Jury finds Duggan killing lawful

[David Guyatt]

Why should I be surprised? The Plod have a long history of muddying the waters. Note the family's statement that the Plod told the IPCC that Duggan originally shot at police officers, and that the compliant IPCC duly passed this disinformation (was he supposed to have shot them with a mobile phone?) to the media for circulation.

The words"stitch up" resound.

Duggan family decline to meet with Met chief after lawful killing verdict

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe to meet community leaders from Tottenham as Duggan family vow to continue 'struggle'

• Matthew Weaver
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 9 January 2014 10.15 GMT
  

Mark Duggan's aunt Carole told BBC radio 'we will just keep asking questions'. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

The head of the Metropolitan police is to meet community leaders fromTottenham on Thursday after an inquest jury's verdict into a police marksman's killing of Mark Duggan sparked an angry reaction from his family and supporters.
But Duggan's family members have said they will not be attending the meeting with Bernard Hogan-Howe and that their struggle for justice will go on. Duggan's aunt, Carole, said the family was still in shock and turmoil following the verdict .
And she confirmed that they would be seeking a review of the inquest jury's decision. "We don't know how they reached the conclusion they did," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday.
She said the family did not want to see any more violence or demonstrations, after Duggan's death sparked the 2011 summer riots. But she added: "We will keep coming back with questions. The struggle will go on peacefully. But we will not give peace to the authorities until we get justice. We will just keep asking questions."
She was asked whether the slogan "no justice, no peace", which the family shouted after the verdict, meant they wanted to see more trouble. Carole Duggan insisted that was not the case.
She added: "There are also questions around the IPCC investigation in the beginning, which may have brought the jury to the verdict that they came to." On the evening of the shooting the Met wrongly told the IPCC that Duggan had fired at officers. The IPCC spread this misinformation to journalists.
Hogan-Howe said he accepted that the police needed to do "much more" to build the trust of black Londoners and said he was "open to ideas and advice".
Asked if the family would be attending the meeting, Carole Duggan said: "Not just yet. The family are still in shock right now about the results of yesterday. We are in turmoil, we don't know what's going to happen right now."
Hogan-Howe has agreed to a pilot project involving firearms officers wearing video cameras to record incidents such as the one in which Duggan was killed.
"We want to see if this is an effective way to record evidence and ensure public confidence," he said in statement on Wednesday night.
The move was welcomed by former Met commissioner Lord Blair. "If everything is on film then it becomes easier to understand what's happened," he told Today.
He added that video of the death of Lee Rigby showed the public that police officers have to react in "milliseconds".
Hogan-Howe welcomed the lawful killing verdict, but recognised the lingering anger and added: " I know that we have much work to do with black Londoners to build trust and confidence in the Metropolitan police."
The commissioner stressed that his armed officers' aim was to save lives but recognised the jury's verdict would not end the debate about the Duggan shooting: "We know that the arguments will continue about what happened in this case. So we appeal for a balanced debate about the risks to the public from gun-crime."
Assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, who was shouted down with cries of "scum" and "murderer" when he made a statement outside the Royal Courts of Justice following Wednesday's verdict, said he understood the family's anger.
Speaking on Today he said: "I can understand their grief and anguish, but 10 ordinary Londoners have looked at all the evidence over three months, rather than some of the nonsense that's been put on the internet over the last two and a half years, and their conclusion was that Mark Duggan was lawfully killed.
"The important thing for us is looking forward in terms of the confidence of Londoners in the local area, and our relations, particularly with the black community, and the commissioner is doing that today.
Rowley added: "We want to reassure Londoners that they can have confidence in our firearms policing and the way they tackle gun crime inLondon, as indeed the jury demonstrated they had yesterday.
"We are not here to pretend that relations with all sectors of the community are perfect in every regard, and that's why the commissioner wants to talk to the community leaders this morning."
He confirmed that from April the Met would be testing having firearms officers wear cameras. "We are committed to it, but there are some technical complexities over how we make it happen," he said.
He said the move should help speed up inquests into deaths at the hands of police. "We can get there much quicker if we have got it on video, so why wouldn't we?" he said.
Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott said it was important to understand the "history to that bitterness and anger" due to the relationship between police and urban communities.
Speaking to ITV's Daybreak, she said: "People have to understand how unhappy some people are about this verdict and why they're unhappy, and it's because of the relationship between the police and some of the community in our urban areas.
"There's still a lot of concern about stop and search, and the fact that black youth and Muslim youth get stopped and searched far more than white youth and it bears no relationship to the actual criminality.
"We just have to understand that there's a history to that bitterness and anger and there's still work to do to build the community's confidence in the police.
"You can't deal with gun crime and gang crime in London unless you have the consent of the community and that's why these sorts of issues have to be dealt with very carefully," she said.

