Mark Duggan’s mother seeks justice

It’s taken a year for the mother of Mark Duggan to make her views known.

I have visited her home in Tottenham on numerous occasions to interview other members of the family on the various developments in the convoluted inquiries into the police shooting of her son.

Each time Pam Duggan has welcomed me in, offered me a cup of tea and then slipped away to let others do the talking.

But frustrated by the lack of answers, together with the recent loss of Mark’s father and the man she’s been with for 35 years, the time has come to speak her mind.

She wants to draw a line between the shooting and the riots that tore Tottenham apart two days later. That was nothing to do with my son’s death and our family she says. The police were to blame.

Mrs Duggan uses the phrase “assassination”. She believes that’s what police did to her son on the evening of 4 August 2011.

She wants the man who did it to stand up and be counted, to own up and say sorry.

She asks why could they not just have disarmed him. She means “disabled” rather than an acceptance her son may have had a gun.

A pistol inside a sock was found at the scene. Mark Duggan’s DNA was not on it but his fingerprint was on a box which contained the gun. It had not been fired.

Why didn’t they just shoot him once, she asks, if that’s what they wanted to do and put him in prison. At least we would still be able to see him, she adds.

These are just a sample of the many unanswered questions which prey on her mind.

She’s met three times with the Independent Police Complaints Commission which is carrying out the investigation into her son’s shooting but she’s little the wiser about what happened.

The IPCC says the inquiry should be completed by the end of this month and a report soon after.

A coroner awaits its findings.

But still none of the officers directly involved have been interviewed.

It’s difficult to see how such an inquiry could be deemed complete without such a crucial element.