Is it relevant that he did not fire the gun

[audreyroberts]

In all this riot situation I fail to see why this duggan man not firing at police is relevant, Surely it the fact he has an illegal fire arm that is relevant. My dh was a police firearms officer - should someone like him wait till somone is firing on him b4 he shoots? In imo - duggan should not have had a gun - it is irrelvant he did not shoot he SHOULD NOT have had a gun. Who was his intended suspect?

of course it matters, they shot a man dead it is a against the law to carry a gun but that punishment is looked after by our judicial system not armed police shooting at anyone who has a gun. at first the reports said that he fired at police, turns out the policeman that was hit the bullet did not come from his gun but likely to be from another police gun. we jsut do not know what happened but whatever the situation it does matter because everyone's life matters and it has to be investigated thoroughly.

this duggan man, that is very deliberately flippant regard to someone that has been killed and you do not even know why he has been shot

@Izzy. If the officer knew at the time he pulled the trigger that it was a banana then yes. But if the suspect quickly picks up an item, holds it in a gun like manner and gets shot in that split second then the officer was reasonable.

Remember the police here cannot win. It reminds me a while back when that solicitor went on the rampage and shot someone before having a firefight with the police. Eventually he was shot and there were people even THEN saying "Oh they shouldn't have shot him....they could have used non-lethal force" Yeah right.

As I said before, if he was genuinely carrying a gun then he accepted the risk of being shot. If it's a huge conspiracy involving a load of police planting a gun at the scene then they should be punished accordingly. I suspect that's highly unlikely though.

I haven't found any statements by the Met.

All IPCC statements are on their website - nothing there at all about shots other than the two fired by the police. The only mention of a radio was that one had been sent for forensic testing.

It's not like De Menezes case where information which should have been known to be wrong was still being promulgated from official sources.

My guess is that the press either over-interpreted and group think did the rest. Or possibly that the press are still running (illegally) sources in the police and that in this case the source was repeating macho hearsay canteen gossip not fact.

Let's not forget that there has been plenty of misinformation spread about what happened to Mark Duggan in justification of the riots.
Someone from the Tottenham area posted on a thread on Saturday night absolutely adamant that Mr Duggan had been held down and shot in the head twice, execution style. The reality is he was shot once in the chest and once in the arm, according to IPCC and coroner.

I think custardcake sums it up nicely.

Why do the police have to wait for one of them to be shot before shooting? He shouldn't have had a gun, end of.

The riots aren't even about that anymore. One guy interviewed last night said he did it because of all the Polish stealing jobs etc. It's simply an excuse for thugs and criminals to riot.

The polish stealing jobs?? Just a feeble excuse. I saw that "interview". The guy is just as entitled to move to Poland and try to get a job there.

They've stolen nothing. They are legally entitled to work here just as much as we are to move anywhere in Europe and get a job there. The fact the Polish have got off their arses, moved here and are willing to do the jobs we can't be arsed to or think is beneath us is our problem, not theirs.

And how you can justify robbing shops because someone else took your job is still beyond me.

Depends completely on the circumstances.
Having a gun on him but not in his hand, then no no reason to use lethal force. A gun in his hand and pointed towards the ground or not pointed at anyone, once again not immediately necessary to use lethal force.They have no reason to believe their life or the life of another is in immediate danger. Identify themselves as police and tell him to slowly put the gun down on the ground, if he makes any suddent movements that make the police believe that they are in danger then the use of lethal force is entirely justified.
If he is pointing the gun at someone or the police then completely justified in using lethal force regardless of the person firing first.
So the fact that he did not fire the gun may be completely irrelevant or may be fundamental to the entire issue depending on the surrounding circumstances, which I do not know enough about to make any definitive statments about this particular case.

People are saying it's all right to shoot to kill

Did you lot hear about that place..where was it..ah yes, Northern Ireland
Very different set of opinions there

I'm saying that if someone is in possession of a fire-arm and is threatening others lives or acting in a manner which leads police officers to believe that their lives or the life of another is in immediate danger then they are justified in using lethal force.
Quite different from shooting unarmed civil rights protestors.

People are saying it's all right to shoot to kill

In certain circumstances that is correct. But the politically correct term is "Shoot to stop"

What would you have Police do when confronted with an armed man? Wait until he shot someone first. Then try to shoot him in the leg? Or perhaps shout "Stop! It's illegal!"

Like I said earlier. In the real world you shoot someone where:

a) You stand the best chance of hitting. Ie. centre mass. Arms, head, legs are not great targets. This is not the movies!

b) You shoot so they instantly cannot shoot back. Because that's why you are shooting them. You are in fear that life is in danger. In other words, not shooting them and stopping them straight away means someone else will get hurt. So shooting them somewhere else is useless.

The actions taken by the British Army during Bloody Sunday were not indicative of a shoot to kill policy in play at that point..so no, not against peaceful protesters.

However the SAS in Gibraltar and the RUC against the PIRA and IRA (arguably the UVF?> provides fairly strong evidence that it was in place and used against armed men and women or those "known" to be in the commission of a crime.
Didn't go down too well as I recall