What is White Collective Power? When white police officers ambush an unarmed, surrendering Black man and their fellow officers, the police chief, internal affairs, the union, jurors, prosecutors and the white media support, defend, and finance the officers “right” to kill him. [MORE] and [MORE]
From [HERE] Despite being completely unarmed, 29-year-old Black man, Mark Duggan was lawfully killed by the police, a UK jury ruled by a majority of eight to two on Wednesday. The shooting of the Londoner in August 2011 provoked the worst riots in the country’s modern history. The jury was composed of seven men and three women - apparently they were all white.
With the same eight-to-two margin, the jury decided that Duggan had been weaponless when he was surrounded by the officers. However, the majority in the jury concluded that the man “threw” the gun from a cab just before being stopped by the police.
Duggan was suspected of being a gang member, with officers stating that he collected a weapon in east London just before the incident happened.
He was shot twice after he got out of the taxi, with one bullet going through his arm and another delivering a lethal wound to the chest. The gun became central to the inquest as it had been "found" several meters away from Duggan’s body, wrapped in a sock, with no fingerprints on it. How did the gun get there?
Neither the gun nor the sock had any DNA or fingerprints from 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.
A statement by Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, Mark Rowley, who is white, was barely heard due to a large crowd outside the court shouting: “Who killed Mark Duggan?” and “murderers.”
The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP, Diane Abbott, said she was baffled by the jury's finding, which she said would raise a lot of questions in the local community.
Writing on Twitter, Abbott said: "If the Duggan jury believe that he did not have a gun in his hand when he was shot, how can they find it was a lawful killing? baffled."
And she told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "There's going to be a lot of questions asked in the community this evening."
Deborah Coles of the group Inquest, which supported the Duggan family, said the findings were not an exoneration of the police. "The Met should be very concerned that an inquest jury has found an unarmed man was shot dead by police and were critical of intelligence failings." [MORE]