Mark Duggan Lawfully Shot

It comes as no surprise whatsoever that the career criminal Mark Duggan was shot and killed quite lawfully, by armed police officers. There doesn't seem to be a situation in which our superb police ever shoot people wrongly.

Sure there have been completely innocent people shot, and the deranged man with a gun, shot to hurry things up, and the baddies who should have had a gun, though on this occasion didn't, but they were all shot with the best intentions and purest of motives.

Mark Duggan put himself in harms way when he devoted himself to a life of violent crime. The police killed him, but it could so easily have been another gang, or a street argument. He chose to play with fire and he got burnt.

I don't have a huge amount of sympathy that he found himself in front of armed police and I'm not that concerned that he was shot. I am however, always concerned that our police do things the right way and for the right reasons. Usually these days you can assume they won't. Firearms officers really do not need to be in that kind of culture.

I understand that people like the Met Commissioner are probably too dim to understand the consequences down the line of their inept, ideology driven version of policing. But in a free society (which clearly he despises) we demand better.

So, my problem, as ever is the IPCC and their protection racket and the way armed police deploy, act, are led and when they fire their weapons. With the Duggan case, the main issue for the IPCC to gloss over is the actual shooting, most of the rest is self evidently easily supported.

The summary is this; the police knew Duggan was involved in using firearms, they knew on this day he was going to acquire a firearm. They even seem to be aware that this fatal cab journey was to pick up a gun. So a team of firearms officers (CO19) was scrambled to intercept him.

They decided to use a tactic known as 'hard stop', which involves blocking in the vehicle a target is in with police cars and apprehending the suspect at gunpoint. When you know where he is going, I'm not entirely sure you need to do this, but it is what they decided on. I would think the best way to apprehend someone would be to present them, in a calm situation with a fait accompli. They are caught, by armed police and only the terminally insane would then react.

The best way to get an unpredictable result I would guess would be to surprise and disorient an armed man. He is likely to make an instinctive self preservation movement that may include firing a weapon (in defence as he would see it), to run, or to dispose of the weapon. He may, calmly stop what he is doing and raise his hands. Though that is akin to not jumping when someone pops a balloon.

Duggan looked to escape (his police profile refers to him as an escaper, that is, someone liable to try to escape). So the entirely unforeseen action of Duggan exiting the vehicle no doubt increased the tension in the police officers. As the lead car was blocking the pavement and with a wall and railings alongside, Duggan could only run in the direction of two police cars behind the taxi.

At this point, the police allege, Duggan reached inside his jacket and produced a gun, which he was raising when one of the officers fired two shots. One of these rounds proved fatal to Duggan and also struck a police officer. The sort of thing that happens when you surround someone and start shooting. Possibly better to deploy with tactical forethought but hey, ideal worlds and all that.

The report has the officer saying he could see the gun and that it was being raised towards him. Now I don't care if Duggan was going to throw it away or whatever, that alone would justify opening fire. You know he has a gun, there it is, fire.

Only, the photo of the weapon as found 4.35 metres from the taxi is a picture of a sock. Because the gun was in a sock. So if the officer had said 'I saw him reach for and produce a sock' that would have been factually accurate. But he said he saw a gun. This is a bit of semantics as I accept that the intelligence was good and in the split second and with the suspect moving, he should expect to get shot. Gun, gun in a sock, it doesn't matter.

But the report presses many areas on detail, yet here it accepts the officer saw a gun. Which didn't then just drop to the ground apparently. And a police officer caught Duggan before he hit the ground too. Which suggests even further than he was unlikely to escape, so close were they.

Mark Duggan is dead for two reasons. Firstly because he chose to become involved in criminal behaviour with firearms, but also due to the faulty tactics of our armed police. And the report makes clear that neither the police nor the IPCC care.

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/investigation_commissioner_reports/IPCC-investigation-report-fatal-shooting-of-MD.pdf

Secrecy Does Not Serve Us

The inquest into the shooting of Mark Duggan by police officers, may not be able to hear the decisions made by senior officers that led to the shooting. Why, is not explained, though I think it is fairly easy to guess. What is not surprising is that this reckless and careless elite, have no shame in asking to be able to hide from scrutiny.

It is no coincidence I'm sure that the rise in political corruption has led to an increase in calls for ever more secrecy in certain situations from them, particularly trials. I also don't think it coincidental that Kenneth Clarke is as keen on secrecy as he is the EU. When you know you have something to hide......

