Vol. 76/No. 32      August 27, 2012

On Aug. 6, a memorial service was held for Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old shot and killed by police in August 2011, in Tottenham, north London. Five days earlier, a coroner’s inquest jury ruled that cops used an “unsuitable level of force” in the 2008 death of Sean Rigg.

The families of Duggan and Rigg, both of whom are black, have been at the forefront of these and other fights against killings by police.

A specialist firearms cop killed Duggan as a police unit on gun crimes in the black community tried to arrest him. The Independent Police Complaints Commission, the government body investigating the case, has admitted it “misled” the media into reporting Duggan had fired at the cops. He did no such thing. Cops then tried to claim he was carrying a loaded gun, but the weapon they produced has no trace of Duggan’s DNA, fingerprints or blood.

No less than 31 cops were present at the shooting; all have so far refused to be interviewed by the IPCC.

The killing sparked widespread unrest here, particularly in Tottenham, as well as other cities across the country.

“It’s a year since Mark was murdered” said Carole Duggan, his aunt, speaking at the memorial service. “We are still no closer to finding out the truth of what happened.” An inquest into the death is not scheduled until early next year.

The Aug. 1 jury verdict implicating cops in the death of Sean Rigg, a 40-year-old who suffered from schizophrenia, was the result of a four-year-long campaign by Rigg’s family to force some of the facts to light against a wall of obstruction and lies.

In August 2008, staff at a hostel where Rigg lived called police when he was experiencing a psychotic episode. The cops brutally “hog-tied” Rigg for eight minutes. They forced his face down on the ground with his legs pulled up to his buttocks, a potentially fatal procedure.

Rigg was dumped in a police van and taken to Brixton police station instead of a hospital. He died half naked on a concrete floor after losing consciousness. None of the police “called an ambulance or got him a blanket,” despite Rigg’s obvious injuries, reported the Independent.

Following the verdict, Marcia Rigg, one of Sean’s sisters, read a statement on behalf of the family calling for “prosecution of those responsible for Sean’s death” and “an urgent public inquiry to establish why the system in this country consistently fails to deliver justice to the many families whose loved ones have died in police custody.”  
 
 
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