Wednesday was a cold wet
windy day in London, it was the kind of day where people scuttle hurriedly with
purpose, through shimmering grey damped streets. A day when peoples coats were
hermetically sealed around them, when the wind whipped by in sudden squalls.
Just another day in London city.
This was no ordinary winter’s
day however. England, had what I would
call its ‘Rodney King’ moment as we witnessed the conclusion of a three month
inquiry into the shooting of Mark Duggan by Operation Trident Metropolitan Police
Officers.
An inquest jury considered whether
the 29-year-old Tottenham father was lawfully or unlawfully killed when he was
shot dead in Ferry Lane, Tottenham Hale, on August 4, 2011.
The jury sat through three
months of evidence and pondered for five long tense days, punctuated by the
Christmas break, and considered whether Mark Duggan a 29-year-old Tottenham
father was lawfully or unlawfully killed when he was shot dead in Ferry Lane,
Tottenham Hale, on August 4, 2011.
No ordinary day January 8th
will be remembered as the day when yet again British justice failed a black
community.
The 10-strong jury of three
men and seven women delivered a confused verdict that many people have simply failed
to understand.
They concluded that there
was no case to answer and despite what the inquest coroner Judge Cutler called ‘stark
inconsistencies’ in police evidence, they concluded Mark Duggan had not had a gun
in his hand when he left that fateful mini cab after being subject to a ‘hard
stop’ by the London anti-gang unit Trident, they decided despite this Mark
Duggan had been ‘lawfully killed ‘
When the decision was
announced all hell broke loose as the pent up anger, frustration, tension, grief
and sadness spilled both inside and out of the Royal Courts of Justice.
There
were huge discrepancies in the police version of events Judge Keith Cutler made a point
of highlighting these stark inconsistencies’ during his summing up of the at
12-week hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in December last year .
He pointed out that the
evidence of a Met Police Sergeant who was the operational firearms commander
and tactical advisor in Duggan’s arrest team appeared to be “directing officers
to go and secure a gun which hadn’t yet been found”.
In statements made in the
aftermath of the shooting, the same officer said he had asked another officer,
to look for the gun. However this was undermined by other evidence, from three
armed PCs who arrived on scene shortly after the shooting of Mark Duggan. All,
including the supervising Sergeant, later gave statements saying another senior
officer directed them to the gun and instructed them to secure it.
However in damming
evidence seen by the jury, a witness’s video footage clearly shows the gun
being found only after the three PCs first speak to the Sergeant. At the time
of Marks death many suspected the Metropolitan police had in fact planted the
gun at the scene to justify his shooting. This evidence gives those views
further credence.
However without this
crucial video evidence the Jury would have no doubt simply accepted the Police
version of events as the truth. The fact is Police officers involved lied.
This verdict also signals
the death of Operation Trident a subject I have written extensively, you can
read more here . The fact is that the credibility Operation
Trident used to enjoy has long gone and the unit should now simply be
disbanded. Its reputation has become toxic as a result Mark Duggan’s killing .
Judge Cutler told the jury
during his summing in December that “Without that BBC footage that would have
been completely accepted and we would not be talking about it,” “Everyone might
have felt quite secure about that account if it hadn’t been for Witness B. He
added “It is not a question of anybody being mistaken. It is something which is
a direct contradiction here; there is that stark problem.”
More than one officer s
told the inquest that they had found the gun. Judge Cutler said: “There’s a lot
of people finding the gun but not telling anybody else about it.”
The suggestion that Mark
Duggan threw the gun into some nearby bushes is inexplicable and irrational.
All eleven officers who gave evidence never saw Duggan dispose of the gun,
there was no forensic evidence to support his association with the gun, none of
the independent witnesses saw him throw a gun and yet a weapon was found some
20 feet away and without a shred of evidence the jury concluded that Duggan had
somehow disposed of the gun prior to his arrest.
Judge Cutler also reminded
jurors that while tests showed it was possible to throw the gun into the bushes
from where Mr Duggan was shot, one medical expert had told them he would have
needed “great willpower” to do so having just been shot in that arm, and that
the theory didn’t really tie in with witnesses’ accounts.
In 2011 the reaction to the
shooting of Mark Duggan was to spark disturbances right across the country as
anger against the police exploded onto the streets. Of course there were those
criminal element who were intent on looting and looting alone.
However the Guardian’s Reading the Riots report explained that the simplistic dismissal
of the events of August 1th 2011 as simply criminally
motivated as described by the Prime Minister David Cameron is factually
wrong. This deep alienation born of police harassment and economic exclusion provides
the rational for the tragic events that unfolded
Their report pointed to the
widespread anger and dissatisfaction of many young people with the roughhouse
policing including stop and search, a basic lack of respect from officers.
It’s reputation has become toxic as a result
and mirrors the on-going reputational decline of the Metropolitan Police
Service.
There is a link between
these contemporary issues and black people’s historical experience of oppression.
As a result we are hyper sensitive to the treatment of black people at the
hands of statutory authorities be it the police, schools or mental health
institutions. Our history is replete with a constant stream of injustice and tragedy.
Our deepest fears, generated by our own history is to die brutally at the hands
of the police. Our latent fear is informed by our experiencing of lynching, racist
murders and police brutality.
You see some us believe that we have never had any real acknowledgement, apology or reparations for slavery that such things could happen again
Deaths in police
custody represents the critical fault line in the relations between police and black communities. The fact is these controversial deaths have increased in
recent years in London rising from four deaths in 2008 to sixteen in 2012, according
to figures published by the Metropolitan Police.