Police Shooting - Update

And here it comes; no weapon discovered 'so far' in the GMP shooting incident. What will the line be if they find a gun locked in a metal case, in the boot? That, because he didn't raise his hands he was going for a gun, which we now know he had? Really the things we are supposed to take as serious comment these days is beyond parody. In Alice in Wonderland the eponymous character says she is able to believe six impossible things before breakfast. This is a feat routinely achieved by politicians and senior police officers these days and something they think we share with them.

Once again, what really happened, I feel sure, is that poorly trained officers were given guns and sent on a mission. Their weapons, para military garb and aggressive training were combined with a briefing that they should expect to face men 'with weapons'. Now, as the stand-off in the film Crocodile Dundee 2 proved, it is the nature of the weapon that conditions the response.

If you have a man with a knife in your gun sight you do not have to shoot him until he is in a position to actually harm someone. If you have an armed man besieged, you do not shoot him to get it over with, even if it is disrupting traffic in Chelsea.

The tactics and deployment of armed police is, I maintain, flawed psychologically. Worse, I think this is recognised but for some reason it has been decided not to address it. The IPCC assiduously avoid asking difficult questions that would reveal inadequacies in the police use of firearms. Training is conducted in a strange way that seems to assume Britain is awash with guns and anyone is a potential killer.

Children are castigated for playing openly with patently toy guns, because 'it could get them shot'. which is true, but instead of the police seeing the children as at fault we should recognise the danger lies in the faulty thinking of the men with real guns; the police.

The need for more armed police these days is an unfortunate fact. The need to have them trained to the highest standard would have seemed pure common sense. Apparently not.

IPCC: Placed Story?

At the weekend there was an article in a broadsheet about the gun at the centre of the police shooting, that preceded the riots in London. It seems that an earlier incident may not have been properly investigated and an opportunity to take that gun out of circulation, potentially missed.

The gun, a Bruni 92 replica that had been converted to fire live ammunition was used in a 'pistol whipping' at a hairdressers and the officers who followed up the incident have been put on 'restricted duties' whilst their actions are investigated. The suggestion was that they could have found the gun and precluded the incident that led to rioting.

The story isn't very substantive and has the smell of being planted. Even if the gun had been seized after the earlier incident, why are we to suppose that Mark Duggan, if he wanted a gun wouldn't have acquired a different one? The story seems designed to distract attention from the actual shooting, immediately after which it was claimed that Duggan had fired first. Not only was this not true, it now appears the gun was in a sock, in a shoe box.

Once again it seems that armed police attending an incident have been extremely ready to open fire, presumably keyed up by the nature of their briefing. The logic appears to be that a criminal with a gun will always use it, whereas we only get that impression when considering armed police. The strategy and tactics applied in armed incidents seems at best to be childish.

If this story was planted and the finger points at the IPCC, it is a disgraceful attempt to obfuscate and distract, in a very serious inquiry. I wish they were more concerned with helping the police correct aberrant behaviour. It is what the public think they are paying for.

Latest From The IPCC

The slow drip feed of information about the shooting of Mark Duggan continues. An insult to the intelligence of a tapeworm, but that is how they choose to do it. We now know that the police opened fire first and that Mark was killed by a single police bullet and another round hit a police officer. Mark had a gun that was converted to be able to fire live ammunition. He was shot during an anti guns operation.

No one can take issue with the police attempting to deal with gun crime. There is no issue with the police firing first. This is not some kind of duel or Western shootout. If the police can see a danger to life they should negate it immediately. They do not need to wait until someone is shot as proof they should shoot a gunman.

However, questions remain. In this 'planned' operation with 'trained' armed police involved, why exactly did they choose to confront Mark whilst in a taxi? In the street? With the driver still in his seat? From the IPCC we gather the beloved MP5 was again the weapon of choice, for an arrest operation that I'm guessing would be designed to be carried out at a range of 6 to 10 feet? (MP5 range: at least 650 feet). And these trained police officers no doubt assumed the tactical deployment we see when shown it on the TV, of standing either side of the vehicle. Directly opposite. Thus enabling them to shoot each other. When are the IPCC going to address these issues? When are they going to insist that the men with guns need to be trained for the situations they face, with a better understanding of tactics. Then clamp down on the idiots that lead them. It is clear the information and the way they are sent out puts lives in danger. And as we have seen all too often, not just criminals lives.

