Obviously this incident is still the subject of an ongoing investigation. I do not know any of the people involved and I do not have access to all the facts. However in my opinion what happened is as follows;
On the day in question Mark Duggan was acting as a courier. That is to say he was transporting a gun from one person in one location to another person in another location. He may have been doing this because he's been paid too or because he's been intimidated into it and he may not have known exactly what he was transporting. The problem was that even before Mr Duggan set out on his journey somebody had already informed the Metropolitan police's anti-gun crime unit known as Operation Trident (SCD11) that he would be travelling through Tottenham carrying a gun on that day. This gave the SCD11 officers little choice other then to mount an operation to arrest Mr Duggan and take the illegal gun off the streets. As is standard procedure in this type of operation SCD11 enlisted help from armed officers from the Metropolitan police's specialist firearms unit (CO19) to stop the vehicle, secure the suspect(s) and secure any firearms.
Unfortunately when the CO19 officers surrounded the silver Toyota Estima taxi that Mr Duggan was travelling in on Ferry Road at 18:15 something went wrong. One of the CO19 officers either deliberately or accidentally discharged a single 9mm jacketed round from their Heckler & Koch MP5 carbine. Although DNA tests have yet to be completed it is unlikely that this bullet struck Mr Duggan. Instead it struck one of the other CO19 officers in their radio/bulletproof vest. Thinking that Mr Duggan had fired at them and therefore being in fear of their lives either the CO19 officer who'd been struck by the bullet or more likely a third CO19 officer reacted as they'd been trained too and fired two 9mm jacketed rounds from their H&K MP5 carbine in quick succession into what shooters call the central body mass. These two bullets struck Mr Duggan in his chest and upper left arm killing him almost instantly. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 18:41.
After searching the vehicle the police also recovered a third firearm that has so far only been identified as some sort of Bruni 8mm blank firing/sporting pistol which had been converted to fire 9mm jacket rounds. Although this gun had most certainly been fired at some point in it's life it had not been fired on that day. In fact it only contained one bullet which was in the magazine rather then the chamber so it had not even been made ready to fire and according to some reports it was still firmly wrapped in a sock.
Normally in high profile situations like this the police immediately try to calm things down by providing the victims family with lots of support and making neutral statements about the need not to jump to conclusions until the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) conduct a thorough investigation. On this occasion though the police chose to inflame the situation further by pretty much ignoring the Duggan family and releasing an entirely false but hugely provocative statement about how their officers had heroically shot and killed an armed gangster who was trying to kill them. Although the exact words were not used this statement may as well as said; "The police think the only good nigger is a dead nigger." Obviously this made the people of Tottenham furious so when the police continued to ignore the Duggan family on Friday and Saturday the rioting started.
Although the circumstances of the actual shooting are still somewhat unclear the mistakes in how the aftermath was handled are such elementary mistakes I am in little doubt that someone - not necessarily the police - set Mark Duggan up to be killed in order to create an interesting talking point and provoke a very real riot but one that was limited to the Tottenham area over one or possibly two nights. There are many reasons for why this was done however the main ones are;
- The Olympics. Inspectors from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have been in London all week to inspect preparations for the 2012 games including the all important security plan. The shooting of Mark Duggan raised the issues of gun/gang crime in east London. The rioting raised the issues of protests, riots and public order policing. Blaming the riots on Research In Motion's (RIM) Black Berry Messenger (BBM) service raised the issue of the security of communication networks. The BBM network has been of particular international interest for a couple of years now. Some authoritarian middle-eastern governments like Bahrain have banned it completely because they can't crack the network's encryption and America have added extra levels of security to allow US President Barack Obama to continue to use his Blackberry whilst in office.
- Property Developers. As simple as it sounds. The rioting was used as cover to destroy old buildings in poor neighbourhoods so property developers could make huge profits at the public's expense re-developing the derelict sites.
- Police Cuts. Like everyone else the police are not happy about being made redundant and having their pensions cut. By provoking riots they make themselves seem essential to the public and politicians and get themselves exempted from the cuts.
- Debt Default and Libya. Britain seems to be positioning itself to argue to the international community and the financial markets that Britain could not possibly be expected to pay it's debts or be stopped from stealing Libya's oil because the threat of major civil unrest is so great. Meanwhile we pay over £20 million for a Royal Wedding and the Prime Minister continues to go on £20,000 a week holidays. This is part of the reason why the London stock exchange dropped below 5000 points during the riots.
As for what should now be done about the people involved in the Mark Duggan shooting the key questions are who gave him the gun and who told the police he had a gun? If a link between these people and the police can be found then they and all of the police officers involved in the operation should be tried for murder by way of joint enterprise because although only one of them actually killed Mr Duggan they were all involved and no-one tried to stop it.
If no such link can be found I think it would be unfair to try the CO19 officer who fired the fatal shots for murder on their own. This is because if I had a gun and I was getting shot at I would most certainly shoot at the person I thought was doing it until they stopped. I don't see why this shouldn't apply equally to a police officer. However the CO19 officer who fired the first shot should most certainly be tried for negligent manslaughter through the careless handling of a firearm because it would be nearly impossible to prove that they fired on purpose.
Failing that the entire Metropolitan Police force should be tried for corporate manslaughter as the were over the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes.
However at the risk of provoking further riots which I do not want to see I think that achieving any of these outcomes is going to be very difficult because the case is not as clear cut as the Ian Tomlinson killing and that was incredibly difficult to bring to trial. So the Duggan family will have to decide if the pain of not seeing justice done is worse then the pain of trying to get justice done.
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