, said she did not recall that happening.

She said she felt “most frightened” of Ivor - who had also sat near her on the train.

She said: “He did make me feel very nervous. My attention was drawn to him. He seemed to have stuff in his bag and there seemed to be a metallic noise.”

‘Something illegal’

She said Ivor then ran toward the door opposite herself and she later heard him shouting “there he is” while pointing at Mr de Menezes.

Ms Dunwoodie added that she thought Ivor - whom it had previously emerged, had also been mistaken by police as their suspect - was her main threat.

After the shooting she told how she thought “something illegal” had happened and said her first impulse was to call the police to let them know.

Two eyewitnesses who sat near the carriage doors where firearms officers opened fire also said they had no recollection of any warnings from armed police.

Robert Preston said he only heard police shouting “get down, get down”.

“It was quite a general statement and it could have applied to me,” he said.

Mark Whitby, a fellow passenger, added that that was all he heard too.

He said: “There was not one mention of armed police.”

The Brazilian’s mother, Maria Otone de Menezes, was seen to leave the inquest in tears after hearing Ms Dunwoodie’s evidence. She was comforted by Justice4Jean campaigners.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, the senior Scotland Yard officer in charge of the operation, was also at the inquest.

When Gary Crutchley started taking pictures of his children playing on an inflatable slide he thought they would be happy reminders of a family day out.

But the innocent snaps of seven-year-old Cory, and Miles, five, led to him being called a ‘pervert’.

The woman running the slide at Wolverhampton Show asked him what he was doing and other families waiting in the queue demanded that he stop.

One even accused him of photographing youngsters to put the pictures on the internet.

Mr Crutchley, 39, who had taken pictures only of his own children, was so enraged that he found two policemen who confirmed he had done nothing wrong.

Yesterday he said: ‘What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not?

‘This parental paranoia is getting completely out of hand. I was so shocked. One of the police officers told me that it was just the way society is these days. He agreed with me that it was madness.’

Father-of-three Mr Crutchley, a consultant for a rubber manufacturer from Walsall, West Midlands, was with his wife Tracey and their sons when the pleasant Sunday afternoon out turned sour.

He said: ‘The children wanted to go on an inflatable slide and I started taking photos of them having a good time. Moments later the woman running the slide told me to stop.

‘When I asked why, she told me I could not take pictures of other people’s children. I explained I was only interested in taking photos of my own children and pointed out that this was taking place in a public park.

‘I showed her the photos I had taken to prove my point. Then another woman joined in and said her child was also on the slide and did not want me taking pictures of the youngster.

‘I repeated that the only people being photographed were my own children. She said I could be taking pictures of just any child to put on the internet and called me a pervert. We immediately left the show.’

Mrs Crutchley, 37, a teaching support assistant and qualified nursery nurse, said: ‘I was shocked by the reaction of those women.

‘It is very sad when every man with a camera enjoying a Sunday afternoon out in the park with his children is automatically assumed to be a pervert.’

The slide was run by Tracey Dukes, 35, whose father Malcolm Gwinnett has an inflatables hire company.

Mr Gwinnett, 58, a LibDem councillor in Wolverhampton, said: ‘Our policy is to ask people taking photos whether they have children on the slide. If they do, then that is fine.

‘But on this occasion another customer took exception to what the man was doing and an argument developed between those two people that continued without any further involvement from staff on the slide.’

Three police forces are to be investigated after armed police ordered a man to lie face-down at a railway station in a case of mistaken identity.

Two Dorset Police officers arrested the 21-year-old at gunpoint after his train stopped at Bournemouth on Saturday.

He was identified by British Transport Police after Hampshire police told them of an earlier incident in Basingstoke.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said all three forces would be investigated.

‘Apology made’

In a statement, it said the inquiry would be “a supervised investigation carried out by Dorset Police so that the actions of the three forces involved can be examined”.

“The IPCC received a referral from Dorset Police on 6 July and decided yesterday that the actions of the force were appropriate and proportionate to the circumstances and decided that the matter could be dealt with locally.”

Dorset Police said a senior officer had visited the man and his family, who live in Bournemouth, and that an apology had been made.

In a statement, the force said: “The 21-year old Bournemouth man was taken to Bournemouth police station but it quickly became clear that it was a case of mistaken identity and he was released immediately.

“During the arrest at Bournemouth railway station, no shots were fired and no-one was injured.”

“Dorset Police has voluntarily referred the incident in which a man was detained by armed police officers at Bournemouth railway station over the weekend to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

“The force is also providing on-going support to the family with the appointment of a dedicated family liaison officer.”