The Shooting of Mark Duggan

A year ago I wrote here about the relaxed approach the IPCC have to the use of deadly force by police officers, in an article about the shooting of Harry Stanley. He was killed basically because the armed officers were told he had a weapon and so accepted it as a fact and further assumed that he would use it. So when he turned round on hearing 'Stop! Armed Police' having no idea who they were shouting at, the police interpreted it as his intention to shoot them and so opened fire and killed him. By the uncritical report they produced, it is clear the IPCC are happy with this type of police action and the public should expect it to happen routinely. As is possibly the case in the shooting of Mark Duggan. Here the bullet that hit a policeman was from a policemen (chump score 1) and that by Sunday they had found a weapon that was not 'a police weapon'. So not the easy to find gun clearly seen by armed officers thus fearing for their lives who opened fire. Chump score 2. The evasive nature of the police response to questions about the shooting clearly indicates they know something didn't go right. (Bearing in mind that the police shooting someone is never seen as a failure. The thought of even an armed man being arrested rather than shot is completely off the scale for them, it seems).

As the IPCC and the police would see such outrageous criticism as anti-police let me give some outrageous perspective. The police issue 'hollow-point' ammunition to their armed units. Hollow-point has also been called 'dum-dum' and is outlawed by the Geneva Convention for military use. The reason it is used at all is that as the bullet's head collapses it causes a bigger wound (more likely to 'take down' a target) and also loses energy more quickly (so less likely to injure anyone else by passing through a target). I fully support the use of this ammunition as it helps to reduce the danger of an armed suspect to the police officers or members of the public in the vicinity. The police however should  restrict their shooting to situations where they know there is a clear and present danger and the IPCC should have the guts to criticise them when they don't

Tottenham

The first thing to say about this situation of course is that the rioting has nothing to do with the shooting. If some incident can get enough people onto the streets, then the 'entitled' will use that as cover for theft and 'entertainment'. It isn't that they don't fear the police, they don't fear the judicial system. Being caught means that you might have to put one of the laptops you stole on ebay to pay the fine (with a little left over naturally). Then we come back to the chance of being caught. Not high, not when you consider the ineptitude of those running the police.

The amount of looting and destruction by fire was more due to the late response of police in numbers (apparently) than the volume of the mob. Whenever senior officers are forced into public view they do seem to have been promoted on the principle that no one brighter than the man (woman) above should be elevated. This is even more evident when they talk about incidents. Curiously the shooting on Thursday of Mark Duggan has had scant space in the papers, no detail available. That is the first alarm bell ringing; the police love to talk about shooting people when they get it right. Then there are the strange press releases, prone to 'amendment'. In one of the first reports I heard on the shooting it was said that 'police don't yet know the order of shooting, just that one of their officers was shot and they returned fire'. Sounds like an order of shooting to me. Then, later we learn that the officer's injury could have been more serious if the bullet hadn't hit his radio. But still no word about the gun Duggan was carrying, why he was targeted for armed arrest whilst in a cab nor how many shots he fired. Now we understand police have, at last, found a gun that was 'not a police weapon'. What curious terminology and why mention this on Sunday, when the shooting occurred on Thursday? When the police don't mention stuff like this, they are trying to get their story straight. OK so we have moved on from the days of Ian Blair and smear campaigns against those wrongly shot, but still, why admit that you made a mistake?

Again, if this does turn out to be a mistake on the part of armed officers, it will likely be down to the planning and tactics, rather than the actual quality of the individual armed officer (though there is room to be cautious about police quality full stop). Did we have another situation where officers were sent out, wound up to arrest someone likely to be carrying and not afraid to use a gun? Did they encircle the cab, thus increasing the likelihood of shooting each other? Why this perpetual love of the dramatic arrest in the street (in a cab!) at gunpoint, rather than catching someone alone and away from other people?

I am no friend of the criminal and would rather see them shot than police officers, so I have no problem if the police open fire first. When they know they are in danger and also when their training and tactics have given every opportunity for them to stay safe, the public to be reassured of their safety and the criminal the chance to surrender peacefully, then they should move in. But all of us are put in great danger by the gung-ho and militaristic mentality of armed police officers. They are deployed too readily, to unproven 'armed incidents' and always assume a guns pointed attitude. I'm sure in their defence the police would say that in a country where guns are banned, only bad people would be carrying them. Which doesn't explain the reckless endangerment of a man's life, when he has guns pointed at him because a member of the public has said he has a gun, which is completely unverified and it turns out to be a child's toy. Or the actual killing of a man with a chair leg in a bag. In the US where in many places the carrying of a gun is legal, officers trained the British way would approach everyone with their guns drawn. But they don't because a) they don't know there's a danger until they know there is a danger and b) because they know how easily accidents happen.

