London police run past a building torched by youth in a rebellion in Tottenham in response to the cop killing of 29-year-old Mark Duggan. The rebellion has continued for a second night and spread to other cities., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Second night of violence in London – and this time it was organised
Police deployed to deal with trouble in Enfield and Brixton, plus reports of disturbances in Dalston and Walthamstow
Paul Lewis, Matthew Taylor and Ben Quinn The Guardian, Monday 8 August 2011
There was mounting evidence on Sunday night that some of the second night of rioting in London was part of an orchestrated plan, as violent disturbances broke out sporadically across parts of the capital.
Police in riot gear were deployed across the city to deal with trouble in Enfield, six miles north of the site of riots in Tottenham, while looters later pillaged shops in Brixton.
The scenes in Enfield, while reminiscent of Saturday night's clashes, were smaller in scale, and they took place from about 7pm.
Teenagers gathered on St Andrews Road – said to have been a preplanned destination – broke down walls on terraced streets so they could collect bricks to throw at police. About a dozen shops were ransacked and a police car smashed on Church Street. Riot police moved in to secure the area and train station.
Shortly after 8.30pm, a crowd of about 100 mainly teenage boys broke into a jewellery store. When police arrived less than a minute later, there were chaotic scenes, with a number of people struck with batons and attacked by dogs.
Resident Mizu Rahman, 34, said a plainclothes police officer had told him at around 2pm that there was intelligence that disorder was imminent. "The officer came down the street warning us there would be trouble," he said. "He showed me his ID. He said, 'Do you live here?' I said yes. He said, 'St Andrews Road is going to be the frontline tonight'."
There was no obvious reason why the rioting should have spread to Enfield, which is in the outskirts of north London.
Rahman, an engineer, said he had seen a message on Facebook that Enfield would be "next on the hitlist".
At 9.30pm, Met police and reinforcements from Kent began turning the whole of Enfield into a sterile area. Hundreds of riot police arrived with vans and police dogs, charging at groups of teenagers, who melted into sidestreets. They smashed cars and shop windows as they ran.
Some teenagers knew exactly where they were heading, saying the plan was to go to Ponders End. A large crowd of youths then sprinted west, attacking a retail park and shops. Among them was a closed Tesco Extra store. Workers inside described hearing windows smashing as dozens of youths poured into the store. "They left carrying TVs, alcohol – they were stuffing trolleys," said one supermarket worker.
Unlike the previous night's disturbances, riot police were on the scene in large numbers. Their stance was also more aggressive, with baton charges and dogs used to disperse crowds.
At 11pm, on a nearby road called Elizabeth Ride, a young man was stabbed under the arm. He could walk to an ambulance but his friends refused to talk to police and disappeared, shouting: "Why would we talk to feds? You're the reason this is happening."
Amid evidence that locals were turning against the rioters, one young woman, aged about 20, was in tears, shouting: "What are you doing? Is this how you pay your respects to Mark? Is this what he would have wanted?"
The leader of Enfield council, Doug Taylor said he believed disturbances there were linked to events in Tottenham. He said: "There's got to be a link to that extent that it's the day after and the police are hugely well organised in Tottenham so maybe this was seen as the place to have a second night."
In Brixton, crowds attending a daytime festival were good-natured but gangs of youths ransacked shops in the area as darkness fell. Branches of Vodafone, Footlocker and H&M were all targeted by looters, who made off in scooters and cars. Police in riot gear were pushing people up Brixton High Street at around 1am.
Elsewhere, there were reports of disturbances in areas including Dalston and Walthamstow.
The latter area's local Labour MP, Stella Creasy, said that branches of Argos, BHS and Barclays were all attacked, while angry locals said that looters asked them for directions to shops and banks.
The Metropolitan police said on Twitter on Sunday night: "Police are responding to a significant amount of criminal activity across London and are deploying officers to tackle it."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
Breaking News: Rioting Reported In Enfield
By M@ · August 7, 2011 at 19:51 pm
A second night of violence appears to be underway in north London. Sky News are reporting smashed windows and vandalised police cars. Unconfirmed reports on Twitter suggest gangs of youths are heading towards Enfield High Street. The Enfield Independent carries a picture of riot police marching down a residential street.
The trouble follows a night of serious unrest in Tottenham, which has so far resulted in 55 arrests.
00:40: Away from Enfield, there are reports of trouble in other parts of the capital. The Guardian is running a page of ‘live’ updates on the disturbances around London, reporting looting and arson in Brixton and some (possibly minor) trouble in Walthamstow.
22.02: It feels like there’s been some kind of negotiation between broadcast media and the police. No coverage at all on BBC, and Sky have only recently started showing pictures from Enfield.
21.58: Enfield town centre appears to have calmed down thanks to a huge influx of riot police, including mounted police. Reports suggest that looting has moved to other locations.
