Mark Duggan- Shooting was lawful

[Whitershadeofpale]

here

Do people really believe that unlike the rest of the population, the police are 100% honest and would never do anything wrong on purpose or try to cover it up if they did?

That isn't true as has been proven in the past.

Nobody is saying that. But we are discussing this case in particular.

I don't think anybody is naïve enough to believe that the police are squeaky clean.

I don't think the comparisons with JCDM are fair.

It's not about comparisons, the cases are very different. It's about recognising that when the police make a high profile catastrophic mistake, it is wise to be extremely sceptical about their version of events.

In both the JCDM case and the MD case, I think being understanding of the person who fired the shot(s) is completely valid.

No of course the police are not 100% honest, just like 100% of the population are not.

BUT like most of society, the vast majority of officers ARE honest.

For me it boils down to this. If I were in the officer's shoes. I'd been told that I'm doing a hard stop on a known gangster who is likely to be armed.

I then have to actually do this and face down a guy who may at any moment shoot me or my fellow colleagues (and likely friends).

I'm given only a split second to decide if he is a threat or not. A split second to make a life & death decision.

Would I be unreasonable to shoot if he raised his hands quickly with an object in his hand that could possibly be a gun but I've only had maybe 0.5 seconds to decide? Oh and he's probably stood a distance away too. Oh and if i take a couple of seconds to actually double check, he could have shot my colleague or worse still myself.

Every officer knows that if they shoot and kill someone, everybody is going to be crawling over your split second decision with a fine tooth comb for months, if not years. Your life will be upside down, not to mention the psychological trauma of having to take someone's life for what may turn out to be a mistake.

In that situation, can anyone hand on heart say the police officer MURDERED (ie. premeditated) Mark Duggan? I'd say you were an idiot for thinking that and encourage you to go back to UFO and 9/11 conspiracies.

Was a mistake made? Yes. Could they have done things better? YES.

Was it murder? No.

it was said by the police that some of the intelligence was on a par with something overheard in a pub.

I'm sure some of the intelligence was on a par with something overheard in a pub. However, as far as I understand the jury's decision was that based on all the evidence the police had reason to believe that Mark Duggan had a gun when he got into the taxi and no reason to believe that he was no longer carrying it when he left the taxi.

The police operate on the balance of evidence available to them at the time and then have to face the consequences later, not after evidence has been judged by a court.

Quite often intelligence is information that is overheard in a pub. It is then submitted as intelligence and it's provenance and reliability is graded as such. That's why it is called intelligence, it's not evidence or proven fact but builds a picture of what is going on.

And in this case, the intelligence was bang on.

niceguy2
Very well put.

I still have trouble seeing how MD could lob the gun over a fence while he had his hands up AND while he was holding a phone - and there is no doubt that there was a gun at the scene. From that point onwards my mind remains open....

BTW 'DozyDoris' - what point are you trying to make by linking to a bio of MD; are you implying 'his sort' deserve all they get? because that's how it reads to me.

Plus whoever said a different headline could be MD shoots man dead after police fail to act on intelligence - this is like Guantanamo fucking Bay isn't it - where loads of men and even boys have been held for 12 years because of something the CIA think they might have done in the future. What an outrageous view. That by shooting MD we have saved potential victims of crime.

Isn't that pretty much what all intelligence is? Snippets of information which is extrapolated and conclusions drawn upon?

If it was fact it would be called erm...fact.

By the very nature of the beast, police must act upon intelligence, suspicion and instinct. Only acting after the event wouldn't be a very good idea would it?

Unfortunately humans make mistakes and police officers are ultimately humans.

If people accept that not all of the police are squeaky clean, why the 'why would they lie' type of responses?

why does anyone lie? to prevent the truth being known.

Donnie. I think an alternative narrative could have easily been:

"Several officers and members of public dead after police marksmen fail to open fire due to restrictive rules of engagement"

The last thing we need is to tie our highly trained but ultimately fallable armed officers up in red tape and threats of legal action. Because if we do that then there's a very good chance that next time they will hesitate. They may decide not to shoot until a shot has been fired.

Only that shot could end up in some innocent child, bystander or member of your family.

How would you feel about the police then? A highly trained officer with a gun trained on the perpetrator and they didn't fire until they'd shot dead your child/husband/mother/father?

