How do you define / judge a "large" number?

Can you link to statistics to support your assertion?

.

In the Stanley case, it is not correct that nothing was put in place to prevent a repetition, on the contrary, many changes were put in place, and apart from that, the PCA, IPCC, police and CPS batted the case around for many years (the 2 officers were arrested on suspicion of murder, manslaughter and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice several years later and a file was passed to CPS - but CPS ultimately decided not to prosecute).

The key point to me in the Stanley case (which may have similarities with the Duggan case) is the method chosen by the officers to challenge/apprehend the "suspect". In Stanley's case, having made the decision to position themselves as they did and challeneg a surprised Stanley in such a way that when he reacted they were only a reported 15 feet away with no cover, meant that they had put themselves in a position where if indeed he did have a shotgun, effectively if he seemed to be raising it to shoot, they would have no alternative but to immediately open fire or risk being killed themselves.

Why they could not work out a way to challenge him from some position of cover, so he had time to assimilate what was happening and they had time to assess the situation better, I will never understand.

I accept entirely that if I have a gun and I am convinced a man has a shotgun in a plastic bag and is turning it to shoot me, then I too would shoot him first. And so would you. But IMHO I would be in the wrong for having put myself in that position in the first place. It should surely have been avoidable. We are talking about highly trained firearms officers, with the full advantage of surprise etc.

In the interests of accuracy, when the unlawful killing verdict was quashed, no further inquest was ordered and so basically that amounts to an open verdict in the Stanley case. If I were a friend or relative of Stanley I would not be at all satisfied with that, but then I would probably not be satisfied with anything unless it was somebody paying for Stanley's death; a reality very apparent to the [url=http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/investigation_commissioner_reports/stanley_report_to_ipcc_03.02.06_for_publication_0.pdfIPCC in their final report[/url. It shows an extremely unfortunate combination of events and, no doubt, some unsavoury and other unacceptable aspects, but as to the meat of it, I'm not sure it is fair to call it an "outrage".

Isn't the number of fatal police shootings (exc. NI) 10 since 1980 ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use ... _incidents

Isn't the number of fatal police shootings (exc. NI) 10 since 1980 ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use ... _incidents

Quote ="shinymcshine"Isn't the number of fatal police shootings (exc. NI) 10 since 1980 ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use ... _incidents'" [url=http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/deaths-custody-studyStats on deaths in custody[/url. This seems to be for all forms of state custody, so presumably includes anyone who died in prison of, for instance, a heart attack.

Quote ="shinymcshine"Isn't the number of fatal police shootings (exc. NI) 10 since 1980 ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use ... _incidents'" [url=http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/deaths-custody-studyStats on deaths in custody[/url. This seems to be for all forms of state custody, so presumably includes anyone who died in prison of, for instance, a heart attack.

Having read the document in the link I'd tend to go for an open verdict. Even if the police felt in danger there is the question of reasonable force being used to prevent it and with the gun on the ground it doesn't seem that reasonable to me. So in theory that would mean unlawful killing but though this is coming from a position of ignorance on the actual evidence presented I am not sure how the jury could conclude one way or the other if there was reason to think the force exercised was reasonable or not.



I agree and perhaps the world is a better place minus Mr Duggan but I am rather surprised at the verdict.

