Mark Duggan, shot to death by police, triggering the riots, was not armed

[edam]

bloody hell A gun was recovered but it was 14 feet away on the other side of a fence. So the police were not facing an armed man.

Some interesting developments today.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/20/investigation-mark-duggan-tainted

www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24012347-local-mp-calls-on-may-to-run-duggan-probe.do

'There is one final piece of outstanding investigative work that we need to put into the public arena. We were told that at least three officers had given a statement that they had witnessed another officer, a sergeant, throwing away the gun that was later found several feet from Duggan's body. When we sought to identify the officers involved, we were told there was no evidence to support the allegation ? that this statement was in fact never given. Yet we were informed by the commissioner that it had been.'

Very interesting

Yes,Ponders,makes for some questions not answered
That's why I posted the links. I hope that doesn't appear of me to be provocotive..I just found these reports interesting.

not provocative at all.

& Stafford Scott seems like a very sound bloke - I hope he'll be able to get something done.

It's all very good and well sitting in the comfort of your own home, reading the various press reports and claiming it's all a big cover up guv. And that the police shouldn't have shot Duggan because he wasn't holding a gun. All very easy indeed to say now isn't it?

But just imagine the situation as it happened. The officers were told they were dealing with an individual who had a gun.

So they stop this car and order Duggan to surrender. He doesn't. He moves quickly. Now you have but a split second to decide whether he is trying to scarper or pull his gun and shoot someone, quite possibly you.

What do you do? Wait until he takes a shot? Or take your shot first?

My point is that it's all too easy to sit here now picking holes and finding mistakes. The actual incident was all over in seconds and under immense pressure. No wonder there was a lot of confusion over who did what and when. Eye witness accounts are probably the least effective form of evidence and that's why there's so much emphasis placed on forensics.

Perhaps police should just let people like Mark Duggan wander around using their guns instead. I mean we don't accidentally want to shoot any of them. So let them all off. That way no mistakes can be made and the police cannot be blamed eh?

From my understanding,MD had no criminal convictions...he was known as asuspect.

Fair enough,the Police feel they acted out of no choice. So why feel the need to tamper with evidence if they were justified? Moving the car,moving the gun..if they were so justified...why do these things?

Lots of questions...but no answers as yet.

niceguy, if those were the circs why make stuff up afterwards?

I thought it kicked off because the police ignored the family afterwards

It did indeed...but so much has come to light since then.

The linked news articles are odd - they are saying it took 3 weeks for IPCC to issue corrections to their initial misleading statements. It was actually 3 days. If they have such an obvious inaccuracy, then it is hard to rely on any other part.

Thing is, from the off the police have behaved with a 'What's the problem?' attitude which really didn't help when they'd just killed a Black man in Tottenham

It is just extraordinary that after the Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson killings (and Harry Stanley - the man shot for carrying a chair leg in a plastic bag) the Met STILL continues to rush out untruthful information about serious incidents. There is obviously a very, very serious cultural problem that pervades the entire force and the IPCC.

The Met haven't actually issued any statements about the case, other than to refer the matter to the IPCC (and the one a couple of days ago, which said it was too early to draw conclusions as the IPCC investigation was still under way).

Niceguy, if you have some special inside knowledge that Duggan didn't stop when ordered by the police, you should contact the IPCC. Otherwise, you are just making it up. Which is rather cruel when the poor man is dead. Maybe he wasn't a vicar, but neither was he convicted of a crime attracting the death penalty...

I may be mistaken edam....but don't think he was convicted of any crime whatsoever.

Previous convictions aren't the point.

He was resisting arrest for a firearms offence, and there was a weapon capable of being fired at the scene.

The investigation is underway, information in the public domain is incomplete, and I tend to agree that it's premature to be drawing conclusions. The police, like anyone else, have a right to self defence and to defend others if there is an imminent risk to life. We simply don't have enough about what happened to know if a reasonable person would genuinely have thought that in these particular circumstances.

Op Trident usually enjoy a good level of public support, and that unit was not involved in the other fatal incidents mentioned in this thread.

MooncupGoddess don't forget the mentally ill man in Park Royal who called the police because he thought someone was after him with a gun, and subsequently got killed by the police himself while running around the street in his underwear.

Who says he was resisting arrest? That's just another slur. Bad enough to kill someone in the first place, even worse to cast mud at him when he's no longer around to defend himself.

