Tottenham: police shooting followed by riots

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Independent Police Complaints Commission?

Mark Duggan death: IPCC says it inadvertently misled media

Police watchdog says it led media to believe shots were exchanged but Duggan was carrying gun that was never used

Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 August 2011 17.47 BST

The police watchdog investigating the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked the first bout of rioting in London on Saturday, has said it may have "inadvertently" misled journalists into believing the Tottenham man had fired at police.

Responding to inquiries from the Guardian, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said in a statement: "it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged".

Duggan, 29, was shot dead after the Toyota Estima minicab he was a passenger in was stopped by Metropolitan poloce officers at around 6.15pm, in Ferry Lane, on Thursday 4 August.

Duggan was carrying a loaded gun but it was not used. Investigators have established that two shots were fired by one CO19 firearms officer.

A postmortem examination concluded that Duggan was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest. He also received a second gunshot wound to his right arm.

A police officer was also injured after a bullet presumably from a ricochet lodged in his police radio.

The alleged failure by the IPCC to provide Duggan's family and the local community with reliable information in the aftermath of his death was part of the reason local people took to the streets to protest last week.

The peaceful demonstration outside Tottenham police station later descended into rioting and looting that, within days, had inspired "copycat" disorder across England.

Duggan's family consistently said that if he was carrying a loaded weapon, they did not believe he would have fired at police.

The firearms officer who shot Duggan has said that he never claimed he was fired at and is understood to be upset that the family might have been misled into believing this.

It was scepticism surrounding the official account of his death reinforced by BlackBerry messages drawing attention to the inconsistencies in the account given by the authorities that led people to protest two days later.

The IPCC's first statement about Duggan's death, issued four hours after he was pronounced dead, made no reference to shots fired at police.

However, at least one spokesperson from the watchdog appears to have misinformed journalists, leading to reports the following that day that Duggan was killed by police after "firing first".

The Evening Standard said Duggan had been involved in a "shootout", adding that "spokesman for the [IPCC] said it appeared the officer was shot first before police returned fire".

The Mirror quoted an IPCC spokesman saying: "We do not know the order the shots were fired. We understand the officer was shot first, then the male."

An article in the Independent made a similar claim. It reported: "It is understood that the officer was shot first, but this is not known for certain, an IPCC spokesperson said."

The IPCC statement has said: "Analysis of media coverage and queries raised on Twitter have alerted to us to the possibility that we may have inadvertently given misleading information to journalists when responding to very early media queries following the shooting of Mark Duggan by MPS officers on the evening of 4 August."

Conceding it was possible it had issued information suggesting shots were exchanged, the IPCC added: "This was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot and taken to hospital.

"Any reference to an exchange of shots was not correct and did not feature in any of our formal statements, although an officer was taken to hospital after the incident."