Police calm London, but riots flare across UK

DAVID STRINGER

RAPHAEL G. SATTER

Asso­ci­ated Press

LONDON — Thou­sands more police offi­cers flooded Lon­don streets Tues­day in a bid to end Britain’s worst riot­ing in a gen­er­a­tion as ner­vous shop­keep­ers closed early and some res­i­dents stood guard to pro­tect their neigh­bor­hoods. An eerie calm pre­vailed in the city, but unrest spread across cen­tral and north­ern Eng­land on a fourth night of vio­lence dri­ven by poor, diverse and brazen crowds of young people.

Scenes of ran­sacked stores, torched cars and black­ened build­ings fright­ened and out­raged Britons just a year before Lon­don is to host the sum­mer Olympic Games, and brought demands for a tougher response from law enforcement.

London’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police depart­ment put thou­sands more offi­cers in the streets and said that by Wednes­day there would be 16,000 — almost triple the num­ber present Mon­day. The depart­ment said a large pres­ence would remain in the city through the next 24 hours at least.

Britain’s riots began Sat­ur­day when an ini­tially peace­ful protest over a police shoot­ing in London’s Tot­ten­ham neigh­bor­hood turned vio­lent. That clash has mor­phed into a gen­eral law­less­ness in Lon­don and sev­eral other cities that police have strug­gled to halt with ordi­nary tactics.

While the riot­ers have run off with sneak­ers, bikes, elec­tron­ics and leather goods, they also have torched stores appar­ently just for the fun of see­ing some­thing burn. They were left vir­tu­ally unchal­lenged in sev­eral neigh­bor­hoods, and when police did arrive they often were able to flee quickly and regroup.

Some saw Britain’s eco­nomic cri­sis and deep cuts planned to socials ben­e­fits as a deeper under­ly­ing cause for the out­burst of vio­lence — though few riot­ers said it was their motivation.

The show of strength by police appeared to have quelled unrest in Lon­don late Tues­day, but in a move that could raise ten­sions, a far-right group said about 1,000 of its mem­bers around the coun­try were tak­ing to the streets to deter rioters.

“We’re going to stop the riots — police obvi­ously can’t han­dle it,” Stephen Lennon, leader of the far-right Eng­lish Defense League, told The Asso­ci­ated Press. He warned that he couldn’t guar­an­tee there wouldn’t be vio­lent clashes with riot­ing youths.

Anders Behring Breivik, who has con­fessed to the bomb­ing and mas­sacre that killed 77 peo­ple in Nor­way last month, has cited the EDL as an inspiration.

Fire­fight­ers were tack­ling a major blaze at the site of a recy­cling cen­ter and fuel depot in Tot­ten­ham early Wednes­day, but it was unclear whether the fire was linked to rioting.

Out­side of Lon­don, chaos con­tin­ued to spread.

In the north­west­ern city of Man­ches­ter, hun­dreds of youths ram­paged through the city cen­ter, hurl­ing bot­tles and stones at police and van­dal­iz­ing stores. A women’s cloth­ing store on the city’s main shop­ping street was set ablaze, along with a dis­used library in nearby Sal­ford. Loot­ers tar­geted stores sell­ing designer clothes and expen­sive con­sumer electronics.

Manchester’s assis­tant chief con­sta­ble Garry She­wan said loot­ing and arson had taken place there on an unprece­dented scale, but appeared to have lit­tle motive. About 50 peo­ple were arrested there.

“We want to make it absolutely clear — they have noth­ing to protest against. There is noth­ing in a sense of injus­tice and there has been no spark that has led to this,” he said.

In the cen­tral Eng­land city of Not­ting­ham, police said riot­ers hurled fire­bombs though the win­dow of a police sta­tion, and set fire to a school and a vehi­cle out­side a sec­ond police sta­tion — but there were no reports of injuries. A total of 90 peo­ple were arrested in attacks on stores, a col­lege, a com­mu­nity cen­ter and cars.