Quote ="Dally"How do you define / judge a "large" number? Can you link to statistics to support your assertion?'" At least 333 from 1999 to 2009 86 of which were RESTRAINT related Quote The IPCC’s research found that 333 people died in police custody between 1999 and 2009, including 86 who died after being restrained. That figure included 16 of the most controversial cases which were classed as restraint-related. '" www.thebureauinvestigates.com/20 ... r-inquiry/ But as you rely on police information there are more. Quote Roger Sylvester Roger Sylvester (c. 1969–11 January 1999) was a mentally ill man who died in north London after being detained outside his home in Tottenham by eight Metropolitan police officers. It was reported that his neighbours had complained to police of a disturbance after Sylvester had started banging on his own front door, naked.[1 Police detained Sylvester under the Mental Health Act, then took him to St Anne's Hospital, Haringey, where he fell into a coma while being restrained on the floor of a padded room by six officers, as they waited for medical help. He died a week later.[1 In 2003, an inquest heard that Sylvester, who suffered from bipolar disorder, had died of brain damage and cardiac arrest, caused by difficulty breathing because of the position he was held in, and because of cannabis-induced delirium. A jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing in October 2003.[1 The eight officers who had taken Sylvester into custody appealed to the High Court against what they called an "irrational" ruling, and the verdict was overturned in November 2004.[2'" Black, mentally ill, jury said unlawful killing overuled by the courts 15 in 2011 and 2012 ( half of whom were mentally ill) www.inquest.org.uk/media/pr/mps- ... tody-death . another one here Police innappropriately restrain a mentally ill man who dies www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -them.html Sean Rigg Black , mentally ill and killed by police who lied in their evidence Quote Four police officers eventually gave chase to Rigg, who was handcuffed and restrained in a prone, face down position as officers leant on him for eight minutes. Arrested for assaulting a police officer, public disorder and theft of a passport—which was actually his own—he was then placed face-down with his legs bent behind him in the caged rear section of a police van and transported to Brixton police station. During the journey "his mental and physical health deteriorated" and he was "extremely unwell and not fully conscious" when eventually taken out of the van. This followed a delay of ten minutes during which he was left handcuffed in a 'rear stack' position, unattended and unmonitored while the van sat outside the station in the car parking area.[10 One of the arresting officers was captured on the station's CCTV claiming that Rigg was "faking it".[11 Two officers then carried Rigg to the caged area at the entrance to the station's custody suite where he was left placed on the floor "handcuffed and unresponsive." After a further delay of 25 minutes Dr Nandasena Amarasekera, the Force Medical Examiner, was called to examine Rigg, although CCTV later showed that custody sergeant PS Paul White misled the doctor by telling him that Rigg was "feigning unconsciousness." When the FME examined him again ten minutes later he found that his heart had stopped and he was not breathing. Although CPR was attempted, Rigg was officially pronounced dead after arriving at King's College Hospital, Southwark'" . You and the others who dont beleive the assertion could always look for evidence or statistics yourself. It also does not include, shootings, Police assaults ie Ian Tomlinson, taserings that lead to death by natural causes, suicides in custody like Colin Roach who managed to impossibly commit suicide in the front office of a police station with a shotgun. Also some coroners have used faux science to explains deaths as accidental. This includes at least 10 poeple who have died as a result of excited delerium after being arrested and held in police custody. The problem with any of these stats is that none of them tell the true story as their are so many people with vested interests who use all sorts of ways of minimising them. www.thebureauinvestigates.com/20 ... e-custody/

