‘Where was our independence?’ The persistent questions about the IPCC’s Mark Duggan investigation

Last week the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report into the death of Mark Duggan exonerated the officers involved – and was immediately condemned by the family as a ‘whitewash’. IRR News analyses previously unreleased internal documents that shed new light on the IPCC’s investigation in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI)[1] reveal the IPCC chose to withhold ballistics information from the public for several days following the shooting. This withheld information was of vital public concern as it proved that a bullet lodged in a police officer’s radio was from a police firearm. It therefore suggested that, contrary to what was circulating in the media at the time, there had been no shots fired by Mark Duggan. The documents also reveal how some of this misinformation actually originated from the IPCC. Overall, the documents raise further questions about the independence and authority of the IPCC – and the extremely close relationship between its press office and the Metropolitan police.
http://www.irr.org.uk/news/where-was-our-independence-the-persistent-questions-about-the-ipccs-mark-duggan-investigation/7