I find it telling that all of the major UK media outlets are reporting that the officer who was shot was struck by a 'police issue' bullet - as though the type of bullet that it is (a hollowpoint, as used by UK armed police officers in handguns) is an absolute indicator of its source.

Apart from the fact that it showcases both the appalling ignorance of the media in these matters and their apparent disinterest in questioning this narrative, I very-much fear that this will now become the accepted narrative, regardless of whatever facts may come out later.

A man with a long criminal record, armed with a handgun, is approached by armed police with a view to arresting him. Shots are fired and he is killed. That's all of us really know right now. And just because the killing of de Menezes was an appalling c*ck-up by the police, does not mean that this killing was as well.

llater,

llamas

The questions of

- whether Mr Duggan was armed;
- whether the fatal bullet came from a police gun or not;
- whether the shooting was excusable - given the eternal impossibility of people making the correct call every time when a split-second life-or-death decision must be made;
- and of whether the state will attempt a cover up

are all separate.

Perhaps a viewpoint from outside the UK would be interesting.

Convicted criminal, with a gun (which I believe to be illegal in the UK) is involved in a shootout with the police (i.e. the source of legitimate force/violence in any country). This means that hooligans are licensed to loot, pillage and injure the police and public. Tesco and their shoppers be damned.

A bit more absolutism is called for, folks...

Two extremes:

1) A violent convicted criminal, armed with a handgun loaded with hollow-points, attempted to murder a police officer, and was shot by that officer's colleagues.

2) An entirely innocent man was murdered by armed police officers.

Neither of these seems to offer the slightest justification for several hundred people burning down a carpet warehouse, stealing cart-loads of consumer goods from local retailers, and torching a double-decker bus.

Maybe I'm missing some detail.

Perry, you need to be more understanding and tollerant toward police officers. They do extremely hard and dangerous work, routinely, and take personal risks.

Sometimes they make mistakes, kill an innocent man, and lie and try to cover up. It is not correct, but understandable.

I don't think that unjustified violence by police officers toward innocent people is a wide-spread phenomenon, or a serious problem in Britain. I might be mistaken - but the question isn't only whether a case like Menezes happened, but how frequent such cases are.

In this particular case, the victim was a known criminal, with a long record, not an innocent bystander like Menezes. (I presume this, at least, is well established). I wouldn't shed a tear over him. I'd rather congratulate the police officers.

Whatever the facts are in this case, and they will emerge eventually, it's just a wonderful excuse for some Ghetto shopping, innit?

There will be much more of this in the dark days to come.

llamas:

That's all of us really know right now. And just because the killing of de Menezes was an appalling c*ck-up by the police, does not mean that this killing was as well.

The killing of Menezes was a cock up, yes, but that was not why the Met cannot be believed. It was what came afterwards, the litany of lies, that is the problem. That was not a cock up, it was a criminal conspiracy for which many people should have gone to jail.

Ian Bennett:

Neither of these seems to offer the slightest justification for several hundred people burning down a carpet warehouse, stealing cart-loads of consumer goods from local retailers, and torching a double-decker bus. Maybe I'm missing some detail.

Yes you are missing one detail. The first paragraph I wrote: "The riots in London over the last couple nights can be condemned as assaults on private property by predatory opportunists. That much is easy."

Whatever the truth of how the police came to kill this man, the rioting, by which I mean violent predatory assaults on private property, are utterly unjustified. Frankly if they burned down the local Nick rather than looting local shops, that could at least tentatively be linked to some riotous justification... but that is not the case.

My problem is not condemning thugs looting and burning but finding myself in the position of not believing a word that anyone from the Met utters until enough time has passed for the 'facts' to be independently assessed.

Perry, you overlook the Ian Tomlinson case, where the police initially claimed that there was no CCTV evidence.

So any claims in the media are either unfounded, or police spin. In recent cases, they seem to have form for lying. This is enough for sensible people to remain sceptical about initial reports. Those reports seem, usually, to be false.

The fact that a bullet is lodged in a police radio is VERY interesting. The only possible explanations acceptable to the public is murder-coverup, or gunfight. By not admitting it immediately, the third possible explanation (negligent discharge, and over-reaction) isn't credible.

With regard to the riot, there are rumours about that the police batoned the hell out of a young girl, then let her go back into a borderline-rioting crowd.

A hardened cynic might suggest that a few riots take the focus off police budget cuts and potential police corruption at commissioner level. The officer cadre now has no experience in riot situations. That's very visible in the discontent among rank-and-file officers in blog comments.

Perry, perhaps you misunderstood or (more likely) I mis-explained, for which I apologise. I was agreeing with you that, whatever the circumstances of the shooting, the aftermath was unjustified.

I've been thinking much the same things as Perry on this matter. I must admit that instinctively I pretty much always blame the police when these things happen. I do realise that this is not always, or perhaps even mostly, justified, however.

A few years ago a good friend was at the wrong end of a police inquiry and I was a close observer of this. My friend had been implicated, by association with the wrong-doers, in the (non-violent) crime. He was completely innocent, however. In any event, the uninterest of the police officers; their truly shocking level of ignorance and incompetence; the bureaucracy and petty mindedness of it all, was an eye opener. The helplessness and even the (unjustified) shame, is deeply stressful. It ended well since it was recognised that my friend had acted in good faith, and there wasn't any evidence to the contrary. I thought at the time that if this is what the black community is exposed to on an ongoing basis....then no wonder there is so much bitterness and anger.

It is not all the fault of the police. The job does not tend to recruit highly moral and dedicated people. The people that are employed by the police are, for the main, suitable for maintaining public order. But any more complicated tasks are likely to be pursued with woeful inefficiency and a complete lack of grace.

Jacob:

Sometimes they make mistakes, kill an innocent man, and lie and try to cover up. It is not correct, but understandable.

