Police conduct and resulting deaths should be examined – journalist

As London embraces for the fourth day of looting and rioting, investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT that the whole generation of British young people feel betrayed and the killing of Mark Duggan last week was a spark.

­“It’s about a crisis of leadership in this country. Our PM does not really connect with the people, and the policy he is implementing is actually dictated to him by the banks; he has lost touch with ordinary people. There is also a crisis at the Metropolitan police,” said Gosling.

Gosling believes the English are confronted with the whole generation of young people many of whom voted for the first time in the general election last year for Liberal Democrats, and feel betrayed.

“They all are angry. The killing last week was the spark, and it is not the only death of an ethnic minority that the police have been responsible for,” he said. “We have had about 340 deaths, mostly of ethnic minorities in police custody over the last 12 years – that’s about one a month, and not a single conviction of a police officer! This is a message that this killing last Thursday is not going to go unanswered.”

“We need a reexamination of the way we investigate these various deaths of people either in custody or as people were being arrested, because it starts to look like some kind of shoot-to-kill policy out there,” he added.

Gosling told RT that unless there is some decisive action from the PM and the government the riots are likely to continue.

“I do not see that decisive action happening. What we need first of all is for Cameron to recall the very well-respected policeman who resigned to run the Metropolitan Police and to give them a boost in morale,” he said. “And we need to know the names of the police officers and the firearms people who shot Mark Duggan; for the society it would be nice to see the officer who fired that fatal shot arrested – it will give a lot of confidence that the police are not above the law,” he concluded.

­Tensions could once again be stoked after initial ballistic tests suggested that shooting victim Mark Duggan did not actually fire at police officers.

Journalist Patrick Henningsen told RT that the news does not really matter at the moment as events have already taken their own turn.

Henningsen doubts the police could have done more, and there are serious reasons for that.

“In this country we have a massive problem. We have had 20 years of political correctness and 20 years of health and safety and risk assessment to the point where police will stand back not being able to intervene this or that way and not allowing the fire department to do their job,” he said.

With one man already dead in hospital after being caught up in the riots, Henningsen thinks there will be more.

“As long as there are shops and stores, and there are people and gangs out there willing to do “commercial crime”, I do not think there is going to be an end to this,” he concluded.