It would be most useful if the training of armed police in the UK became more professional and oriented towards protecting the public rather than shooting people and if the police generally understood that mistakes do happen and it is how you respond and learn from experience that matters and on which they will be judged. Currently, cover up and lie is their first option (remember of course, that the current crop of senior police are from the era of Tony Blair, so are merely copying the style of government they have been brought up under). Of similar utility would be an Independent Police Complaints Commission that actually investigated and pointed out faults and options for improvement. Instead we have a supine body that seeks to minimise public knowledge of police ineptitude. They are lucky that we no longer have investigative reporters in this country (well, non celebrity obsessed ones anyway).

Another shooting, Another story

Fresh from an Independent Police Complaints Commission report, the tale of the shooting of Bartholomew Buckley by West Yorkshire Police. This time the police have been wound up by the hysterics of the woman calling them fearing for her life and the assailant having a record of threatening police with bladed weapons, apparently. Naturally and quite correctly an Armed Response is decided on and three ARV's and a dog van are sent.

On arrival the woman is seen screaming for help and banging on an upstairs window, so still seems to be serious an a forced entry is made. Now for me, the officers would and should be careful, assertive and high on adrenaline but here, once again the added ingredient is some strange firearms attitude of expecting and meeting aggression with force. When Buckley appears at the top of the stairs he removes his T shirt and shouts at the police to kill him (both civilians in this had been drinking, in fact a bottle of vodka between them). He was unarmed. A taser was fired at him to calm him down but it missed. Buckley then disappeared into a bedroom and three officers mounted the stairs. On reaching the top Buckley threw a drinks bottle at the first officer and another, trying to avoid the missile fell down the stairs. The first officer fired his Taser and again missed and at this point Buckley charged at the officer. The third policeman there apparently feared he was attempting to get the officers pistol (which was holstered and not easy to withdraw if you don't know how) and fired a round from his H&K G36 a rifle (technically a sub-carbine) with a muzzle velocity of 3018ft per sec. He then fired four more rounds. He hit Buckley once, in the arm.

At the gunshot the officer being charged threw himself down the stairs and Buckley fell after him. As they clattered to the bottom and Buckley stood up a further officer, fearing a colleague had been shot (?) fired a baton round hitting Buckley and knocking him down. The report says at this point that the officers 'realised Buckley had a serious gunshot wound and First Aid was immediately administered.' What strikes me is that they then realised a bunch of police officers can actually overpower one man.

I'm sorry if I am banging on about this, but I think that when police officers take high velocity weapons inside houses there is something going on between their ears that is way too martial and self-impressed. Clearly a Taser would have dealt with the man even if he had the samurai sword they thought they may be facing. If in grave danger a drawn Glock pistol would have been more easily brought to bear and plenty lethal enough. Luckily they were not in a modern house, else the rounds loosed off with what appears a little abandon from the G36, may have been killing the neighbours too.

To be fair, the IPCC report does point this out and says that there was a lack of planing and also that the use of the Taser may have inflamed the situation. Certainly does when you repeatedly miss. But it doesn't seem strong enough in questioning the attitudes that lead to these decisions, comforting itself that the officers were correct in most of their actions. Though interestingly, they do go into detail about how difficult it is to remove a Glock pistol from its holster if you haven't been trained to do it.Apparently, an unknowing firearms officer took six minutes. Yet the IPCC think that a policeman opening fire because he fears his colleagues' pistol may be seized, is appropriate. Reading their report it seems plain that this isn't acceptable. It is dangerous and moronic to believe otherwise.

With policeman falling down stairs and trained firearms officers firing 8 times at close quarters, managing to hit the target twice, it would seem comedic but for the fact that these people are loosing off lethal lumps of lead.

Stay safe. Evening all.

Police Shooting -Terry Nicholas

Reading yet another report by the IPCC gives the impression that the IPCC are not trying to get to the truth, nor looking for recommendations for improvements.