Closed-circuit TV cameras are the crime-fighting tool so fiendishly sophisticated that they can be foiled by the wearing of a hood. Yet having stuck 4.2 million of the things around this country, with nary a consultation on the matter - nor any significant impact on crime statistics - efforts to pimp them to 2.0 status continue

This week it emerged that scientists at Portsmouth University are developing “listening” cameras. Artificial intelligence software will be able to recognise sounds such as breaking glass, so that, when such a noise is detected, they can rotate in its direction and capture the act of vandalism/terrorism/God that resulted in a milk bottle falling off your doorstep. I paraphrase slightly, but given that the most recent Home Office report on the matter found that better street lighting is seven times more effective at cutting crime than CCTV, the truly suspicious behaviour is our deepening obsession with surveillance.

The past few years have thrown up dozens of instances which made one wince to be a citizen of this septic isle, but a personal low came with the discovery that 500,000 bins had been fitted with electronic tracking devices. Transponders in bins … Could any morning news item be more designed to force one back against the pillows, too embarrassed about one’s country to start the day? Yes, as it turned out. A couple of months ago it was discovered that Poole borough council, in Dorset, had used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - designed to track serious criminals and terrorists - to determine whether a school applicant and her parents lived where they said they did. They did, and were appalled to discover they had been spied on for three weeks, the subject of surveillance notes such as “female and three children enter target vehicle and drive off”. Target vehicle, if you please! The thought of some deep-cover council drone jotting this stuff down as though it were an elite Delta Force operation is not as funny as it is horrifying.

Just who are these people, these swelling legions of unelected, ill-qualified monitors who wield such extraordinary power in our surveillance society? Clarification in one case came last year, when the civilian in charge of a Worcester police station’s surveillance team was suspended after detectives found, among one day’s footage, a 20-minute sequence of close-ups of a woman’s cleavage and backside as she walked oblivious through the streets. Whether the woman ever discovered she was the star of a kind of pervert Truman Show is not recorded. But the offending monitor escaped with a warning and was - unbelievably - back in post within weeks.

In some city centres, such as Middlesbrough, speakers have been put on the cameras, so that those monitoring can interact with potential miscreants. Let’s hope these remote bossy boots imagine they’re involved in some high-level negotiation, in which they talk down a teenager from his decision to drop a hamburger wrapper on the pavement.

The former home secretary John Reid, on whose draconian watch the Middlesbrough scheme was approved, even suggested at its launch that schoolchildren should enter a competition to become the voice of the cameras - once again laying bare the government’s desire to co-opt its citizens into the surveillance process at all levels. We are, of course, coming up to the time of year when we are ordered to shop our neighbours for acts of hosepipe, while the Shoreditch Trust recently trialled a scheme encouraging residents to watch live CCTV feeds on a special local channel, the better to assist in policing.

For all this creepy “outreach”, though, the only hands-down beneficiaries of our CCTV obsession (apart from the revenue gatherers) have been broadcasters. For no good reason, all manner of TV networks have been furnished with hours of footage to pad out their witless police chase documentaries, or offensively cheap “street crime UK” shows. Britain’s CCTV network: proudly supporting the Bravo channel.

The worst thing is the blithe insistence that this is all necessary and normal. We are watched more closely, by more cameras, with each passing day. But so faultlessly designed is our society that we have never come close to having a say on it.

There’s a great bit in Woody Allen’s movie Deconstructing Harry when Robin Williams’s character goes out of focus, appearing as a sort of fuzzy version of himself, which sounds increasingly like the sort of sickness that should be courted by any attractive woman keen to walk through Worcester. That said, she could always don a hood. Yet there does seem a vaguely depressing irony in governments insisting that constant surveillance is essential to prevent our being overrun by repressive regimes who’d make us all cover our heads and the like. It’s these initiatives that drive even the most pliant members of society to dream of taking just that precaution themselves, if only for a bit of privacy.

Sweeping new policies set to be introduced in the UK will mandate parents to get government permission to kiss their children or take them to the swimming pool in public, measures that are “poisoning” relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.

A quarter of the entire adult population of the United Kingdom will be mandated to pass a state check operated by a newly formed government agency to have any physical contact with children under the age of 16 in public - including their own kids.

“From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted,” according to a London Telegraph report.

In a think tank report, Professor Furedi highlighted cases where government checks were already being required by schools and other organizations for parents to merely interact with their own children in public.

In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted.

In another, a mother was surprised to be told by another parent that she and her husband were “CRB checked” when their children played together.

In a third example, a father was given “filthy looks” by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own in “a scene from a Western when the room goes silent and tumbleweed blows across the foreground”.

