Justice for Azelle Rodney

The general silence surrounding the state murder of Azelle Rodney is symptomatic of a police force still riddled by institutional racism, suffering from weak leadership (in the form of Sir Ian Blair) and still operating disastrous shoot-to-kill policy which has claimed too many innocent lives.

And this is the important thing: Azelle Rodney wasn't guilty of anything. A young man without a criminal record (and unarmed) was murdered by armed assailants in a planned operation. If his story were ever mentioned in the news, it would cause uproar... and even more so because his attackers were officers of the state, legally obliged to keep the peace and protect citizens.

In brief, here is a recap of the state of affairs (borrowed from the Justice for Azelle Rodney website):

Azelle was a rear seat passenger in a car travelling north along Hale Lane in Edgware when at approx 19.45 the car was stopped by Plain Clothes armed Police Officers from SO19 as part of a pre planned Operation, as the car was stopped he was immediately shot 7 times at close range (5 shots to the head, 1 in the back and one in the shoulder) 2 Bullets appeared to have missed him.

• AR was shot without warning.
• All shots were fired by One Officer.
• All shots were fired using a High Velocity Semi Automatic Assault Rifle at close range ( HK G36C as seen above).
• Police have stated AR was never seen at any point in Time with a gun or other weapon.
• There was no return fire from the vehicle AR was a passenger in.
• There were several eye witnesses to the killing as in the Immediate vicinity where the car was stopped there were many Pub and Restaurant goers, this included a family who were within 4 metres of the vehicle when it was stopped.
• The police have said they did not know who AR was until he was Identified the Day after the shooting.
• The next day when the Family and Friends of AR visited the site they had to hose down and cleanse the pools of AR's still wet and dried blood that the Armed Police had left behind at the scene, this was witnessed by the Police Liaison Officers and was very distressing for the family.
• Information initially released by Police Sources stated that AR was seen with a Firearm, the Police have now Retracted that statement but have not announced this publicly.

Sir Ian Blair, who this week claimed that the media were 'institutionally racist' is apparently on the verge of being sacked because of a string of failures by the Metropolitan Police, as well as several lapses in his personal judgement. When you have a police service committed to withholding information about cases where they have made mistakes, the media should be investigating. But at the same time, the police service needs to be reformed. How can it be that they freely suggested that Azelle was armed, but when they found he wasn't, they decided to keep quiet. Should the mainstream media have to fight the police for this sort of information? Or should the police simply be more honest about the tragic mistakes they made? The thing is: the police have intentionally left the idea in the public conscience that Azelle Rodney was armed. They knew he wasn't, but they allowed that idea to come out as a way of making the public feel that perhaps he deserved to be killed. The police therefore misled all of us and what's more, they likely calculated that by making the victim a young, 'armed' black man, they could trigger a racist fear response in the general public.

This case will not be suppressed. Azelle's family is leading a dignified campaign to make the police come clean about their mistakes and start the process of punishing the man who shot their son. Citizens committed to civil rights, the protection of the rule of law and preventing the encroachment of police capabilities on our human rights should lend all the support they can to the Justice for Azelle Rodney campaign.

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