Quote ="Dally"How do you define / judge a "large" number? Can you link to statistics to support your assertion?'" At least 333 from 1999 to 2009 86 of which were RESTRAINT related Quote The IPCC’s research found that 333 people died in police custody between 1999 and 2009, including 86 who died after being restrained. That figure included 16 of the most controversial cases which were classed as restraint-related. '" www.thebureauinvestigates.com/20 ... r-inquiry/ But as you rely on police information there are more. Quote Roger Sylvester Roger Sylvester (c. 1969–11 January 1999) was a mentally ill man who died in north London after being detained outside his home in Tottenham by eight Metropolitan police officers. It was reported that his neighbours had complained to police of a disturbance after Sylvester had started banging on his own front door, naked.[1 Police detained Sylvester under the Mental Health Act, then took him to St Anne's Hospital, Haringey, where he fell into a coma while being restrained on the floor of a padded room by six officers, as they waited for medical help. He died a week later.[1 In 2003, an inquest heard that Sylvester, who suffered from bipolar disorder, had died of brain damage and cardiac arrest, caused by difficulty breathing because of the position he was held in, and because of cannabis-induced delirium. A jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing in October 2003.[1 The eight officers who had taken Sylvester into custody appealed to the High Court against what they called an "irrational" ruling, and the verdict was overturned in November 2004.[2'" Black, mentally ill, jury said unlawful killing overuled by the courts 15 in 2011 and 2012 ( half of whom were mentally ill) www.inquest.org.uk/media/pr/mps- ... tody-death . another one here Police innappropriately restrain a mentally ill man who dies www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -them.html Sean Rigg Black , mentally ill and killed by police who lied in their evidence Quote Four police officers eventually gave chase to Rigg, who was handcuffed and restrained in a prone, face down position as officers leant on him for eight minutes. Arrested for assaulting a police officer, public disorder and theft of a passport—which was actually his own—he was then placed face-down with his legs bent behind him in the caged rear section of a police van and transported to Brixton police station. During the journey "his mental and physical health deteriorated" and he was "extremely unwell and not fully conscious" when eventually taken out of the van. This followed a delay of ten minutes during which he was left handcuffed in a 'rear stack' position, unattended and unmonitored while the van sat outside the station in the car parking area.[10 One of the arresting officers was captured on the station's CCTV claiming that Rigg was "faking it".[11 Two officers then carried Rigg to the caged area at the entrance to the station's custody suite where he was left placed on the floor "handcuffed and unresponsive." After a further delay of 25 minutes Dr Nandasena Amarasekera, the Force Medical Examiner, was called to examine Rigg, although CCTV later showed that custody sergeant PS Paul White misled the doctor by telling him that Rigg was "feigning unconsciousness." When the FME examined him again ten minutes later he found that his heart had stopped and he was not breathing. Although CPR was attempted, Rigg was officially pronounced dead after arriving at King's College Hospital, Southwark'" . You and the others who dont beleive the assertion could always look for evidence or statistics yourself. It also does not include, shootings, Police assaults ie Ian Tomlinson, taserings that lead to death by natural causes, suicides in custody like Colin Roach who managed to impossibly commit suicide in the front office of a police station with a shotgun. Also some coroners have used faux science to explains deaths as accidental. This includes at least 10 poeple who have died as a result of excited delerium after being arrested and held in police custody. The problem with any of these stats is that none of them tell the true story as their are so many people with vested interests who use all sorts of ways of minimising them. www.thebureauinvestigates.com/20 ... e-custody/

How mant Police Officers have been killed in line of duty?

Why does that matter? I doubt that an on-duty police officer has ever been shot by a member of the public and seen a verdict of Lawful killing.

Or suicide or post duty excited delerium

It goes someway to the reaction (some deeming over reaction) of the Police to shoot when feeling threatened.

The fate of the gun is indeed the key point. From the evidence I've read, the shooter says he saw a weapon in his hand (in a sock?), and another testified he also saw the gun in his hand. Another office who arrived later says he was told one of the armed response team tossed the gun away from Duggan for safety, something not reported by the armed officers. One girl says she saw an officer enter the cab and exit with a gun. Some bloke (the one who filmed the aftermath) with presumably astounding eyesight reckons he saw a Blackberry in Duggan's hand from the 9th floor of a building over the road. Another witness also says Duggan was holding a mobile phone.

It seems no-one saw a gun being thrown but the fact is it ended up 20 feet (no particularly far) away. On balance, it's either been thrown from the cab as it stopped, or as he exited the cab, and he was also holding a mobile phone. Or it's been planted. If you choose to believe it was planted you need to wonder why the police would deliberately target a fairly low level criminal in this way, or if they were carrying a gun to plant just in case someone shot a suspect. Further, if they're covering up for Duggan being unarmed when shot, whether the gun is in the grass or in the cab is irrelevant and surely it would make more sense to plant the gun on or much closer to him - in fact, planting it where it was found would (and did) raise suspicions. The facts are that Duggan had a gun, it was in the cab with him, the cab was stopped and in the following few moments it ended up a small distance away.