[David Guyatt]

The man at the centre of the Duggan storm, Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan Howe, has form:

Met police's Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe referred to IPCC over Hillsborough role

Hogan-Howe was inspector with South Yorkshire police at time of disaster at Sheffield's Hillsborough football ground in 1989

• David Conn
  
• The Guardian, Monday 16 December 2013 21.59 GMT
  

Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe was an inspector in South Yorkshire police at the time of the Hillsborough disaster Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has been formally referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for investigation over his role in the Hillsborough disaster. The IPCC said the mayor's office for policing and crime had referred the complaints.
Meanwhile, a court has heard further allegations that South Yorkshirepolice tampered with evidence from the disaster. Pete Weatherby QC, representing 22 bereaved families affiliated to the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, told a pre-inquest hearing that film of events on the day, taken by the police with hand-held cameras, has an "unexplained gap" of 10 minutes. "I stress, there may be integrity issues here," he said.
A further complaint about Hogan-Howe was made by Paul Spearritt, whose older brother, Adam, was 14 when he and 95 others were killed in the crush in the Leppings Lane "pens" at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough football ground on April 15 1989. The Spearritt family were distressed that Adam was incorrectly included in a list of people "safe and well" read out on the evening of the disaster by a senior South Yorkshire police officer at a Sheffield boys' club where anxious friends and relatives were waiting for news.
Hogan-Howe was at the time an inspector with South Yorkshire police, and served as a senior officer at the boys' club. The IPCC said it would investigate whether Hogan-Howe read out the list, as part of its ongoing investigation into alleged police misconduct leading to the deaths, and the subsequent alleged police "cover-up".
After the Hillsborough Independent Panel published its report last year, Hogan-Howe said he had originally made a statement to the Taylor inquiry, then declined to change his statement when later contacted by a police officer. It appears Hogan-Howe never made a statement about his actions at Hillsborough. The IPCC said it "must now decide how this matter should be investigated."
Hogan-Howe has said that he will "co-operate fully with any inquiries from the IPCC".
Weatherby's assertion that 10 minutes of video footage, which could have included the build-up to the fatal crush, are missing, followed concerns he previously expressed that South Yorkshire police may have tampered with film. Weatherby asked the coroner, Lord Justice Goldring, to give permission for the families' appointed expert to examine the tapes forensically.
The IPCC told the coroner that 240 South Yorkshire police officers' accounts of the disaster were subsequently altered. Thirteen officers, all retired and not suspected of misconduct, are refusing to co-operate with the investigation. The IPCC has interviewed 143 officers so far.
The new inquest is due to start in Warrington on 31 March next year. The original inquest's verdict of accidental death was quashed last December after more than 20 years of campaigning by the families.

But will the IPCC do anything other than scratch their behind and pontificate? I suspect not.

[Magda Hassan]

Perhaps they can start building bridges by not killing members of the community?

[David Guyatt]

I do harbour some pretty cynical questions about this killing. Firstly, the faked up police claims that Duggan got out of the taxi and began shooting, next the gun the police say they found close by (was it a police throw-away, I'm inclined to ask - and if so, why were the armed response team to hand?). Had someone decided Duggan had to go, or was it a hung ho killing by a cop or cops, and if so why?

Basically, it smells to high heaven.