Don't forget all the shit that was poured over poor Mr De Menezes before the truth finally emerged - that he was an entirely innocent man, gunned down for no reason other than 'looking a bit Muslim' and 'living in a block of flats'.

Funny...no reports yet...but he was "resisting arrest"

My apologies: I was quoting The Guardian, but it clearly isn't a sufficiently reliable source on any part of this story.

An eyewitness said that a police officer had shouted to the man to stop "a couple of times", but he had not heeded the warning. (Source: Telegraph )

My point isn't that the police have intentionally made stuff up. If that's the case then they should answer for that. My point is if you are put into situations which are of extreme stress and all over in a few seconds then chances are you are not trying to remember things as they occur but dealing with the situation. In this case "Is he going to shoot? Yes/No."

Afterwards there is a certain fog of war where people, even trained police will be confused as to what happened. In that situation, it's totally feasible that information which is released/leaked too early is later proven to be wrong by facts.

So all I'm saying is that we shouldn't be too critical of the police, we need to make allowances for what the police thought was the situation at the time and give time for the official investigation to complete.

It's the same with Mendes. A tragic mistake. But bear in mind that the officers who shot him were told he was a suicide bomber with possibly a bomb on him. They were in the same carriage as him and probably shitting themselves that this "terrorist" could blow them all to kingdom come and they wouldn't make it home to their own kids that night. If that's what you were told and you were there, would you shoot? I probably would have.

I don't think anyone blames the officers who shot Jean Charles de Menezes - they were horribly misled by their senior officers (the guy who was having a pee when Mr de Menezes left the block of flats deserves a demotion, though). And of course those senior officers have got off not only scot-free but have been promoted. Ridiculous that if they genuinely thought he was a threat, they followed him on and off two buses and let him get on a tube train, though.

Edith, I wouldn't be so quick to criticise the Guardian - all that has happened is that the Met have complained about the story, specifically the headline. Doesn't mean the Met are justified. They clearly don't want any bad publicity and equally clearly have a grudge against the Guardian for their dogged investigation into phone hacking, carried on in the teeth of not only flat denials from the Met, but complaints and harassment of anyone who dared to say 'this should be investigated'. This included threatening the Guardian's journalists with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for asking awkward questions, and attempts to get the Dowler family's lawyer sacked. The Guardian has caused considerable embarrassment to the Met - no doubt Scotland Yard would be thrilled to pin something on the paper.

niceguy it would be nice if you could get Mr de Menezes name even approximately correct. I know it's a bit tricky to spell but still give it a shot eh? On a thread like this it seems a bit disrespectful to get the name of an innocent man who was killed by police completely wrong especially when others have been talking about him (his name is here on the thread).

Also "My point isn't that the police have intentionally made stuff up. " They did though didn't they as initially they said that Mark Duggan had a gun and had fired it, hitting a police officer, and that is why they shot him. Fast forward a few days and (as usual) their story starts to unravel.

Exactly the same as Jean Charles Menezes. Exactly the same as Ian Tomlinson. And all of those deaths in custody at least a dozen of which have been concluded as having been caused by the police and no-one ever loses their job or gets found guilty of a crime. And look at the police going out to police the march where Ian Tomlinson died obscuring their identification numbers. What possible reason could they have for doing that, other than that they expected to behave in a way that they shouldn't.

Sardine, honest mistake getting his name spelt wrong.

But my whole point is that because everything happens so fast, what people HONESTLY THINK happened may not in reality be what did. Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable.

In the above case, it could be quite plausible that they did think Duggan fired at the police since an officer was shot in the vest. The natural assumption would be that he fired at the police rather than being hit by a stray bullet. If they did make it up, surely there'd be a massive coverup rather than the facts coming out.

What this tells me is that no news should be released until some time has passed and a proper investigation has taken place. Leaking bits of information when the facts are unknown causes exactly this sort of doubt.

We're asking the police to do an incredibly difficult and often violent job. Sometimes they will get things wrong. Overall they deserve our support, not criticism from the comfort of our armchairs.

Exactly the police keep releasing information after these incidents which paints them in the best possible light and then turns out not to be true.... Shouldn't they have learnt their lesson after the first time this happened?

AND if it all happens so fast they don't know what happened how come the incorrect information is always in favour of the police? They have never released information that said they accidentally shot an unarmed man whoops and later on it turns out he had a machine gun in his sock or whatever.