The Met's head of communications, Dick Fedorcio, appears before the home affairs select committee. Photograph: Reuters
After Ian Tomlinson and Smiley Culture, we are once again faced with a controversial death in an incident involving the police. Once again, there are serious doubts about the integrity of the initial reports of the incident by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
The generally accepted facts are that Mark Duggan, a Tottenham man who grew up on the Broadwater Farm estate, was on his way home in a minicab on Thursday evening. Officers from the MPS firearms unit CO19 approached the car, shots were fired and Duggan was killed.
The initial reports, however, followed a depressingly familiar pattern. With the allegation that the police were fired at first came the implication that Duggan may somehow have been responsible for his own death. A police officer was also cast as a modern-day hero, catching a potentially fatal bullet in his radio during an exchange of fire.
The victim was predictably described in unflattering terms. In the earliest articles the Telegraph reported that on the night that Duggan was killed they were informed by "police sources" that the dead man was a "well-known gangster" who had been under surveillance by officers investigating gun crime in a preplanned operation in Tottenhan Hale – the implication of "gangster" being that he was not worthy of public sympathy and may well have met a violent end in any event.
The Telegraph also reported that a spokesman for the IPCC said he understood that Duggan had been shot by police, adding that an officer had been shot and wounded. "We understand the officer was shot first before the male was shot." It appears that the IPCC relied on the police sources for their information.
Four days and three nights of riots later, the accounts attributed to a police source and the IPCC look misleading. It is now being reported that the initial ballistics tests on the bullet found lodged in the radio shows that the bullet was police issue, and therefore had not been fired by Duggan. Stafford Scott, a community leader, has also reported that the gun said to have been found at the scene "was found in a sock meaning it wasn't prepared for action".
In other death-in-custody cases the initial accounts put forward in the press have proved to be similarly misleading. Initial reports concerning the death of Tomlinson focused on the officers who went to Tomlinson's aid despite the "barrage of missiles from protesters". The inquest revealed that there was no such assault on the officers. A heavy emphasis in the press was put on Tomlinson lifestyle and health, notably, even before a postmortem had been carried out. Initial reports into death of Jean Charles de Menezes also proved to be similarly misleading, with accounts of the victim vaulting over the tube barrier and wearing a suspiciously bulky padded jacket later being proved untrue.
When there is a controversial, high-profile death or serious injury case involving the police, it is important that the public obtain a truthful, unbiased and accurate picture of the events. Usually the first communications about such incidents are from a police force's communications department – afterwards the IPCC communications department assumes responsibility for the investigation.
These days, the lines of the comms battle are more apparent than ever before: on one side is the 24-hour news channels, the online media and citizen journalists blogging and tweeting in real time, and on the other side is the Met's public affairs department, equipped with a staff of 72 and a budget of £6.3m, dedicated to explaining and promoting the work of the Met's 30,000 police officers. Recently, the work of the Met's comms department has been brought to the public's attention when its director Dick Fedorcio was interviewed in connection with the News of the World at the home affairs select committee.
Discussing the 7/7 terrorist attacks in an interview with PRWeek, deputy director Chris Webb gave an interesting insight into how the department worked. "The first hour after a terror attack is the most important", he explained, "both in terms of setting out a proactive comms strategy and in reacting to media speculation. It's about reassuring the public that you're in control … we have what we call a golden hour. It's an hour to get a grip, to get control of the situation, or others will do it on our behalf."
In the case of Duggan, it is unclear who the police source that spoke to the Telegraph was, or even whether the source was authorised to speak. There is no evidence yet that what he allegedly said was part of a "proactive comms strategy".
What is clear, however, is that neither a vacuum nor proactive comms are going to reassure an increasingly sceptical and angry public. Improbable accounts are as bad for generating rumours as an information vacuum and it is perhaps no surprise that ahead of the riot in Tottenham there was speculation that Duggan was pulled from the minicab, held down and then killed.
In an ideal world, the IPCC would be a neutral body that concentrates on investigating allegations about deaths and serious injuries caused by police offers. However, the IPCC has increasingly become responsible for controlling the release of information about police incidents to the media and public. It opens itself up to the criticisms of bias in this role. In the Duggan case, for instance, while the IPCC has now '"categorically refuted'" rumours that Duggan was shot by police "execution style", it has failed to categorically confirm that the bullet in the radio was a police bullet or offer clarification about the circumstances in which the gun was found at the scene.
What is required, especially when a death is involved, is that there are timely and honest disclosures of the facts, even when those facts raise serious issues for the force concerned. Such frank and low-key disclosures would require the forces to radically step back from engaging in the comms war and cut the costs and influence of comms departments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/met-communications-department-mark-duggan