As you state, and I mentioned on page 2, the number of discharges per armed response call-out is miniscule by anyone's standards, hardly indicative of a trigger-happy police force going round shooting people without due cause. The number of deaths is fewer still. It's quite right and correct that deaths are investigated, whilst remembering that when asking our police officers to make these split-second decisions questionable incidences will occur which may not sit pretty in people's minds, whilst being entirely legitimate and legal. In this case, the jury were satisfied that Duggan threw the gun and that the shooter did "honestly believe or may he honestly have believed, even if that belief is mistaken, that at the time he fired the fatal shot, that he needed to use force to defend himself or another". And given the evidence, I agree - given that no-one saw the gun thrown, there was every reason to believe he was still armed.

No. It does not.

They train for a job that they choose to do, knowing that it may involve personal danger.

Those who are authorised to carry and use firearms volunteer for that and are trained further for that. That training should help to avoid any 'over reaction'.

If a civilian shot someone because they said that they felt threatened – and there was no threat (see the Harry Stanley case mentioned above) then it seems fairly likely that they would lose their liberty.

The problem with 'feeling threatened' is that it is about perception. The police [ifelt[/i threatened in the case of Harry Stanley. The facts, however, revealed that there was no threat whatsoever.

And just to reiterate: I do not think the police have an enviable job and I am not offering solutions.

No amount of training, no amount of professionalism takes away the human factor.

I as a Firearms officer point my gun at someone, then he lifts what I think is a gun, the instant fear factor is driving the thought I need to shoot him.

It could be a chair leg, it could be a mobile phone, it could be a remote control BUT it could be a gun and that moments hesitation could mean your own death, now as a Policeman they are more acutely aware of the dangers, the danger signs and the unsavoury side of human nature.
If they are aware of a Policeman getting killed because he took a moment to think then yes I think it does go someway as to the reaction.

I am an avid supporter of the police even though they have inconvenienced me and been on the receiving end financially of a policeman in the line of work.
They do a thankless job and I will never let one or two bad apples taint my opinion of them as a whole.

I know a few people in the police both friends and family and I certainly don't envy them.

You are forgetting the umpteen decisions taken to get to the stage where you have this Mexican stand-off. In the Duggan Case, it seems clear that whilst the decision of the police officer themselves has been backed up (and I agree with how difficult it must be to make that split second decision) there were many decisions taken to get to that point and there doesn’t to me, seem to have been a plan where Mark Duggan minus gun could be safely arrested, we know this to be the case because Mark Duggan minus gun got out of a car and was shot dead. The questions being asked should be about the decisions to stop the car when, where and how they did when the potential for such an incident was so high, and so obvious.

10 fatal shootings by the police firearms unit since 1980 doesn't suggest a trigger happy force, albeit each incident should be investigated to understand the lawfulness in each circumstance.

Maybe one message community leaders could have pushed yesterday (if they did, I didn't see it reported) was that young men, and young black men in particular, should be aware of the potential consequences of involvment in gun culture. Guns are not toys, they are not medals and they are not a status symbol. If you are a criminal known to carry a gun then you are potentially going to be in a position where you are confronted by heavily armed police officers who will kill you if they are feel they are threatened or another member of the public is threatened. Not to mention the possibility that other criminals, knowing you are "packing" will work on the principle that they need to shoot you before you shoot them.
Could have been a different message sent out after this verdict.

This is my 12585th post on RL Fans and I invite you to go through anyone of them and point to where I have ever made a racist comment. I am the least racist person you could wish to meet to be honest, I don't care if a scumbag is black, white, brown, yellow or pink with blue stripes, if they take a gun out for criminal activity, they have it coming.

As for your comments about my thinking police are lovely and cuddly, you couldn't be wider off the mark, I have been the victim of a policeman lying to circumstances in something I was involved in (a minor offence admittedly) to which I made a formal complaint. If a police officer breaks the law they certainly don't deserve to keep their jobs and I would not have any quarms about them being sacked and incarcerated. In the case of Mark Duggan I think on balance the jury was right to come up with the findings they did, not because he was black, but because he was an odious little criminal and was in possession of a firearm that had the potential to cause harm or death to the police officers or a member of the public.

