IPCC report into the killing of Mark Duggan fails to convince

"Mark Duggan was shot dead in the street like a dog. He was executed by the Trident Police Command "

That is the strongly held belief of the majority of Black people, the wider community and the family of Mark Duggan.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) published its report into his death. Duggan was suspected of being in possession of a gun. The only weapon found at the scene was a weapon found some 14ft away from the scene where Mark fell. The IPCC declaring that although no gun was found on Mark, the most "plausible" explanation for the location of the gun was that Duggan "was in the process of throwing it to his right as he was shot"

The Metropolitan Police officer who shot Mark Duggan, refused to be interviewed by the IPCC whilst all of the officers at the scene has later 'conferred' with each other before writing their statements.

The suspicion of our communities is this - that Mark Duggan was set up. The man who is said to have supplied a gun to Duggan, Kevin Hutchinson, mysteriously had serious gun charges dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) at the very last minute in a trial at the Old Bailey. The very strong belief in black communities is that Hutchinson was in fact an criminal active informer, acting under instructions of the Met police.

Why else would a black man with a violent criminal record and charged with serious charges be given a free pass by the CPS? Following the Old Bailey trial, Hutchinson was captured on CCTV by the police, who saw him brutally pistol whip a man in public. The key question here is, why was this man allowed by Met Operation Trident Command to maraud around London, committing such serious and violent crimes?

Not only was he not arrested despite his obvious criminality, but when the Mail on Sunday asked for copies of the Old Bailey court papers that would explain why the case against Hutchinson was dropped the Crown Prosecution service said it cannot now find the original paperwork. How very convenient.

My best guess is that Hutchinson was a paid criminal informant who, although engaged in serious criminality was protected by the Metropolitan Police and the CPS. The Met have real form in this area do you recall the case of Delroy Denton and Eaton Green two psychotic criminal informers that were given a licence to kill by the Met. Denton went to murder and rape, 24-year old mother of Marcia Lawes, stabbing her 18 times in Brixton in 1995. This case revealed that the Met was allowing dangerous criminals to act as informers in exchange for freedom of prosecution. This was a campaign I helped to lead and ironically was one of the rationales behind the establishment of Trident.

In our long and sometimes tragic history of Black community relations with the UK State, the issue of deaths in police custody represents the critical fault line in police community relations. No other issue has the power to enrage our community whose history is littered with the dead corpses of innocent black men and women. Recent research published by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) concluded that over 500 Black and ethnic minority people have died in deeply suspicious circumstances over the last 24 years.

As a a founder member of Operation Trident Independent Advisory Group and its longest standing Chair resigning in 2007 and as former Policing Director for London, I consider the IPCC report to be deeply flawed having failed to asses the information now published in the Mail on Sunday.

I also see strong evidence that the Met has seen the return of a culture of institutional corruption exemplified by under cover cops, spying on families seeking justice, child sex abuse cover up scandals and a rampant return of institutional racism.

Harmit Athwal, co-editor of the IRR report said that while the official report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 was intended to challenge racism within Scotland Yard, the ongoing catalogue of deaths suggested a culture of institutional racism remained prevalent.

If the Macpherson report was intended as a way of restoring community faith in the British police, the issue of deaths in custody is the one which is constantly undermining it. As more deaths take place and no one is ever prosecuted, it inevitably sows seeds of incredulity, anger and despair,"

said Athwal.

The black communities perception is that once again the Met have - -metophorically and literally - gotten away with murder. With the newly emerging evidence cited here and over 30 years experience exposing police racism and corruption I think they're right.

Lee Jasper