'MET TREATED MY FAMILY DISGRACEFULLY AFTER OFFICERS KILLED MARK'

The Evening Standard (London)

January 23, 2012 Monday

'MET TREATED MY FAMILY DISGRACEFULLY AFTER OFFICERS KILLED MARK'

Bo Wilson, Benedict Moore-bridger


MARK Duggan's mother today attacked Scotland Yard for the "disgraceful" way it treated her family after police shot her son dead.
Pamela Duggan, 53, said the Met's response to her son's death last August - which led to riots that spread from Tottenham across Britain - had made her family's pain and distress much worse.
An interim report into the riots by Met Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said that police made "comprehensive and strenuous" efforts to talk to local people and calm tensions after Mr Duggan, 29, was shot on August 4.
The report was described as a "whitewash" by local church leader Pastor Nims Obunge.
Mrs Duggan today echoed that view and demanded a public apology from the Met and the Independent Police Complaints Commission. She said: "They did not treat us well at all. I still feel ill about it.
"It was disgraceful. I did not hear about the shooting until Mark's girlfriend Semone (Wilson) came round and put the TV on and we saw it on the news."
Mrs Duggan also told of her anger that there was no senior officer at Tottenham police station on August 6 to talk to protesters who had marched there to seek information over the shooting. She said: "They went to the police station and waited for hours, but did not get any answers. It was an insult."
Within hours the riots had begun.
Mrs Duggan said: "It should have been handled better. A couple of weeks or more after it happened a senior police person came round and said sorry and that I should have been told earlier (about the shooting), but that was it. They should apologise publicly."
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Duggans claim, they were so ill-informed that the father-of-four's sister Kay, 38, drove to Central Middlesex Hospital near Ealing, believing he had been taken there alive by air ambulance, only to find it was an injured firearms officer who had been transported.
Many hours later, the family say, they had to contact police themselves to find out what was happening as they had received no firm information.
The IPCC has admitted making a mistake when it initially said Mr Duggan had fired at police, when tests showed he had not.
The family's lawyer has accused the watchdog, which is handling the investigation into the shooting, of "misinformation, a lack of information, and conflicting information".
Mrs Duggan said she is on medication and rarely discusses her son's death publicly or reads news reports about the case as descriptions of him as a "well-known gangster" do not match her memories.
Mr Duggan's late uncle was Desmond Noonan, whose crime family ran Manchester's underworld for 20 years. Mrs Duggan said: "Mark was not the kind of guy that he has been portrayed as - the way they say he was a gangster. He was a father, a kind, loving family man with kids.
"I can't talk to anyone about it. It brings back too many painful memories. He was my son. The riots were nothing to do with Mark - we did not want them and he would never have condoned violence like that." The Met did not return the Standard's calls.