Terry Nicholas was obviously not a straightforward fellow, having been shot at on at least a couple of occasions. He was offered police protection but refused it, saying he would sort it out himself. The police became aware that he was going to acquire a firearm and followed him to Paolo's restaurant in West London. The police had an armed surveillance team and CO19 firearms officers present. Nicholas parked his moped at the rear of the restaurant and was later seen to receive something from another man outside the front. It was decided to arrest him, now presumably with a weapon when he came out. And so as Nicholas went to his moped two police cars drove towards him. He opened fire and the police officers stopped their cars, got out and opened fire. No officers were hit but Nicholas was killed. The IPCC were happy that the officers were wearing their 'police' caps and that they didn't shout 'armed police' was understandable (as indeed it was) and therefore there was nothing else that they could do. It was sad and unfortunate that Terry Nicholas was dead, but it was his fault for opening fire.

The planing again is clearly to blame and the police seem to care nought for their repeated failures. Surely even a person of limited imagination would think twice about driving unmarked cars towards a man with a gun, who had been shot at before, particularly when that man is in a confined space. What exactly did they expect to happen? They could have contained the area with marked cars and called out to him by name, saying they knew he had a weapon and to put it down. But no, they decide to rush towards a man with a gun, who is cornered and fearing for his life.

Mark Saunders -Gunman

The news is full of stories of the police shooting of barrister Mark Saunders. Mark had, under the influence of drink and drugs apparently, fired a shotgun out of the window of his Chelsea house. This is much less than we would expect of any citizen and quite correctly armed police were sent to the scene, to offer adequate protection should he start to target people. Is that what they did? Clearly not. The area had been evacuated so there was no one to shoot. The armed police then took up forward positions, basically in harms way. That is not a containment or a defensive tactic. The police do not have to seek to engage with firearms; as long as everyone is safe they can sit back and wait. It seems likely now that Mark was not intending to hurt anyone, but he did still have a weapon and did seem to be behaving erratically. Still not a problem though.

During the siege, Mark had negotiators trying to call to him, armed officers shouting for him to put down the weapon and a helicopter making its noise overhead. At no point does this chaotic police activity appear to have worried them. With his last words apparently being 'I can't hear you' and hanging out a window, still holding the shotgun seven police officers opened fire. 5 of them managed to hit their target. It is difficult to understand how this could be anything other than manslaughter. Rather than calm the situation the police kept themselves in a state of high anxiety and had placed themselves in positions, not to dominate the area and keep it secure, but to confront Mark. Why, for instance were there at least seven officers in positions where they could fire on the 'gunman'? Mark for his part, seemed almost detached from the scene, uncomprehending. He was not providing tension, the police were keeping themselves wound up. It would seem the armed units are trained to be aggressive, to confront and challenge and to shoot first and ask questions later. This last is not a glib suggestion, but a reflection of the events. They wouldn't let Mark's wife speak to him and the assumption was, from the outset that he was a danger. A man discharging a gun openly and randomly is not something to be taken lightly, but we either decide that we take things slowly and ask questions to establish what we are faced with, or we accept that our police are in perpetual danger and must shoot first.

As I have said before, it is the faulty briefings and the mindset of the officers on arrival that is leading to so many police killings. In the Falklands war, the British Sea Harriers were shooting down Argentine aircraft attacking our forces and so fighters were sent in to deal with them. These aircraft, optimised and armed for air to air combat did their best work at high altitude, the Sea Harrier performed best at medium level. So, the Argentines 'trailed their coats' and waited for the Sea Harriers to come up and get them, where they would be attacked on the Argentines terms. But they represented no threat to the British forces, so the Harriers watched them, but left them alone. The Argentine fighters went home, having achieved nothing. Aggression would have sent the Harrier pilots racing after the enemy regardless; a cool head and rational thinking suggested otherwise. Again, the shooting of a man with a chair leg in a bag (which was thought to be a gun) was an example of the faulty thinking of firearms officers. Calling out 'armed police' in the street would probably cause any number of passers by to turn to see what was going on. Yet this simple, predictable and understandable action cost a man his life, because the police 'knew' he was a gunman.

In waters near Iran, on a high state of alert the US warship USS Vincennes detected an aircraft heading towards it and decided its action in so doing was aggressive. The Vincennes broadcast a message identifying itself and warning the aircraft on a particular bearing that if it did not turn away it would be fired upon (the bearing being that from the warship). To know who this unknown ship was talking to, the pilot of the Iranian airliner they were targeting would have to know the bearing, from that warship. An impossibility. So it carried on and was shot down. Exactly the same, faulty mindset. A lack of proper planning that made a fatal shooting almost inevitable. The problem with the British police is though, that this has never been recognised and as can be seen from their protestations, the police are not looking to learn anything.

We await the next one, as surely as night follows day.