'A man died and you want to close down the whole hospital.'

You ask people to keep the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting at the forefront of their mind when they read the following quote:

'She's made me a whipping boy because I founded CI5. But I didn't, you did, society did. If there were no fires you wouldn't need firemen, and in God's name and I invoke him sincerely, I wish you would make me, my organisation rudundent. I wish you would make the streets clean again, I wish you would give everyman, whatever his colour or creed the right to be to feel safe again. But that's not to be, not yet. So like it or not you need us. That's why i'm asking you, pleading with you, don't destroy us, don't cut us down, not until you've got something better to put in our place.

A jungle, that's where it's at, with mad beasts crawling through it and we are the hunters. You showed us photos, carpets ripped up. But what about these? Faces grown old before they were ever young, destroyed and racked by drug addiction. Girls barely out of their teens selling their bodies, their experience to the highest bidder. These are the streets we have to walk, not the bright streets, the mean ones, devoid of hope and all humanity. We walk them, and we brush aside some of the dirt, not all of the dirt just some, so there's less to offend when you come along.

And now you're going to take whatever teeth we have left, why? Because someone got hurt, because a man died? I didn't want that, and I regret that. A man died and you want to close down the whole hospital, because like it or not that's what we are, the surgeons, a messy, sometimes bloody job and oh yes our knives are sharp and we have to operate fast and quickly to cut out the desease. The deasease hurts, but so does the surgeons knife! Which would you prefer? It's your choice.'

George Cowley, CI5 The Professionals.