A cover-up’s internal contradictions can destroy the very justification for the original shooting.

Evidence

As Stafford Scott’s piece in the Guardian2 today makes clear, the police case explanation for what happened was an obvious fabrication that lacked even minimal coherence. It’s a classic example of kettle logic, in which the police’s obvious cover-up actually undermined the rationale for shooting Duggan. Either Mark Duggan was holding a gun when he died — as officer V53 claimed at the inquest — or he threw the gun away. If the former, how could the gun end up seven metres away from him (and without any trace of his fingerprints or DNA on it)? If the latter, then how could Mark Duggan have been thought to have pose sufficient threat that he had to be shot dead? At best, the operation was a monumental blunder — compounded by a cover-up which was at least as inept. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1747

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distills the ‘kettle logic’ concept — two mutually exclusive defenses that jointly reveal rather than hide the truth.