Mark Duggan was probably throwing away a handgun when he was shot by armed police officers, the police watchdog has found.
Dugg was under police surveillance when he was fatally shot in Tottenham in August 2011. The incident became a catalyst for unrest to explode into riots across London.
After a three-and-a-half-year investigation, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) cleared the Metropolitan Police of any wrongdoing and said that the most “plausible explanation” of the incident was that Duggan was tossing away a handgun when officers fired two shots at him.
The gun was found behind railings around 4.2m from Duggan’s car.
The report also recommended changes to how covert operations are executed in the future, including recording all radio communications and the introduction of in-car recordings, both of which could be used as evidence in any future investigation.
Without these recordings, the IPCC said that it was impossible to know exactly what happened in this case.
The IPCC report follows an inquest last year that found that Duggan had been lawfully killed by officers, with the majority of jurors believing that Duggan had discarded the weapon before his confrontation with police.
