Normally in these situations, I'd hold off from commenting until all of the relevant facts are in. There's an investigation underway, as occurs with all police shootings, and there is no clear and definitive account of what happened.

But so far, based on the BBC report, it appears possible to conclude that:

1) Police were acting on a tip-off of some kind

2) They expected, or hoped, to find evidence confirming the tip-off

3) They don't appear to have found it yet

4) In the course of the search, one of the inhabitants of the house, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, was shot. He, along with his brother, was arrested under anti-terror legislation.

5) The police are not accepting responsibility for the shooting, with the suggestion being made that one of the brothers shot the other during a scuffle

I'm wholly in favour of the police vigorously pursuing terrorists. People plotting murder should be apprehended and tough police action is going to be required to do it. I just wish I felt that I could trust the police to do it properly and honestly.

Today's news reports bring with them a horrible sense of deja vu; as with the De Menezes shooting, we have numerous versions of events floating around which are obviously contradictory. The sole official police statement merely states that a man was shot, but not who pulled the trigger. According to the BBC, quoting the News of the World, "a Whitehall source" says that the man was accidentally shot by his brother. The police have neither confirmed nor denied this story, something which cannot fail to stir memories of the rumours around the De Menezes shooting; the heavy coat, the jumping of the turnstiles and the suggestion that he was a suspect in an ongoing investigation. All of these were rumours which originated from within the police or government and were not denied. They all later proved to be untrue.

So what is going on?

Lawyers for both of the arrested men deny the story that the younger brother was the one who fired the shot. This places them at odds with the "Whitehall source", although the police have not officially taken a line on this.

As I see it, there are only two possibilities: either he was shot by a police officer, or he was shot by someone else. Ballistics evidence should be categorical, once the evidence is examined it will prove one case or the other.

This leaves us in a confusing situation. If the police shot Mr Kahar, then why is a "Whitehall source" claiming otherwise? And why are the police not clarifying the situation? On the other hand, if Mr Kahar was shot by his younger brother, why have the police not mentioned this fact and why has it only come to light, two days after the event, via an unnamed source?

The police have learned nothing from their handling of the De Menezes affair. Public confidence requires that the police be honest in their actions. We may, perhaps, expect off-the-record briefings from inside sources in the world of politics, but the job of the police is to behave unimpeachably in upholding the law. The more confusion they allow, the greater the loss of confidence. If they prove to have behaved correctly in their execution of the raid, then they are allowing this to be undermined by briefings to the press. If they have made a terrible mistake, then their failure to admit it will undermine their authority even more.