Nei­ther Man­ches­ter nor Not­ting­ham had pre­vi­ously been involved in unrest. There also were minor clashes for the first time in the cen­tral Eng­land loca­tions of Leices­ter, Wolver­hamp­ton and West Bromwich, and the west­ern city of Glouces­ter — where police and fire­fight­ers tack­led a blaze and dis­tur­bance in the city’s Brunswick district.

In Lon­don, stores, offices and nurs­ery schools closed early amid fears of fresh riot­ing. Sev­eral usu­ally busy streets were quiet as cafes, restau­rants and pubs also decided to shut down for the night.

Many shops had their metal blinds pulled down, while other busi­ness own­ers rushed to secure ply­wood over their win­dows before nightfall.

Some Lon­don res­i­dents pre­pared to defend their homes and stores. Out­side a Sikh tem­ple in Southall, west Lon­don, res­i­dents stood guard and vowed to defend their place of wor­ship if mobs of young riot­ers appeared. Another group marched through Enfield, in north Lon­don, aim­ing to deter looters.

In east London’s Beth­nal Green dis­trict, con­ve­nience store owner Adnan Butt said res­i­dents were tense.

“Peo­ple are all at home — they’re scared” of the riot­ers, he said.

Police offered advice on what actions busi­nesses or home­own­ers could legally take to defend prop­er­ties from attack. “As a gen­eral rule, the more extreme the cir­cum­stances and the fear felt, the more force you can law­fully use in self-defense,” Lon­don police said in advice cir­cu­lated late Tuesday.

Senior offi­cers said they were con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­ble use of plas­tic bul­lets — blunt-nosed pro­jec­tiles designed to deal pun­ish­ing blows to riot­ers with­out pen­e­trat­ing the skin. Such weapons, for­mally called baton rounds, still are used to quell riots in North­ern Ire­land but have never been used by police on Britain’s mainland.

Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron’s gov­ern­ment rejected calls by Con­ser­v­a­tive law­maker Patrick Mer­cer and some mem­bers of the pub­lic for strong-arm riot mea­sures that British police gen­er­ally avoid, such as tear gas and water cannons.

“They should have the tools avail­able and they should use them if the com­man­der on the ground thinks it’s nec­es­sary,” Mer­cer said.

The dis­or­der has caused heartache for Lon­don­ers whose busi­nesses and homes were torched or ran­sacked, and a cri­sis for police and politi­cians already stag­ger­ing from a splut­ter­ing econ­omy and a scan­dal over ille­gal phone hack­ing by a tabloid news­pa­per that has dragged in senior politi­cians and police.

“The pub­lic wanted to see tough action. They wanted to see it sooner and there is a degree of frus­tra­tion,” said Andrew Silke, head of the crim­i­nol­ogy depart­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of East London.

So far 685 peo­ple have been arrested in Lon­don and 111 charged — includ­ing an 11-year-old boy — and the capital’s prison cells were over­flow­ing. Britain’s Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice said it had teams of lawyers work­ing 24 hours a day to help police decide whether to charge sus­pects, allow­ing them quickly clear police sta­tion cells.

About 230 peo­ple were arrested after two days of vio­lence in Birm­ing­ham — where police were inves­ti­gat­ing reports of shots fired in a restive inner-city neigh­bor­hood. “Offi­cers are on the scene but there have been no injuries reported,” the city’s police depart­ment said in a statement.

In the north­ern city of Liv­er­pool, about 200 youths hurled mis­siles at police and fire­fight­ers in a sec­ond night of unrest, and about 40 were arrested.

A total of 111 offi­cers and 14 mem­bers of the pub­lic have been hurt so far in the riot­ing, includ­ing a man in his 60s who was attacked as he attempted to put out a fire started by mem­bers of a mob.

Police said the injured man had been tack­ling a blaze in a garbage bin, when he was set upon by sev­eral riot­ers. “It was quite a grave assault and his con­di­tion is caus­ing us some con­cern,” said police com­man­der Simon Foy.