As a result ordinary parents - many of whom are volunteers at sports and social clubs - now find themselves regarded “potential child abusers”.

Despite the fact that cases of child abduction in the UK have steadily dropped since the 1970’s, government fearmongering and media scare campaigns have created the illusion that pedophiles are roaming around everywhere preying on children. Child abuse numbers are also being artificially inflated by charities like the NSPCC - who were caught faking abuse cases to generate cash donations.

In reality, as we have consistently highlighted, by far the highest ratio of child abuse and pedophilia per head is found in government institutions and other state-run programs tasked with “protecting” children.

In America, CPS workers who take children from loving homes and hand them over to child abusers are not even disciplined, while horror stories about the insane actions of Child Protective Services abound.

The CIA and government officials have also been implicated in numerous child sex trafficking rings in the U.S., including a major case that centered around the abduction of Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch, who vanished without a trace in 1982.

In a recent case, the U.S. State Department was implicated as being involved in a major international child abduction scandal.

On a wider scale, in almost every case of human trafficking for child sex slavery, from Chile to Australia, to Bosnia, to Portugal, to Belgium, court proceedings get shut down or diverted when a clear connection to government officials, politicians and judges arises.

The agenda behind sweeping measures sold as “child protection” is to take away parents’ rights and hand them over to the state, as happened in Hitler Germany and other dictatorships throughout history.

Once the state gets its hands on your kids, they can mould them into good little Stasi agents who will gleefully inform on you for the most benevolent of actions, such as the use of minor physical discipline, which can easily be deemed “child abuse”.

At best power mad control freaks - and at worst child abusers and pedophiles themselves - are crafting laws to dictate how parents can behave around their own children. This is one of the fundamental benchmarks of tyranny and a psychological assault on the very foundation of our society.

MIAMI — From “Scarface” to “Miami Vice,” Florida’s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

Law enforcement officials said that the shift toward prescription-drug abuse, which began here about eight years ago, showed no sign of letting up and that the state must do more to control it.

“You have health care providers involved, you have doctor shoppers, and then there are crimes like robbing drug shipments,” said Jeff Beasley, a drug intelligence inspector for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which co-sponsored the study. “There is a multitude of ways to get these drugs, and that’s what makes things complicated.”

The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.

Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).

The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.

Florida scrutinizes drug-related deaths more closely than do other states, and so there is little basis for comparison with them.

It has also witnessed several highly publicized cases in recent years that have highlighted the problem. Only last year, an accidental prescription drug overdose killed Anna Nicole Smith in Broward County.

Still, the state has lagged in enforcement. Thirty-eight other states have approved prescription drug monitoring programs that track sales. Florida lawmakers have repeatedly considered similar legislation, but privacy concerns have kept it from passing.

As a result, federal, state and local law enforcement officials say, Florida has become a source of prescription drugs that are illegally sold across the country.

“The monitoring plan is our priority effort, but that is not enough,” William H. Janes, the Florida director of drug control, said in a statement accompanying the study. He said Florida was also looking at ways to curb illegal Internet sales and to encourage doctors and pharmacists to identify potential abusers.

Some local police departments have taken a more novel approach.

In Broward County on May 31, deputies completed a “drug takeback” in which $5 Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens gift cards were distributed to 150 people who cleaned out their medicine cabinets and turned in unused drugs in an effort to keep them out of young people’s hands.

“The abuse has reached epidemic proportions,” said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s just explosive.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days.

It appears 37 Labour MPs joined forces with Conservative and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals.

But that was not enough to defeat the plan ministers claim is needed to deal with complex terror plots.

It was passed by 315 MPs to 306 votes. It will come as a big boost to Mr Brown after his recent troubles.

Cheers rang out as the result was announced to a packed Commons chamber after a five-hour debate.

But there were also angry shouts from Conservative opponents of the move, protesting about the role of DUP MPs, who were believed to have backed the government.

‘Very tight’

Speaker Michael Martin had to intervene to restore order and quell the barracking.

Downing Street had earlier again forecast that the outcome of the vote was looking “very, very tight”.

Facing one of the biggest tests of his leadership, the Prime Minister had been personally calling Labour MPs to make the case for the extension.

In a sign of how tight the situation was, Foreign Secretary David Miliband had to cut short a visit to Israel to attend the crucial divisions in Westminster.

One of the Labour rebels, John McDonnell, said: “Any attempt to present this as some sort of victory for the government will ring absolutely hollow.

“There will be widespread consternation among our supporters in the country seeing a Labour government prepared to use every tactic available in its determination to crush essential civil liberties, which have been won by the labour movement over generations.”

Veteran former Labour MP Tony Benn said: “I never thought I would be in the House of Commons on the day Magna Carta was repealed”.

He said he hoped it would be overturned in the House of Lords.

A man was handcuffed, arrested and dragged before a court after falling off the settee with laughter while watching Have I Got News For You.

Christopher Cocker, 36, was enjoying the BBC1 show when a joke made by panellist Paul Merton had him doubled up with laughter.

He collapsed on the floor - but the thud startled his downstairs neighbour who, believing he had collapsed, called police.

Officers arrived and said Cocker was initially co-operative but became ‘aggressive’ when they asked his name and tried to shut his front door.

He was eventually disabled with parva spray through the gap and arrested.

Jonathan Taylor, defending, said: ‘The officer accepts in his statement that he struck my client and then sprayed him again.

‘He was handcuffed and unceremoniously thrown into the back of a police van. When he ended up in a police cell he was asking himself how all this had happened.’

Mr Taylor told Blackburn Magistrates’ Court, Lancs., said that having informed the police he was the only one in the flat and he was fine, his client could not understand why they wanted his details.

‘With hindsight he should just have told the police what they wanted to know and they would have gone on their way,’ said Mr Taylor.

Cocker, of Blackburn, Lancs., pleaded guilty to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge for six months following the incident on May 20.

A charge of assaulting PC Michael Davies was withdrawn.

Speaking after the hearing, Cocker said he had been in his flat minding his own business.

He said: ‘I can’t believe it - I was thrown in the back of a police van before being stripped naked and put in a cell.

‘I was handcuffed behind my back and my ankles bound with plastic ties before six of them carried me to the van.

”It was something Paul Merton said and I remember falling of the settee, I didn’t think it would end up in court.

‘I hadn’t had a drink or anything, I was just watching TV and all this happened. Paul Merton is one of my favourites. He’s really funny.’

Prosecutor Alex Mann said the police went to ensure everything was all right and spoke to Cocker who was ‘co-operative and relaxed’ and he assured the officers everything was fine.

‘He only became worked up when the police asked for his details,’ said Mrs Mann.

‘The police tried to explain they just needed the name for the report but he became aggressive and started swearing at the officer.’

After the hearing Joan Codling, 57, who lives in the flat below and made the call to police, said she contacted officers after being concerned that he may have fallen ill.

She said: ‘I was worried in case he was having an epileptic fit. There was a lot of noise and I didn’t know what to do so I called the police.’

A police spokesman said Cocker became ‘aggressive’ towards the officers who feared for their own safety.

The spokesman said: ‘Parva spray was used to stop any confrontation and was necessary to protect the officers and any members of the public who were around at the time.

‘Within the circumstances, we feel we used reasonable force.’

Many of them face abuse and aggression from drivers every day.

But lollipop men and women have been given a new weapon against reckless or angry motorists.

Video cameras are being built into their lollipop poles.

The cameras are visible so it is hoped they will act a deterrent.

If not, their time-coded footage can used as evidence against offenders.

Around 1,400 incidents were reported to councils last year and dozens of lollipop staff needed hospital treatment after being hit by cars.

They - and the children they are shepherding across roads - are often abused and sworn at.

A number of councils, including Dudley in the Midlands and Kirklees in West Yorkshire, have bought the camera poles, which are being rotated around “lollipop rage” hotspots.

“It’s unbelievable that we have to take this action, but the lives of children are at risk from increasing numbers of drivers,” said David Sparks of the Local Government Association’s transport board.

“Drivers are so selfish that they are willing to put lives at risk by refusing to stop for 30 seconds at a school crossing.

“Councils will do everything in their power to stamp this out. Abuse and intimidation of lollipop men and women who are carrying out a vital service to the community will also not be tolerated.

“Motorists need to be made aware that they are committing a criminal offence and we hope this new technology will prove an effective deterrent.”

Under the law, a lollipop patrol should be obeyed in the same way as a traffic light.

Failure to stop for one could mean a fine of up to £1,000 and three penalty points.

Don Mac-Dougall, road safety officer at Dudley council, said offenders who escaped prosecution could now be taken to court.

“Only a handful of incidents each year end up in prosecutions because it’s usually just one person’s word against another,” he said.

“The video evidence will obviously provide much stronger evidence, although we are hoping it will be a deterrent rather than anything else.”

Kirklees councillor David Hall said: “Our patrols do a fantastic job looking after the safety of children.

“These lollipops will give the patrols peace of mind when stepping into the road.”

The camera poles, costing £890, have been developed by Oxfordshire-based company Routesafe.