Growing Police Scandal In The UK: No Evidence That Mark Duggan Fired At Police Before They Shot Him

Mark Duggan did not shoot at police, says IPCC

While the finding do not in any way substantiate the violence and ignorance that has taken place on the streets of the UK where hundreds of buildings were burned and looted.........the news that Mark Duggan did not fire at the police greatly undercuts the credibility of the law enforcement and their choice to use deadly force.

This has echoes of Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African immigrant in New York who was gunned down by the police. The ricocheting rounds from the police were assumed to be gun fire from Diallo, triggering more fire toward his way.

In the case of Duggan - the police man who was hit by a bullet and was saved from injury because the bullet hit his radio - appears to have been hit by a police bullet that ricocheted .

I traditionally give deference to the police in the context of the dangerous task they have in engaging criminal suspects and the unknown threats that this entails. It seems that they should have been less aggressive in confronting him and instead secured the taxi cab and then extricated the occupants. They appeared to "Shoot first and ask questions later".

From the UK Guardian

Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked London's riots, did not fire a shot at police officers before they killed him, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said on Tuesday.

Releasing the initial findings of ballistics tests, the police watchdog said a CO19 firearms officer fired two bullets, and that a bullet that lodged in a police radio was "consistent with being fired from a police gun".

One theory, not confirmed by the IPCC, is that the bullet became lodged in the radio from a ricochet or after passing through Duggan.

Duggan, 29, was killed last Thursday in Tottenham, north London, after armed officers stopped the minicab in which he was travelling.

The IPCC said Duggan was carrying a loaded gun, but it had no evidence that the weapon had been fired. It said tests were continuing.

The officer who fired the fatal shots has been removed from firearms duties, which is standard procedure, pending the IPCC investigation.

Officers from the Met's Operation Trident and Special Crime Directorate 11, accompanied by officers from CO19, the Met's specialist firearms command, stopped the silver Toyota Estima minicab in Ferry Lane, close to Tottenham Hale tube station, to arrest Duggan.

He was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest, and received a second gunshot wound to his right bicep. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 6.41pm.

The IPCC's statement said the bullet lodged in the police radio was a "jacketed round". This is a police-issue bullet and is "consistent with having been fired from a [police] Heckler and Koch MP5", it said.

The non-police firearm found at the scene was a converted BBM Bruni self-loading pistol. The gun was found to have a "bulleted cartridge" in the magazine, which is being subjected to further forensic tests.