The unrest has been Britain’s worst since race riots set Lon­don ablaze in the 1980s. London’s belea­guered police force noted that it had received more than 20,000 emer­gency calls on Mon­day — four times the nor­mal num­ber. Scot­land Yard has called in rein­force­ments from around the coun­try and asked all vol­un­teer spe­cial con­sta­bles to report for duty.

A soc­cer match sched­uled for Wednes­day between Eng­land and the Nether­lands at London’s Wem­b­ley sta­dium was can­celed to free up police offi­cers for riot duty. Britain’s soc­cer author­i­ties said they were in talks with police to see whether this weekend’s season-opening matches of the Pre­mier League could still go ahead in London.

Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron cut short a hol­i­day in Italy to deal with the cri­sis, revers­ing an ear­lier deci­sion to remain on his vaca­tion. He recalled Par­lia­ment from its sum­mer recess for an emer­gency debate on the riots Thursday.

Cameron described the scenes of burn­ing build­ings and smashed win­dows as “sick­en­ing,” but refrained from tougher mea­sures such as call­ing in the mil­i­tary to help restore order.

“Peo­ple should be in no doubt that we will do every­thing nec­es­sary to restore order to Britain’s streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding,” Cameron told reporters after a cri­sis meet­ing at his Down­ing Street office.

Other politi­cians vis­ited riot sites Tues­day — but for many res­i­dents it was too lit­tle, too late.

Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Nick Clegg was booed by crowds who shouted “Go home!” in Birm­ing­ham, while Lon­don Mayor Boris John­son — who flew back overnight from his sum­mer vaca­tion — was heck­led on a shat­tered shop­ping street in Clapham, south London.

John­son said the riots would not stop Lon­don from “wel­com­ing the world to our city” for the Olympics.

“We have time in the next 12 months to rebuild, to repair the dam­age that has been done,” he said. “I’m not say­ing it will be done overnight, but this is what we are going to do.”

Vio­lence broke out late Sat­ur­day in the low-income, mul­ti­eth­nic dis­trict of Tot­ten­ham in north Lon­don, after a protest against the fatal police shoot­ing of Mark Dug­gan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in dis­puted cir­cum­stances Thursday.

Police said Dug­gan was shot dead when offi­cers from Oper­a­tion Tri­dent — the unit that inves­ti­gates gun crime in the black com­mu­nity — stopped a cab he was rid­ing in.

The Inde­pen­dent Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion, which is inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing, said a “non-police firearm” was recov­ered at the scene, but that there was no evi­dence it had been fired, or that Dug­gan had fired a weapon at police. An inquest into Duggan’s death was opened Tues­day, but a full hear­ing will likely take sev­eral months.

Duggan’s death stirred mem­o­ries of the 1980s, when many black Lon­don­ers felt they were dis­pro­por­tion­ately stopped and searched by police. The frus­tra­tion erupted in vio­lent riots in 1985.

Rela­tions have improved since then, but ten­sions remain and many young peo­ple of all races mis­trust the police.

Seek­ing expla­na­tions for the unrest, some pointed to ris­ing social ten­sions in Britain as the gov­ern­ment slashes 80 bil­lion pounds ($130 bil­lion) from pub­lic spend­ing by 2015 to reduce the country’s huge bud­get deficit, swollen after the coun­try spent bil­lions bail­ing out its founder­ing banks.

But many riot­ers appeared sim­ply to rel­ish the oppor­tu­nity for unchecked vio­lence Mon­day night. “Come join the fun!” shouted one youth as loot­ers hit the east Lon­don sub­urb of Hackney.

In Croy­don, fire gut­ted a 140-year-old fam­ily run depart­ment store, House of Reeves, and forced nearby homes to be evac­u­ated. “No one’s stolen any­thing,” said owner Gra­ham Reeves, 52. “They just burnt it down.”

Police said a 21-year-old man was arrested late Tues­day in con­nec­tion with the blaze.

Posted by AP News on Aug 9 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.