It was part of an ongoing police investigation into black people carrying firearms. Given that such people are want to shoot said firearms, it's not unreasonable for the police to also be duly armed. Likely it was a special unit that is trained and given clearance to shoot black people should they be found in possession of firearms.

 

It's because of this that the citizens of the UK can sleep safely at night, and need only kill a black person should one be found burglarising their own home and castle.

Those damned blacks!

Indeed, and you can't see them at night, which makes it even more worrying.

I guess the only answer is to make them a curfew, and if they are caught out after it shoot them.

The police were in a planned operation to arrest him at the time, that much they've said. If they knew he was likely to be armed, they'd have had guns too. I think it's Operation Trident, who deal with armed gangs. The bullet found lodged in a policeman's radio afterwards was apparently a police one, so likely (?) a ricochet? I assume a direct shot would go through a radio reasonably easily.

They've got a non-police gun and ammunition on the scene, but there are conflicting reports over whether Duggan actually fired a shot or not. He was a passenger in a taxi at the time, though since he'd texted his girlfriend with "the Feds are following me" shortly beforehand I guess he was aware things were about to happen.

In terms of why it would cause a riot - the Met are currently at something of a low when it comes to public trust. In a big way with cases like Tomlinson or De Menezes or several others where they've been proven to be lying consistently and often about what happened during operations that went wrong. There's also their recent exposure with the News International scandals and how some officers were involved in that, still coming out.

I don't think any of those things were much of a factor. The local youths live in a deprived area (I drive through to work at the football club sometimes, it's an absolute shithole) and likely perceive the police to be unfairly against them into the bargain. A few start a bit of trouble and a lot more came out just to join in the fun. I mean, there's people posting pics of themselves with their loot on Twitter, for fuck's sake, and loads not hiding their faces when trashing businesses live on camera. Impressively dumb. Meanwhile rumours circulate that the police had Duggan on the ground and immobile when they shot him and things like that - probably not true but enough to be incendiary. A big old mix of social injustice, anger at the establishment and plain old stupids.

Lock 'em all up!

I like the way you're thinking!

Indeed, and not quite. Trident is specifically aimed at gun crime in London's black communities.

Yeah that's true. I should know really, my mate's brother works for them. ANYWAY, yes - not regular police and generally going to be tooled up for an operation.

 

edit - also the rioters appear to be very much predominantly white. Hm!

I'm hearing the actual riot kicked off after the police attacked a 16yo girl - possibly throwing stones

The Police were throwing stones? Seems a tad unprofessional even for the Met.

:D

White people need new trainers too! RACIALIST! :@

Possibly entirely unrelated, but very unusual... there were (at least) three dozen police in Croydon town centre this evening.

 

No signs of rioting or property damage or whatever, though both the shopping centres seemed to be closing early, so maybe something happened/planned inside either/both of those.

TIYF

FT

Hmmm, that page is predicting at "7:57" there will be 100 youths at north end. (or it was a typo and that was 15 mins ago).

Eitherway, sounds like I left before the "fun" started.

You are welcome to read what the Guardian is writing after reading Twitter. I prefer the noise.

You fucking animals!

No I'm not! It's graphi that likes the horses, not me. :P