Lawful killing of Mark Duggan

Mr Jack said:
The Police received a report a man was carrying a gun They approached the man and ordered him to lay down his weapon. The man turned towards them, apparently bringing the gun they thought he was carrying to bear on them.

What would you have them do?
Click to expand...

Be able to recognise the difference between a shot gun and a table leg?

It sets a very dangerous precedent if the police can shoot dead anyone who they've had a report of having a gun and panics when they are accosted by several armed officers. It's very easy to say in the cold light of day that faced with that, out of the blue, you'd drop whatever you were carrying and lie down on the floor.

Let's say I hate you and know you have a few anxiety issues. I see you walking down the road to your local pool hall with your cue so I ring the police and tell them there is a mad man with a gun walking down the road. At that point your life is now entirely based on how you'd react to the screeching of car (which by the way are usually unmarked thus obfuscating an already confusing situation for the potential victim further) wheels and having several men shout and point guns at you. Panic, flinch or just give one of them a funny look and you're dead.

Don't get me wrong, my mate had his flat burned to the ground in the Tottenham riots so I certainly have no love for Duggan, but on the general point I don't think giving the police carte blanche to end the lives of people they may have had reports (which as we've seen from the table leg incident aren't always accurate) on and might not react 100% perfectly in a panicked situation.

Police marksmen should be some of the best firearms users in the world and they should have lightening reflexes. They should have enough time and composure to reasonably ascertain if an assailant does have a firearm (and not just an 'object') and whether they are at threat before shooting. This isn't a spaghetti western where someone who already has their gun primed, aimed and with their finger on the trigger [i.e the armed officer] gets shot dead by Quick Draw Mcgraw character who can pull his gun out, aim and fire all before the other person can think [i.e. a chav with a bulge in his pocket].

Let me ask the question another way, when was the last time an armed police officer was shot and killed because they decided not to shoot and allow a little time for benefit of the doubt? I can't think of one, but I can think of lots of people (some of whom entirely innocent) who've been shot and killed by police who shoot first and worry about the circumstances later.
 
Last edited:
Duggan should have paid attention to Chris Rock:

edit - actually its got swearing in it - but I was linking to "Chris Rock - How not to get your ass kicked by the police! "
 
Last edited:
estebanrey said:
It sets a very dangerous precedent if the police can shoot dead anyone who they've had a report of having a gun and panics when they are accosted by several armed officers.
Click to expand...

This wasn't exactly the case here.. he had more than a little history, despite what his lovely mommy says about her little cherub...

"To Duggan’s right in the picture is Junior Cameron, a career criminal serving a life sentence for shooting a man after a minor prang between their cars.
Cameron pulled a semi-automatic pistol on Gary Guthrie in Streatham, South London, and shot him in the back as he tried to escape. The 39-year-old died in hospital.
Cameron committed the murder in October 2007 – six months after being freed early from prison. The man to Duggan’s left is Darrell Albert, who was in the same car as Cameron that night.
During the confrontation he shot Mr Guthrie’s friend Rowan Williams with a Baikal 9mm pistol – now the weapon of choice for gangsters.
Mr Williams, 37, took a bullet in the neck but it was removed by surgeons and he survived.
As for Duggan, he was arrested on suspicion of murder in October 2003 after a body was found next to a ditch in Tottenham.
Gavin Smith, 28, had been abducted by a gang and then knifed in the back 17 times. He died from multiple stab wounds that pierced his lungs. Duggan was released without charge.
Three years later, he was arrested for the attempted murder of Surkhan Hussein, a Turkish mechanic who lost a kidney after being shot.




article-2536197-1A7FA5E800000578-48_634x589_zps698768f6.jpg
 
Clearly a lot more to the person than met the eye. Really was a silly thing to "protest"/an excuse to steal en masse because you felt society owed you something. A right piece of work.
 
thedoc46 said:
Marksmen with guns on them as well as bullet proof vests, don't you think, they could actually wait 'til' they see a weapon before opening fire. I mean not too much to ask is it.. In either case, no gun was ever pulled on them.. Let assume for a second that they indeed do have weapons? Which they didn't (important FACT there). In the real world, they're going to have to take aim if they have any hope in actually hitting the cop that's shouting at them. Which neither did. That thing you see in movies, as in firing from the hip, almost never hits its target, let alone people protected in bullet proof vests. These people had guns on them. The person with the gun (most likely a rifle vs a handgun or shotgun) on them, is always going to lose the shootout, if they're going to need to take aim against the person who's got them squared away in their targets and finger on the trigger..

This should be NOTHING to do if Duggan was scum or not. This should be if this particular police officer was too itchy to pull the trigger or not.. He clearly was in this case. He should have given Duggan more opportunity to surrender, which he would have no doubt done, once he realised what exactly was going on. He's not going to take on an armed unit with cell phone is he.

That's all I'm trying to say.
Click to expand...

A "bullet proof" vest isn't, it can protect against some rounds passing through, it doesn't protect against all rounds (even from hand guns), and you can still get badly hurt/die from the impact shock if a round (that is stopped) hits the wrong place (IIRC people have died from a round hitting near their heart, even through the round was stopped from entering the body).
It also doesn't protect things like your arms, or legs (no major blood vessels in either of them where you can bleed out from in under a minute or two), it doesn't protect your head, or neck (and I don't think any of our armed officers are routinely equipped with 'full' ballistic face protection as it's very limiting in vision from memory).
Not to mention their job isn't just to protect themselves from being shot, it's to protect the members of the public from being shot (and to be honest, given the quality of marksmanship shown by numpty wannabe hardmen, the local residents would probably have been at as much risk as the officers if not more, if Duggan opened fire).