Understandable? Yes I understand perfectly why they did it, I do not think anyone does not understand. They killed a man by mistake and did not want to bear responsibility for that and that went all the way up the chain of command: fictitious accounts and destroyed evidence in order to pervert the course of justice... things you or I would go to jail for unless we works for the Met, of course. That is why I am waiting to see what the actual facts are in the current case and not reflexively saying "oh good, the cops shot an armed blagger who fired first, end of story" just because the Met says that is what happened. Maybe it did go down like that. And maybe not.

What is there not to understand?

But what I do not understand is why you take me to task because as a result of the Menezes case I think nothing the Met says can be taken as The Truth, given they have form for bare faced lying to cover their arses. Perhaps where you come from that is just the norm but I feel it is reasonable to demand a lot more from the Police.

I am not one of those libertarians who thinks The Future Libertopia would not have or need Police. As a result, I want to be able to have some degree of trust in the cops as I cannot foresee some time when they will not be an unfortunate necessity.

Fair enough Ian, I misunderstood your point. It seems we are in a state of furious agreement.

I have long been under the impression that the UK police have been disarmed - I see I was wrong?

Yes, police will lie and cover up. It's standard practice. I wish it weren't so, but it is. I know no way of creating an ideal police. The main question is how frequent are these cases of wrong-doing.

My feeling is that the whole thing gets cranked out of kilter and proportion before it has happened, and is why it happened, in this and the de Menezes case, and others similar.

Assuming that the state is a valid entity and one is going to have a police force, then it must have the authority to have the last word.

If it is challenged and has to deal with answer-backs, it loses authority, becomes held in contempt, and becomes useless.

I have often noticed that the police one has to watch out for are those with less power and less authority.
In both South Africa and Spain I used to watch out for the municipal police because they were the less powerful and thus out to prove themselves to themselves to themselves.

In Spain the Guardia and to a slightly lesser extent the National Police, were much more reasonable and helpful. The Guardia called me a tow truck after I ran my car off the road and disappeared without asking questions. But if one wants to take a back-answering attitude they can be serious trouble.

As the police become increasingly challenged and "authority-free" you can expect to see things get worse.

Most of the UK police used to be unarmed, Alisa, but those were the days when they were respected.

From the US:

I view any police testimony as suspect and untrustworthy -- about on the order of that of any known criminal or addict -- under any conditions because my personal experience is that they routinely lie to manufacture "reasonable cause". Each of my interactions has been trivial, but my assessment of the character and culture of police has been formed from these experiences. The cases reported in the media for serious events simply reinforce this opinion.

Oops, John, I seem to have gotten it all backwards - thanks for correcting me.

I've been watching it (Monday evening 10 pm ish) on the television.

It may be too much to expect the "public" to be armed, but it is in particular a great shame that shopkeepers have not been allowed the weaponry to defend themselves and their property. As it is, the shopkeepers have been utterly defenceless. While they were watching their livelihoods go up in smoke and flames, the police have been similarly overwhelmed. They can't be everywhere, which is pretty much now where they need to be.

Yet the forces of law and order, knowing that the rioters will just laugh at them, are reduced to appealing to the victims of all this to just stay clear of it. To "let the police get on with their job". I understand this. I do. But it is depressing.

The fire brigades won't come out to stop a fire, if they don't have police protection. Which they don't.

The tv journalists seem to be out in force, though.

"Was this a 'righteous shoot' of a gangster who fired first or another cack-handed murder by the state justified by a flood of lies?"

My best guess (from the little I've followed this) is that it's a cack-handed (possibly) righteous killing of a gangster followed by lies because that's all they know how to do in such a situation.

The riots are simply people who like the ideo of rioting and breaking stuff and stealing things because that's all they know how to do in such a situation.

Perry -

Would you please spell out the facts about which you believe the Met lied?

There will be much more of this in the dark days to come.

I was rather too precient with that one, it's been hardly a day...

The Police chopper is above my house here in Bristol again, bad stuff going on in the centre and St Pauls, the same is happening in Birmingham and Liverpool...

This now has nothing to do with the original police shooting incident. It is pure and utter opportunist criminality. Ghetto shopping, like I said earlier. And the rioters/looters are far more organised and fluid in their tactics than the Police.

It's like the climax to the movie Harry Brown is breaking out all over the country. Without the armed old man giving the thugs their own violence right back at them.

Perry - Would you please spell out the facts about which you believe the Met lied?

You are going to have to narrow that request down a bit...

About the Menezes and Ian Tomlinson cases? Google is your friend: there is copious information on the police malfeasance in both cases.

As for the current matter, as stated in my article, I have no idea if the police have been economical with the truth. Frankly I am inclined to believe CO19's killing of Mark Duggan was a righteous shoot.

My problem is it is going to take a lot of work before we can ever believe what the Met tells us given their previous form for conspiracy and porkies to cover their arses...and at a time like this, when frankly I would be all in favour of looters being shot on sight in the streets, that is very unfortunate indeed.

A press release has appeared on the IPCC website within the last hour.

It confirms some information hinted at earlier today in the Telegraph, Independent and perhaps elsewhere, that the bullet that hit a police officer and lodged in his radio came from an official police weapon, after having passed through the arm of Mark Duggan.

It is inconclusive on the issue of whether the handgun found at the scene had been fired. It states nothing on whether that handgun had been drawn.

Best regards

You are going to have to narrow that request down a bit...

About the Menezes and Ian Tomlinson cases? Google is your friend

Sorry, I should have put that more clearly. I meant the Menezes shooting. I know there's plenty available via Google, but I was interested in what you believed they had lied about.

Philip: Would you like to outline any instances in which the police told the truth about the Menezes shooting? Seriously, anything at all?