Colin Roach was a 21-year-old black British man who died from a gunshot wound inside the entrance of Stoke Newington police station, in the London Borough of Hackney, on 12 January 1983. Amid allegations of a police cover-up, the case became a cause célèbre for civil rights campaigners and black community groups in the United Kingdom. Prior to Roach's death, Hackney Black People's Association had been calling for a public inquiry into policing in the area, alleging that there existed a culture of police brutality, wrongful detention of black people, racial harassment, and racially motivated "stopping and searching." Ernie Roberts, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said that there had been "a complete breakdown of faith and credibility in the police" in the area and the Commission for Racial Equality called for a full inquiry into both the death of Roach and the policing in Hackney generally. In June 1983 a coroner's jury returned a majority verdict of suicide. INQUEST, the United Kingdom pressure group founded following the death of Blair Peach at the hands of a police officer in April 1979, was highly critical of the coroner's directions to the jury, and said that he had wrongly pointed them towards a verdict of suicide. Discrepancies The police surgeon called in after Roach's death observed an inconsistency between the position of Colin Roach's body and suicide. Roach's hand was found to be uninjured, even though when the trigger of a shotgun is pulled facing oneself, the recoil damages and often even breaks the thumb used to pull the trigger. This recoil should also propel the shotgun across the room into a wall, but in Roach's case the gun and the police cell's wall saw no mark of such an impact. However, a gun being forced into Roach's mouth should have left marks, which were not found. Roach had had a sports bag with him when he entered the cell. However, the shotgun used for the suicide could not have fitted into the bag, even if dissassembled, and the driver who took Roach to the police station said that he didn't see a bulge in Roach's bag. Additionally, no oil from the gun could be found on the bag, nor fibres from the bag on the gun. The driver claimed that when he dropped off Roach, Roach was frightened. The driver saw him walk into the police station. Irregularities