This palpable fear and anger is not well understood by some white
people who don’t understand the cultural symbolism of such events. The very
people who are charged with protecting our communities become feared as a violent
oppressive force of occupation.
Institutional racism has become rampant and endemic as a result of
a changes in the political environment. Since the Coalition and Government came
to power the restraining influence of a series of monitoring policy frameworks
and the political priority accorded to race equality has been swept away and as
a result the police have returned to their natural cultural default setting of open
hostility to black people.
The Home Secretary, the Mayor Boris Johnson and Commissioner Hogan
Howe must stop denying the reality of institutional racism that leads to so
many black people being criminalised and disproportionately abused, attacked and
beaten by police officers steeped in a culture of racism. The elite armed response
unit SO19 is no different in this regard to Police Constables who routinely
discriminate against black people on a daily basis as evidenced by stop and
search figures and disproportionate charging rates for black and white first
time offenders.
I believe that too many
Police officers see black people differently to whites and racial bias leads
them to assume a threat where non exits. We are routinely considered to be
criminals, psychotics, super bad bordering on evil.
This racial bias of specialist
firearms officers leads to a false perception of increased threat, which in
turn leads to the use of overwhelming force being used by frightened police officers.
That’s why black people
suffer more violent rates of arrests, are more likely to be tasered by the
police and sometimes face overwhelming and deadly force.
In a multicultural city
like London a majority white police service should routinely test officers for
levels of racial bias and specifically assess whether racist attitudes or unconscious
bias leads to perceptions of increased threat when the subject is black.
Politicians of all parties
must now accept or be forced to confront the real and growing crisis of
confidence that exists between black communities and the Metropolitan Police.
The Association of Chief
Police Officer’s and the Home Secretary must also accept that there is an urgent need to
restore the confidence of black communities in British policing or we can
expect further disturbance in the future.
No dialogue aimed at improving
trust and confidence and building community police partnerships can be
effective, or have any credibility if the reality of institutionalised racism
is not accepted by Government and the Mayor Boris Johnson. That should be our key
starting point for any discussions. Such is the depth of the crisis and the
level of political resistance to reinstating institutional racism as a key
priority that nothing short of a national boycott on working with the police
stands a chance of changing things for the better. A 12 month boycott on all
but essential discussion and an all-out national boycott on black police recruitment
will bring all parties to the negotiating table. Anything else is simply window
dressing and waiting for the next crisis. It’s time to take a stand.
Unfortunately both police
and politicians deny the existence of endemic institutional racism and until
the political discomfort and pain of holding that position becomes so great as
to become intolerable, then they will not change their ideological Tory view
that racism is nothing more than ‘politically correctness gone mad’ or plain
old ‘Marxist lunacy’
That political blind spot
cost the country hundreds of millions of pounds as a consequence of the
disturbances of 201, all of which could have been avoided if the lessons learned
after the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence were applied. Instead they were
swept away by Tories and senior police officers whose political antagonism to anti-racism
became so engrained that some would physically wretch at the mention of the very
words ‘anti-racism’ or ‘multiculturalism’.
Government and the Mayor
need to reprioritise the issue of racism in policing as an urgent issue if we
are to avoid a further descent into deep seated animosity and a Northern
Ireland type policing scenario. I can see, in a few years’ time, if this issue
is not urgently addressed quickly how Police could find themselves being
actively targeted as the ‘enemy’ and subject to violent and deadly retribution.
It’s simply not a road we can afford to go down. We’re not there yet but we’re
perilously close if someone does not wake up and smell the coffee.
Challenges don’t exist for
the Police and politicians alone. The Independent Police Complaints Commission
must now begin the process of restoring its reputation after it became clear
that they had colluded with the Metropolitan Police in putting out
misinformation, in the immediate wake of the shooting, suggesting Mark had shot
at police officers. This turned out to be a lie.
Whilst the jury perverse
verdict leaves everybody angry and confused, the reality is, that real world
public perception, particularly within black communities is that the ‘police executed
Mark Duggan’.
My community is seething with
resentment and in danger of exploding with anger at the ongoing continued mass criminalisation,
harassment and violence they receive at the hand of the police.
Racial profiling, stop and
search, racist police officers and a criminal justice system that reeks of institutional
racism and injustice provide the fuel for this profound discontentment.
It’s time we returned to the anti-racist battlefield to secure the
future for our children.
We at Colourful Radio believe that this is an extremely important
issue for our communities and as such I would like to invite you listen and
join in my live breakfast show on Friday 10th January between 7 and 10 am.
As you know these issue rarely get the proper coverage from
mainstream news outlets and in response to that we have decided that our entire
programme will be dedicated to this important issue. We need you support
to make sure the programme is a resounding success.
So this week on my show we will be focusing exclusively on deaths
in custody, the implications of the Mark Duggan inquest verdict for the
entirety of the programme.
I will be joined in the studio by my co presenter Dr X and by
Matilda Macattram of Black Mental Health UK, Samanath Rigg sister of Sean Rigg
Janet Hills Chair of Met Black police Association, Hillsborough Justice
Campaign, Peter Herbert Chair of Society of Black lawyers .Deborah Coles from Inquest , Assistant Commissioner Rowley of the Met Police and many
many more.
Stop Press: The Mark Duggan family have called for a peaceful mass demonstration Saturday 11th Jan 2pm Tottenham Police Station.
www.colourfulradio.com
