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?

Taunton Marines Honoured

Despite the general unpopularity of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that our British troops are engaged in, there still exists a great affinity between the public and our armed forces.

This was proven beyond doubt today in Taunton when the local Royal Marine unit 40 Commando, stationed at Norton Manor Camp, held a parade through the town to mark their homecoming after a tour of Afghanistan.

The streets were in places lined more than eight people deep, especially as the parade route converged at the war memorial outside the Market House in the centre of Taunton. In fact, so busy were the pavements that it was quite often impossible to see anything more than the back of another person’s head.

The parade also marked the sad death of three brave 40 Commando Marines who did not return home after losing their lives in service of their country. Two of those commandos were killed when caught in an explosion in Helmand Province, while another died in a separate explosion while taking part in an outreach patrol to disrupt enemy forces north of Sangin.

40 Commando is also the regiment of reservist Lance Corporal Matt Croucher, who has been in the news lately with the recent announcement that he is to receive the George Cross from the Queen in October, for bravely jumping on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades after tripping a wired trap while out on a reconnaissance patrol in Helmand Province in February.

News crews from BBC Points West (or BBC Points Bristol as they should really be known since the vast majority of their news never covers much else) and ITV West were on hand to cover the morning’s events, while the usually non-existent local Police were out in force to mark the route.

To cheering crowds, the Royal Marines of 40 Commando were given a special welcome home and a day that they, and those that were there, will hopefully remember for years to come.

A Dedicated Border Police Force

The Conservative Party, which for some reason The Telegraph now refers to as ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’, have announced possible plans for a new dedicated Border Police Force.

The new unit will apparently help combat illegal immigration, people and drugs trafficking along with a whole host of other niceties that cross our borders on a day to day basis. However, as is unfortunately the case with so many new Conservative proposals, this mooted Border Force will avoid the true issue and instead tackle an irrelevant one.

The immigration problems that we now face as a country have little to do with the illegal variety which constitutes only a very minor part of our total immigration burden. In fact our real problems (and they are many) lie with what is entirely legal immigration over which we no longer have any say or control.

When we became members of the European Economic Community and later the European Union we accepted the text of the Treaty of Rome which grants the ‘fundamental right’ of free movement to Citizens of the Union across member state borders.

This supposed ‘right’ to free movement was later strengthened by our old friend Directive 2004/38/EC and more recently the Lisbon Treaty (aka. The Constitution) which has now completed its rubberstamping journey through our increasingly irrelevant provincial council (aka. The Houses of Parliament) and will soon come into force once the will of the Irish people has been circumnavigated (aka. basically told to shove it).

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