The Smoking Gun

I may be jumping the gun, so to speak, but a report by the Guardian on the IPCC’s preliminary findings suggest that Mark Duggan did not shoot at police before being killed by them last Thursday.

Presuming this to be truth, we now have evidence that a man has been shot dead by police without, in hindsight, justification. It has happened before, and will do again.

Only yesterday I highlighted the link between the rise in gun crime in Britain and the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s. Yet, suggest forms of capital punishment should be reinstated, and some commentators such as Peter North (son of Dr Richard North) claim that they are ‘not comfortable giving government the power to kill people for any reason’.

‘Uncomfortable’ they might be; but by removing the death penalty, we have not somehow done away with state sanctioned killings, but simply exchanged one type of death for another. Clearly Mr Duggan was not entirely innocent. Though the exact details of events that led to his death are yet to become clear, he was found holding an illegal firearm. Yet, did he deserve to be killed for this crime?

Some may attempt to argue that police were in a difficult situation, and that accidents like this can happen in tense situations. They are right – but surely if that is true, and they are so concerned that the death penalty may result in the death of an innocent person, surely they would be equally concerned – if not more so – that an innocent person may be accidentally killed by the police?

The shooting of the innocent, or killing without intention become an inevitable part of policing once firearms have been issued. It sadly happened with Jean Charles de Menezes, and now it has happened with Mark Duggan. This is not to say that the cases of law-abiding de Menezes and apparently criminal Duggan are equivalent, or to condone the latter’s actions, but that neither deserved their fate.

Accidents are in our nature. We are imperfect beings, regardless of whether we are highly trained members of the police or seemingly ordinary blue collar workers. But we try to restrict our mistakes by ensuring proper procedures and practices are followed, so that they occur as infrequently as we can possibly manage.

This is why the death penalty is the preferable option to the arming of the police, which is, as I have already said, the real consequence of abolishing capital punishment. Mark Duggan was, to all intents and purposes, executed by the police last week – but crucially he was killed without trial, a judge, a jury, a right to defence or repeal.

Duggan’s trial (as we could call it) occurred in the minds of one or perhaps more officers, who weighed up the situation and evidence before them, acting presumably under pressure and forced to make a split second decision over life and death. By comparison, this is a world away from the far more precise, measured and reasonable process of the courts and judicial system.

In a court, Mr Duggan (or a person accused of murder) would have had the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty. He would have been tried by a Judge and heard by a Jury under strict rules of law and procedures. There would have been prosecution and defence, the right of repeal and the fairness of an open hearing. And if after proper judicial examination a man were found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers, and sentenced to death for his crime, this would be a much fairer and more just system of punishment than being shot by an armed police officer.

An Inevitable Outcome

If only the ‘inevitable outcome’ of which I will write were the collapse of the single European currency, whose death throws, like a slow motion train crash, threaten to take the European Union down with it.

Unfortunately though, the rapid demise of Europe’s anti democratic Union has been predicted on many an occasion and, so far at least, failed to materialise. Therefore one now tends to make such predictions with some level of care.

Consequently, I shall, for the time being, pass over the continuing Euro zone crisis and instead briefly comment on the current violence in London – a city that long ago ceased to be English or British.

The death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on Thursday, who was shot by police during what the BBC describes as ‘an apparent exchange of fire’, is another unpleasant reminder of the failure of our criminal justice system and our increasingly destructive political class.

As our police force have evolved into another department of social services, and its officers have receded from their once prominent position on the streets of our town and cities, the criminal elements in society have become increasingly emboldened.

On the orders of wise politicians, the police have become a reactive service rather than remain a preventative force – and they ceased long ago to be citizens in uniform, instead seeing each other as an elite group, draped in paramilitary equipment and riding around in expensive metal boxes, all utterly removed from the events outside and the people they are tasked with defending.

Far from deterring crime, they appear – if at all – only once the offence has taken place, sometimes to record the transgression, but usually to provide counselling and lecture the public against ‘taking the law into their own hands’. Yet attempt to engage in a political demonstration and suddenly the riot shields come out in force.

But most worrying of all is how the police have slowly been armed over the course of four decades, with the inevitable outcome being violence and bloodshed. It was the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s to 60s which created the present situation. The fear and deterrent of the noose quickly gave way, and as the figures starkly prove, gun crime has rapidly risen in the years since.

Areas of London and other major British cities have become no-go zones, ruled by armed gangs who kill without mercy or so much as a thought for the consequences. While the police have retreated to the safety of their police stations and squad cars, when the two gun toting groups eventually cross paths and lock horns, the deaths of innocent bystanders are the inevitable outcome.

This really is only the beginning. Unless we restore the deterrent of the death penalty, gun crime will continue to rise without check, as will unintentional death at the trigger finger of the police. Either it is criminals who live in fear of the law and justice, or we who live in fear of criminals. Which is it to be?

Killing With Kindness

In the past couple of days, visitors and readers of ConservativeHome have debated whether the death penalty should be reintroduced in Britain.

Today, in a comment article on ConservativeHome, David T Breaker argued that the death penalty was wrong. In the comments, the Conservative MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, Dan Byles, agreed, saying that he believed ‘the power to take the lives of its citizens is too awesome a power to trust to the State’.

This remark on capital punishment is particularly interesting in light of the speech he made back in March, duly recorded by Hansard, in which Mr Byles made the following points:

I believe that the House is broadly united, with the possible exception of Mr Winnick, in believing that in the case of Libya, events had reached a stage where committing our military to enforcing the UN resolution is absolutely the right thing to do.

The spectre of Iraq should not prevent us from doing what we believe is right and is ultimately in our national interests…

It is with some regret that I will be voting for the motion, because committing military forces to action anywhere in the world is regrettable. It will lead to dead soldiers, if not British, then Libyan; we must not forget that whichever side wins, there are casualties on the other side.

What we understand by all this is that Mr Byles is perfectly in favour of the State using the ‘awesome power’ of taking life to kill Libyan soldiers and civilians, which is the logical and real consequence of his support for military action in Libya – but he is against the execution of convicted murderers, tried by a jury of their peers (with unanimous verdicts) under an open legal system, with a right to defence and fair trial.

Dan Byles MP is therefore prepared to protect Libyan civilians by dropping bombs on Gaddafi, but if innocent civilians are killed by mistake (and they have been and will be), it is deemed ‘regrettable’ but, in his eyes, acceptable. But he will not allow the hanging of British murderers for their crimes and to protect us.