Think about it this way. The time it takes you to press one key on your keyboard is probably less time than an officer has to make that life/death decision.

@Amber. I think the thing to remember is that when all the chaos is going on, it's very difficult to remember things.

A long time ago i woke up to hear a loud bang. A car had pulled up outside the local off license, smashed in the door and was robbing it. They quickly drove off after loading the car up. I saw everything. I couldn't see the registration from my angle.

The police asked me what colour the car was. I wasn't sure. Such a simple fact, I'd seen it all. I didn't know. I wasn't lying.

All I'm saying is that in that few seconds where it all kicked off, it's very difficult to remember everything. Your mind plays tricks on you afterwards.

It boils down to the phrase that ultimately the jury decided upon. The 'honestly held belief'. Did the officer shoot with an 'honestly held belief' that MD was a lethal danger. If yes, then it's not murder. If no then it is.

I don't think the police are completely honest, and I certainly think that they would use information to show themselves in the best possible light.

However, in this case 'lie' would mean a police cover up - e.g. illegally planting or fabricating evidence to show that it was reasonable for them to believe that Duggan had a gun. I know some people are suggesting that this might be the case, but a jury with all the evidence has judged this not to be so. I suspect there will be a judicial enquiry so maybe more information will come to light.

However, in the absence of that evidence I think the jury reached the only reasonable conclusion.

Yes I agree that it can be difficult to remember facts exactly in such situations. Absolutely.

it is the lies told in the aftermath that make me and many others dubious. The lie about mark duggan having fired a gun at police was announced by the IPCC but came from high ranking police officers.

is it that hard to see why people are untrusting of what the police say?

That announcement of him having fired at police was very influential in the public perception of the case. it was also very influential on the level of trust/scepticism on everything the police said happened.

I think there is a separate enquiry into the actions of the IPCC.

Or it could have been a very simple explanation like the officers thought a loud bang or even the sound from the other officers gun was MD firing a shot.

Ie. it may not have been a lie but simply the fog of war. That's why forensic evidence is so crucial.

I've already said that I understand about having to decide quickly and mistakes being possible. However, doesn't that mean that most time a police officer must kill a suspect because most times there will be some doubt what he is holding and because anyone could have a gun.

Doesn't that mean that stopping suspects must be done differently? Either with something like bullet proof shields or by shooting them dead from a distance in the first place and not messing about pretending that wasn't the plan.

In theory that would be lovely BackOnly.

But in practice it's not very realistic.

A bulletproof shield wouldn't stop a suspect from shooting someone else like a member of the public either on purpose or by accident. They're HUGE and would take far too long to get out of the car during a hard stop.

And shooting them dead from a distance is irrelevant since he'd still be dead. Worse still being further away you've even less chance of seeing a gun, your chances of missing go up a lot.

Plus when you shoot someone you go for the biggest target so you minimise the chance of you missing. It's not like the movies where you shoot someone in the arm/hand/shoulder/leg. You go for centre mass.

We don't know what each and every police officer is like, but consider this. We have seen that the first resort when they have killed someone or committed some other crime is lie about it. Even if what they did was justified it is still "let's lie and hide the evidence".

And yes that can be just a minority but now consider all the others who being police officers are in a position to know. They support the ones lying right? So they are a party to it.

If there are honest ones left, and surely there must be some, then they are so concerned with their own safety they will not interfere. They are no use to anyone.

Also, re: planting the gun, as far as I understand, the argument was that the police had found the gun in the taxi and then planted it near the scene, presumably to show that it was in Duggan's hand when he was shot and not still in the taxi.

However, the killing was found to be lawful because it was reasonable for the police to believe he had a gun, not because he actually did have the gun.

If the gun were planted to fabricate evidence it seems a bit cack handed and desperate, didn't convince the jury that Duggan was armed when shot, but in the event didn't affect the outcome. On the other hand, at least by apparently finding a gun to plant in the taxi , the police did show that there was a gun in the taxi, although not as definitively as if they had just left the gun in the taxi.

It's a moot point?! There is nothing to suggest the officers involved in this case have ever lied. That's not been an issue at the hearing.

And police officers don't support those who commit crimes, esp murder ffs!

police officers don't support those who commit crimes

You're kidding, right?