Met Police shooting of unarmed man was ‘lawful’, inquest finds

A British inquest jury concluded yesterday that police lawfully killed a man whose shooting in 2011 sparked deadly riots across the country.

Mark Duggan did not have a gun in his hand when he was shot dead by police, having thrown the weapon away when the taxi he was in was stopped.

There were angry scenes in court as Mr Duggan’s family reacted to the lawful killing verdict over the death of the 29-year-old, which came after armed officers forced a cab he was travelling in to stop, based on intelligence that he was part of a gang and had collected a gun.

Mr Duggan’s mother, Pam, collapsed in court on hearing the findings of the jury and his brother Marlon shouted at the jury as they left the courtroom.

The 10-member jury recorded an 8-2 majority ruling that the killing was lawful.

The shooting by the London Metropolitan police - known as the Met - in north London on August 4th, 2011, triggered the worst riots in modern English history.

The inquest, which began in September, was told by police that Mr Duggan was shot twice after he produced a gun when surrounded by armed officers.

The narrative verdict was delivered at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, where the inquest took place after the jury had deliberated for six and a half days. They were originally sent out on December 11th, 2013. They broke for two weeks for the Christmas and new year holidays.

Mr Duggan died “within 10 heartbeats” of a bullet striking his aorta. The jury was told police believed he was a member of TMD, Tottenham Man Dem, which officers believed had links to guns used in nightclubs.

The officer who shot Mr Duggan twice, known as V53, testified he had seen a gun in Mr Duggan’s right hand, and believed the suspect was preparing to use it. V53 said he had acted in self-defence, fearing for his own life or the lives of his colleagues.

The key issue for the jury was whether Mr Duggan was holding a gun, as the marksman said, when he exited the cab and came face to face with armed police.

V53 and a second officer, W70, told the jury they had both seen Mr Duggan holding a gun but were surprised when they could not find it later.

In fact, a gun, wrapped in a sock, was found on the other side of a fence 3 to 6 metres away from where a fatally injured Mr Duggan fell to the pavement, the jury heard. The gun was capable of being fired but had not been “racked”, so was not ready to fire.

Neither the gun nor the sock had any DNA or fingerprints from Mr Duggan on it. Gun residue was also absent from the deceased, save for a speck in his back pocket which the jury was told was scientifically irrelevant. His fingerprints were on a shoebox found inside the cab in which it is believed the gun had been stored, and traces of the drug ecstasy were in his bloodstream.

The jury was asked whether Mr Duggan could have been holding a mobile phone when he left the cab. Seconds before the cab was made to stop, he had held a three-minute conversation with his brother Marlon.

One witness claimed he had seen the shooting from 150 metres away and claimed Mr Duggan was shot while surrendering with a mobile phone in his hand.

In the days before the shooting, the Met had received intelligence from the Serious Organised Crime Agency about TMD. It ran a four-day operation codenamed Dibri targeting six members of the gang, one of whom was Mr Duggan.

That intelligence led to him being placed under surveillance, as officers were said to have feared he would try to get a gun from a man called Kevin Hutchinson-Foster, who was later convicted at a criminal trial of supplying Mr Duggan with the gun.

On his last night alive Mr Duggan attended a family barbecue, and in court his relatives heard the details of his death.

Intelligence was still developing as Mr Duggan travelled in a cab to east London, where police suspected he was planning to collect the gun.

Firearms officers deployed to stop Mr Duggan were then told he had already collected it. The police then used a “hard stop” - boxing in of the taxi and forcing it to come to an abrupt halt - a “shock and awe” tactic designed to stun the occupants into submission and compliance, said Ashley Underwood QC, counsel to the inquest.

Two shots were fired rapidly by the marksman. The first shot struck Mr Duggan in one of his biceps. The second, entering through the chest and exiting his back, killed the father of four.

Mr Underwood said: “The chest wound would have been fatal within about 10 heartbeats - but it would not necessarily have stopped somebody moving then and there.”

Armed officers and police chiefs have been critical of the length of time investigations into police shootings take. The Met says that by April 2014, firearms officers will wear small video cameras with the aim of clearly showing what happened and to help shorten investigation times.

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