As the riots spread, the danger is that the authorities and media will succeed in focusing attention solely on the actions of the rioters, averting public anger away from, and preventing public discussion of the incident that sparked it all. Namely the accidental killing or execution (depending on your point of view) of Mark Duggan, a young father of four from Tottenham.
The official claim is that his death was the accidental result of an Operation Trident attempted apprehension, Trident being the ongoing Met operation to combat gun crime, but like any police killing it is shrouded in conflicting statements and poor attempts to validate the actions of police officers, with answers for the victim’s family and community being considered a secondary immediate aim, if considered at all.
Isn’t this all a bit familiar?
Straight away, just like any police shooting and with no consideration for his family, we are told that Mark Duggan was involved in gang related activity or some other crime, the expected public response being “oh, well that’s ok then”. Of course no requests from the UK’s ’upstanding and honourable’ journalist community regarding his alleged guilt are made, their motto, as ever, being ‘Guilty until proven innocent’. Also, currently there are an abscence of any questions relating to the conflicting statements, two shots were fired claim the police (although one witness has reported hearing four loud bangs in quick succession) one from the suspect which injured an officer, before the bullet lodged in a police radio, and one shot fired by police, which killed Mark Duggan. Seems fairly straight forward, except lo and behold, the gun allegedly found on Mark Duggan has turned out to be a blank firing conversion, that was not fired and has not been confirmed as being able to fire, and the bullet that injured the copper and lodged in a radio was in fact from a Heckler & Koch MP5, a police weapon. Meaning that in reality, a cab was halted by armed police the innocent driver was dragged out at gunpoint and Mark Duggan was executed before some idiot plod accidentally shot one of his own mates. Which brings us to the time and place of the incident, which occured while he was traveling in a taxi as a passenger. The most obvious question then being, although I’ve yet to see or hear any explanation, if the operation was so well pre-planned, as they have claimed, then why would the police not apprehend him before he got in, or after he got out of the cab? Isn’t the ‘golden rule’ never let an armed suspect get in a vehicle? Instead they attempted an armed arrest in a situation that risked injury or death to the taxi driver, who we presume was just someone trying to earn a living. Perhaps because far from being well planned, some gung-ho arsehole plod just couldn’t contain his excitement at being able to give it large and play at Rambo, unless the suggestion is that the taxi driver was a mate of Marks, or was a suspect in some alleged crime, but if this was the case then you can bet the Met would have mentioned this to the press in order to excuse their actions further, which would then enable The Sun to start some frenzied panic about gun-toting ‘gangsta’ taxi drivers.
But thankfully for the authorities they have the cunning to distract the public with the threat of some fifteen-year-old ‘yoof’ pinching a shitty tv from the local Currys. Apprently the theft of some hunk of shite electric goods stirs up more revulsion than a man being executed by the state in broad daylight.
I don’t claim that the death of Mark Duggan is the only reason for the spreading riots (large numbers of the looters probably don’t give a shit one way or the other), the reasons are many and I would argue that with the Tories back in power then widespread unrest, at some point, was almost inevitable. What can’t be ignored though is that his death is what has begun a significant social incident that has an impact on all of us and when the dust settles the state will try to brush his death under the carpet. Evidently nothing has been learned from the execution of John Charles De Menezes and other similar police operations, where ‘getting their man’ and placating the wannabe action man ego of Britain’s trigger-happy armed plod is more important than the accuracy of a suspects guilt or the safety of the general public.
Carrying an realistic imitation firearm in public is illegal, and doing so can result in fatal action by armed Police. Whether it was “capable of firing fuck all” or not makes no difference. If it looks like a gun, it should not be on the street.
Duggan was also a crook with connections to London criminal gangs. This was reported, not by the Police, or mainstream media, as you suggest, but on his own public Facebook page and supported by his own friends on theirs, one of whom published on his own Twitter page that Duggan had caused “grief” to certain people and had “lived by the gun”.
Further details of his criminal links were published in the Black media.
The riots did not start because of Duggan’s death; they began after a viral Blackberry message was spread claiming that a young girl had been beaten up by Police at the peaceful march following Duggan’s death.
The girl has yet to report this crime, or anyone else come forward to report it (which seems perculiar considering the number of witnesses available at the scene at the time), nor has any footage been found by Police, or Police detractors, showing such an attack. In fact, it seems very unlikely that any attack happened.
I appreciate your efforts to offer opinion on this subject; it is interesting, but much of what you offer is part-fact and (if you don’t mind me saying) political propaganda. It will therefore lack credibility and erode your cause rather than bolster it.
You have however succeeded in one thing. After reading this you have convinced me to start a blog myself. Truths need to be told, and lies dispelled.
Thank you.