The case with the table leg is often misrepresented.
The police didn't go out to kill someone carrying a table leg, from memory the guy in question had a history of things like armed robbery (and had been in jail for it until not long before he got shot), so when the officers got a call that he had a gun in his bag, they took it seriously.

IIRC at the later inquest one of the barristers who was arguing for it to be an unlawful killing, even in the nice, quiet, controlled, and safe inquest room couldn't tell the difference between a bag with a sawn off shot gun and a bag with a table leg in it.
Which sort of puts the situation the officers on the ground were in, in a certain (some would say very favourable) light, given they had to make the decision thinking it was a gun, with multiple lives at risk, in a split second.


All anyone has to show, to make the use of lethal force lawful in self defence, is that they reasonably believed their lives, or the life of someone else was in immediate danger, when they used such force.
In the case of officers told by reliable sources that someone, who they know is involved in such things as armed robberies, or other violent crimes has a weapon, if they tell the person to do something, and that person makes any move that could be considered to be getting ready to shoot, then they are allowed (quite legally, and rightly imo) to fire first.

If the officers had a policy of only firing once they, or someone else had been shot at, you can bet that the outcome would be a lot more dead people, as the officers would still have to open fire to remove the threat, but before that the likelyhood of some innocent bystander (or an officer) being hurt is much higher, and the chances of the gunman being killed is vastly increased (normally in most situations where armed police open fire in this country, it's one or two officers who have seen the suspect getting ready to fire, if the suspect has fired you can be fairly sure most/all of the officers will return fire).

It probably says a huge amount for the professionalism and restraint of armed officers in the UK that out of thousands of call outs a year they have to open fire relatively rarely (and it always seems to make the news), and even less often the suspect dies.
 
anything I don't mind said:
On principle I have to be against police brutality and with these sorts of events it is difficult to find out what happened. End of day the guy was shot and murdered and it turned out there was not justification for it. It would be manslaughter. Just like people driving a car and kill someone by accident. [..]
Click to expand...

No, not just like that at all.

The key point is "reasonable force". That's a legal defence up to and including killing someone. It's not the same as manslaughter and manslaughter is not the same as murder. You're just plain wrong.

Also, driving a car and killing someone by accident is not in itself manslaughter. It's not even a crime, not by itself. There has to be intent to harm or negligence of some kind.
 
delta0 said:
Clearly a lot more to the person than met the eye. Really was a silly thing to "protest"/an excuse to steal en masse because you felt society owed you something. A right piece of work.
Click to expand...

maybe he robbed drugs from the rich and sold them to the poor
 
thedoc46 said:
Except, they don't even need to be completely compliant to not be shot. My guess is the guy with the wooden leg, and this Duggan guy were shot prematurely for being a split second too hesitant to not responding to all the yelling, and of course a trigger happy policeman with a gun that he NEVER EVER normally gets to use.
Click to expand...

I really have to ask this question.

But do you really think armed police NEVER EVER use their weapons?

The armed police units I have worked with were on the range almost every day practising and training. Along with all the rules, regulations and assessments they have to go through to maintain qualification. Unless it has changed in the last couple of years they have to account for each round fired as I am sure was done in this case. I really hate the use of the word trigger happy, as it really implies loss of control when the complete opposite would be true. Especially as has been mentioned numerous times that they have the split second decision to make regarding the perceived/evident threat, taking into account intelligence given to the officer previous to the event.

Plus that officer has to live with the fact he has killed someone. The psychological implications cannot be healthy. I for one would hate to have to live the rest of my life being able to recollect that moment of taking someone's elses. So I sincerely doubt he was trigger happy to end a persons life.
 
mattyfez said:
"To Duggan’s right in the picture is Junior Cameron, a career criminal serving a life sentence for shooting a man after a minor prang between their cars.
Cameron pulled a semi-automatic pistol on Gary Guthrie in Streatham, South London, and shot him in the back as he tried to escape. The 39-year-old died in hospital.
Cameron committed the murder in October 2007 – six months after being freed early from prison. The man to Duggan’s left is Darrell Albert, who was in the same car as Cameron that night.
During the confrontation he shot Mr Guthrie’s friend Rowan Williams with a Baikal 9mm pistol – now the weapon of choice for gangsters.
Mr Williams, 37, took a bullet in the neck but it was removed by surgeons and he survived.
As for Duggan, he was arrested on suspicion of murder in October 2003 after a body was found next to a ditch in Tottenham.
Gavin Smith, 28, had been abducted by a gang and then knifed in the back 17 times. He died from multiple stab wounds that pierced his lungs. Duggan was released without charge.
Three years later, he was arrested for the attempted murder of Surkhan Hussein, a Turkish mechanic who lost a kidney after being shot.
Click to expand...

What nice scum.
 
How many shootings have there been in London in the last five years where the victim or offender was black and it wasn't the police who pulled the trigger?

Lets be blunt here, the Met Trident team was set up to combat gun and knife crime in the black community.
 
OldCoals said:
How many shootings have there been in London in the last five years where the victim or offender was black and it wasn't the police who pulled the trigger?

Lets be blunt here, the Met Trident team was set up to combat gun and knife crime in the black community.
Click to expand...

You big truth telling racist you! You know you're not allowed to say that!

Glad the bloke was shot - good job well done!
 
scum of the earth, and no tears here over the low-life ****,

there is no debate here, he played the death game, and he paid the price.

maybe, just maybe, these stupid ****'* might just get the message, that this is not Boyz in the Hood, its real life.

Thank you Mr Policeman, ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom