Very little of what was first reported of the July 22 shooting by London police of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian, seems to be true. In early reports, he was said to have been wearing a bulky jacket and to have jumped the subway turnstile as he fled the police. The Guardian reports that at a news conference yesterday, de Menezes’s relatives said that London’s Metropolitan police have now admitted that he was wearing only a “jeans jacket” and that he did not jump the ticket barrier but “used a travel card” to enter the subway. The Scotsman notes that “There is a widespread belief he [de Menezes] was confused because the police were not in uniform,” but I can’t find any solid reports about this one way or the other. When the shooting was first reported in America, most accounts justified the suspect nature of the Brazilian’s jacket by noting that London temperatures on July 22 “were in the 70s”. But according to at least one weather site, the temperature in London that day never rose above 69 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius).
One thought on “Chillier than reported”
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The jacket issue could be a good (but certainly sad) example of a cross-cultural miscue. As someone essentially from *the tropics* myself, I tend to overdress relative to North American standards 'cause honestly, my threshold tolerance for cold is extremely low. And I regularly see immigrant children from warmer climates even out here dressed 3-layers deep when the median temperature is about 70 degrees. Granted, it is chillier in the morning, but still, it's all relative to what you're used to.