Taking Responsibility
A lot has been written recently about 'taking responsibility' - in the context of all the violent looting in London.
The spark for what happened was the initial 'riot' in Tottenham following the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan - though this was just a convenient cover for all the copycat violence - which quickly spread to other parts of London in the nights that followed.
On the Monday following that first weekend I remember listening to a TV interview the widow of Mark Duggan - who had been holding an initially peaceful vigil outside the local police station along with family 'supporters' - which later got out of control and turned violent.
The young woman was speaking about her husband and said she was sure he did not possess a gun - but even if he did have a gun (without her knowledge), then she was sure that he would never have used it to fire at anyone.
And finally she said that even if he did have a gun - then why didn't the police just shoot it out of his hand - instead of shooting him dead?
I also listened to one of the family 'supporters' - a black community leader - say that the police had not just shot Mark Duggan, but 'blew his clean head off' - a wild, inflammatory statement that proved to be completely untrue.
Now if this kind of language was typical of what was being said either at - or around the edges - of the 'peaceful' vigil outside Tottenham police station that first Saturday night - then no wonder things escalated so badly.
Because while north London might sometimes resemble the wild west - the police are not trick shot artists - performers in some kind of Buffalo Bill or Annie Oakley wild west show.
So people need to take responsibility for what they say - and how they say it - and to be fair the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) needs to learn a few lessons as well.
Here's a statement the IPCC have issued since the original shooting took place on Thursday 4 August 2011 - in which they accept responsiblity for creating the false impression that shots were actually exchanged with the police.
"The IPCC's first statement, issued at 10:49pm on 4 August, makes no reference to shots fired at police and our subsequent statements have set out the sequence of events based on the emerging evidence.
However, having reviewed the information the IPCC received and gave out during the very early hours of the unfolding incident, before any documentation had been received, it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged, as this was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot.
Any reference to an exchange of shots was not correct and did not feature in any of our formal statements, although an officer was taken to hospital after the incident."
Loose talk can inflame situations and encourage them to spiral out of control - as recent events have shown.
Innocent people have ended up paying with their lives - and livelihoods - as criminals and others with their own axe to grind tried to exploit what happened - for their own selfish ends.
So it's not just the IPCC who should be reflecting on what they said and how they said it - there's a lot more besides.
The spark for what happened was the initial 'riot' in Tottenham following the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan - though this was just a convenient cover for all the copycat violence - which quickly spread to other parts of London in the nights that followed.
On the Monday following that first weekend I remember listening to a TV interview the widow of Mark Duggan - who had been holding an initially peaceful vigil outside the local police station along with family 'supporters' - which later got out of control and turned violent.
The young woman was speaking about her husband and said she was sure he did not possess a gun - but even if he did have a gun (without her knowledge), then she was sure that he would never have used it to fire at anyone.
And finally she said that even if he did have a gun - then why didn't the police just shoot it out of his hand - instead of shooting him dead?
I also listened to one of the family 'supporters' - a black community leader - say that the police had not just shot Mark Duggan, but 'blew his clean head off' - a wild, inflammatory statement that proved to be completely untrue.
Now if this kind of language was typical of what was being said either at - or around the edges - of the 'peaceful' vigil outside Tottenham police station that first Saturday night - then no wonder things escalated so badly.
Because while north London might sometimes resemble the wild west - the police are not trick shot artists - performers in some kind of Buffalo Bill or Annie Oakley wild west show.
So people need to take responsibility for what they say - and how they say it - and to be fair the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) needs to learn a few lessons as well.
Here's a statement the IPCC have issued since the original shooting took place on Thursday 4 August 2011 - in which they accept responsiblity for creating the false impression that shots were actually exchanged with the police.
"The IPCC's first statement, issued at 10:49pm on 4 August, makes no reference to shots fired at police and our subsequent statements have set out the sequence of events based on the emerging evidence.
However, having reviewed the information the IPCC received and gave out during the very early hours of the unfolding incident, before any documentation had been received, it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged, as this was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot.
Any reference to an exchange of shots was not correct and did not feature in any of our formal statements, although an officer was taken to hospital after the incident."
Loose talk can inflame situations and encourage them to spiral out of control - as recent events have shown.
Innocent people have ended up paying with their lives - and livelihoods - as criminals and others with their own axe to grind tried to exploit what happened - for their own selfish ends.
So it's not just the IPCC who should be reflecting on what they said and how they said it - there's a lot more besides.
