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.
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!
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.
I don't really get why you think the UI is shit. It's just a stream of information. It's your responsibility to read into it what you think. How would you do it different?
I dislike reading polished version of things now, it's too easy and you rarely get the full picture.
Oh look, your Guardian Live Blog is just linking to Tweets now. At least that's honest.
Roses are bollocks, Violets are crud, I hate bloody flowers, And much prefer mud.