If the above makes me a racist in your mind there isn't much I can do about it other than think it is you that is the narrow minded one, not me.

Do you feel your position in world society equates to just £2.80 of Euromillions?

All of us posting here are at the jackpot end of the scale.

Thank goodness that people like you and Minty and others like FA get the central issue and can articulate it.
To dismiss this event as the death of a scumbag who had it coming is to totally miss the point.
This event will I believe lead to new procedures for the police.
Because if we can't learn from this then God help us.

Arrested for what?

If they arrest him before he's got the gun then he hasn't committed any crime.



I suspect when he exited the car he was carrying a gun. The gun was quickly thrown by him and he was attempting to leg it. By choosing to take such actions when faced with armed police officers he ended up being shot dead by the officers.



So when do you think they should have stopped him? If they stop him before he has the gun then they face charges of police harassment. If they wait then they could be too late and accused of allowing Duggan to execute his victim.

It appears that you and Jerry cannot read i did not accuse either of you of racism which is why the delete as neccessary bit is there
You did however write



which means that you could be put in the bracket of school of justification for the shooting of Duggan. That is the simple point. Just beacuse Duggan was a scumbag does not in any way justify what happened. There are rules and laws in place to protect the guilty and the innocent and once you start using different criteria to justify one groups actions then you are on the slippery slope.

The examples i gave about deaths in police custody etc is to point out that because so many people automatically assume the police are the good guys it becomes harder for them to be caught out when they might be the bad guys.

So they can shoot unarmed people like menezes and get away with it, push awkward types over and kill them Ian Tomlinson and get away with it or, mentally ill people in police stations like Thomas Orchard and get away with it.

Too many people put the police on a moral high ground above those they deal with and that is why when bad individuals or incompetent ones in the Police get away with things for so long and things continue to go wrong. There is little if any criminal accountability for their actions.

compared to who? My income and wealth is far closer to those at the bottom end of the scale than the top. I would guess pretty much everyone here is in the same position.

The firearms section is indeed a role fulfilled by volunteer PC's who then undergo a lengthy training and selection process and from memory the drop-out and de-selection rate is high, so we can be confident that only the most appropriate candidates are forwarded to the actual pointing of guns on a range bit (I have a very close friend and a friend from some years ago who have both qualified).

When and if (IF) they qualify as a firearms officer they are then subject to ultimate screening, testing and re-testing, constant scrutiny and the sanction of not only losing your job for one mistake but also of being prosecuted for murder - its quite a pressurized environment even though for 52 weeks of the year you probably won't even get a call out, you are checked out and checked back in for each shift by a senior officer and if you lose any equipment or god forbid any ammunition during that shift then you are in deep poo - not surprisingly the drop-out rate among firearms officers after serving for a 12 month term is high and both of my friends went back to other duties simply because of the bureaucracy.

Even after all of that you are still human and not an automaton but in this specific case it does seem that everything was done by the book as the officer in question has not been criticised for his performance despite the fact that ultimately he shot dead an unarmed man.

The fact that he can follow through the procedures perfectly and still be suspended from duty pending an investigation from an outside party and then face a court to explain his actions simply goes to reinforce the safeguards that are in place to protect the public, and criminals, from rogue firearms officers shooting indiscriminately and "executing" people for being black, or bad, or wrong'uns as some buffoons would believe, the fact that there were procedures in place to allow that officer to shoot upon a genuine belief rather than wait to confirm the fact is also correct as we have asked that officer to place himself in front of the target and identify himself as an armed officer thus attracting the full attention of the criminal, if you're going to ask someone to do that on your behalf then you have to support him.

Whatever crime he is supposed to have committed, If he hasnt committed a crime then what on earth was going on.
then don't arrest him. Why arrest and innocent person? DOnt shoot him though

Which is wrong, an unarmed man cannot be a threat to shoot. If he has thrown the gun there is no justification for shooting him.

When it was safe to do so.


What you seem to be describing here is a position where the police are in fact escalating a situation to a point where they have to kill somebody. That doesnt seem a particularly smart move.