[Content note: This article discusses police-led violence and sexual abuse]

ACTION: Join the United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC) Procession 2014 on Saturday 25th October

By @JustinTheLibSoc

The cold edifice of glass and concrete, that is the offices of the Crown Prosecution Service, was met in the warm August sun with several indomitable figures from the United Families and Friends Campaign. Among them was Marcia Rigg, demanding that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecute the police officers that were involved in the death of her brother, Sean Rigg in Brixton Police Station in 2008.

Over the past six years, Marcia and her family have endured many tribulations which could have only compounded the grief of their loss. There was the insult of an incompetent investigation by the IPCC, followed by the travesty of waiting four years for a public inquest only for the Coroner to direct the jury to discount the “unlawful killing” and “death by neglect” verdicts from consideration. Despite state orchestrated setbacks and institutional disadvantage, in 2013, the family and their legal team uncover a series of errors made by the IPCC investigation into Sean’s death. The IPCC possessed but failed to examine clear evidence, which proved that the officers made false statements. When Marcia Rigg called for action in front of CPS offices, it had been over a year since the evidence had been handed over to the authorities.

Yesterday the Crown Prosecution Service finally responded by refusing to prosecute the Metropolitan Police officers for perjury. In a lengthy statement which detailed the evidence and their reasoning, the CPS attempted to hide in plain sight, the unnerving truth. That the CPS’ primary function is to protect the State. They act in prejudice against the interests of the bereaved and abused. Their response said this and more. It was a clear attempt to debilitate the Rigg family’s heroic efforts. The family released a statement showing their disappointment.

Before the CPS made this decision, the simple truth of the evidence had been examined three times over, which made the CPS’ refusal rather extraordinary. The IPCC had been embarrassed into admitting that there was a case to answer. The officers were shown to have twice repeated false accounts about Sean Rigg and their response. According to the criminologist Dr Silvia Casale, who reviewed the evidence for the IPCC, found the officers’ statements “improbable” and “implausible”. Before these statements were submitted these officers were allowed to collude and confer to much criticism. When the CPS writes “a jury would be likely to accept that the constable’s statements were the result of a genuine mistake”, it merely invites hollow laughter. The perjury case itself would not result in justice being done but a successful prosecution would prompt demands for quashing the previous verdict and initiating a new inquest. Plus further demands for disclosure on other fatal incident cases where there was evidence of police collusion in writing statements. Instead the floodgates have held firm.

There are a few things to take away from this outcome. The most obvious is that the CPS’ loyalty to the State surpasses their need to be viewed as impartial. This is especially true in relation to crimes committed by those directly employed by the state. There was a brief moment where the ghostly image of “progress” appeared to be materialising, with the charging of Jimmy Mubenga’s killers, the independent panel into the death of Daniel Morgan and the upcoming trial of Anthony Long, the armed Metropolitan Police officer who shot Azelle Rodney, for murder. However the CPS have yet in living memory to ever successfully prosecute a police officer for murder or manslaughter. The decision not to prosecute on behalf of the spy-cops victims coupled with this perverse decision casts that ghostly appearance of progress further into considerable doubt. Black and working class families who have suffered a death in custody or contact are instructed that justice cannot be achieved through the courts, and not even a semblance of it, will be imitated. For them, the CPS will work to hide the State’s inconvenient fingerprints on corpses.

This brings in the role of popular struggle. We know that when the evidence is unambiguous and independently verified, victims still have to take to the streets to get mere acknowledgement. It is doubtful that, the Duggan Inquest appeal would have been so swiftly granted without the large presence outside the Royal Courts of Justice. The Rigg family will need similar collective and physical support from communities affected by deaths in custody.

Those who fight to get heard, whether they have been sexually assaulted by police officers or had loved ones murdered by them, are greeted with the state’s complicit silence. The number of souls that have been crushed by lesser efforts of the state will never been known. It is in this context that the London Campaign against Police & State Violence will hold their second conference this Sunday.

****UPDATE on 9th October 2:35pm****

Marcia Rigg has confirmed that she will be speaking at the London Campaign Against Police & State Violence conference