20.55: Around 200 teens have ransacked a jewellery store, reports @PaulLewis. A police baton charge disperses the crims.
20.25: According to reporter @PaulLewis, Enfield “is currently tense but calm; dozens of riot police, hundreds of teenagers and curious onlookers, roads closed.”
20.07: A verified photo on Sky News shows a damaged police car on Enfield High Street with a concrete slab laying on the bonnet. Unconfirmed photos show looting of HMV.
This post will be updated as more information comes in.
London in grip of fresh rioting
Monday, 8 August 2011
Emergency services have been dealing with disturbances across London as fresh bouts of rioting and looting broke out.
Police officers were being deployed to respond to "copycat criminal activity" across the capital, after trouble flared in Tottenham, north London, Scotland Yard said.
Disturbances erupted in several boroughs in north, south and east London, with reports of trouble in Brixton, Enfield, Walthamstow and Islington.
Three officers were taken to hospital after being hit by a fast-moving vehicle at 12.45am, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said. The officers had been in the process of making arrests in Chingford Mount, Waltham Forest, after a shop was looted by youths.
"Two officers are believed to have superficial injuries and the other has an injury to his knee," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, a fight broke out when rival gangs attended King's College Hospital after two victims of minor stabbings were admitted, police said.
The hospital has brought in extra security for the rest of the night and officers remain on scene dealing with the initial stabbings, the spokesman added.
Six fire engines were dispatched to deal with a blaze at a Foot Locker shop in Brixton, south London, and witnesses saw riot police clash with looters at a Currys store nearby.
The fresh violence comes after a peaceful protest in Tottenham, north London, on Saturday, which followed the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, 29 on Thursday.
More Riots Break Out in London: Were These Planned?
by Amelia T.
August 7, 2011
7:00 pm
.A second set of riots broke out in north and south London on Sunday night, leaving officials even more concerned about the possibility for mounting violence. According to the Guardian, police were deployed to the Enfield and Brixton neighborhoods of London to deal with large groups of teenage boys, who seemed to have preplanned an attack against the police. In Enfield, about six miles north of last night’s riots, the boys had torn bricks from walls to throw at police. In Brixton, stores were targeted by looters.
There were reports of disturbances in other neighborhoods, leading to questions about whether the latest riots were planned and coordinated. The potential for future conflict is clear, especially since some commenters reacted by blaming the rioters as “lunatics,” engaging in a “chilling orgy of random destruction.”
This characterization does not adequately portray the anxiety and anger felt by London’s young urban poor, who have been particularly affected by Britain’s new austerity measures.
These cuts to social services, combined with the feeling among some minorities that they have been unfairly targeted by the police, begin to explain just how the riots began.
Officials claim that “certain elements” exploited the general climate of anger to encourage violent behavior. But others added that rumors about a violent conflict between a police officer and a 16-year-old girl added fuel to the fire.
Although there are many conflicting reports about how a peaceful march turned into a massive and destructive riot on Saturday night, social media had a lot to do with it. Hundreds of people tweeted pictures of burning police cars, inciting others onto the streets. One user said: “‘Everyone up and roll to Tottenham f*** the 50 [police]. I hope one dead tonight.”
Since social media played such a crucial role in Egypt’s revolution, it’s not surprising to see it happening again in another city. As we saw with Egypt, social media can catalyze movements among disaffected people that can be extremely powerful. Sunday night’s events clearly demonstrated that British officials have reason to be nervous about the potential for more organized conflict among the most marginalized of London’s citizens.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/more-riots-break-out-in-london-were-these-planned.html#ixzz1UOybYhIj
Leading article: A breakdown of trust
Monday, 8 August 2011
A grim irony about the orgy of anti-police rioting that took place in Tottenham on Saturday night is the fact that this enclave of north London was one of the birthplaces of community policing.
After the murder of PC Keith Blakelock by a frenzied mob at the Broadwater Farm housing estate in 1985, there was a concerted move away from heavy-handed policing. Serious efforts were made to engage with what had been, until then, a profoundly alienated community.
Policing in the capital is generally agreed to have improved significantly since the dark days of inner-city violence in the 1980s. The detested "sus" laws – which were essentially used by the police to harass black people – were repealed in 1981 after Lord Scarman's report on the Brixton riots blamed them for helping to destroy relations between the local community and the authorities.
Further reforms were made after the 1999 Macpherson report into the Metropolitan Police's botched handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation. The Independent Police Complaints Commission was established in 2004 to guarantee that the police force would no longer be in a position to scrutinise itself.
It is true, as the Tottenham MP, David Lammy, argued over the weekend, that the looting and violence in Tottenham on Saturday night was the work of an opportunistic criminal fringe. But this cannot obscure the palpable sense of mistrust of the police that was on display from the wider, law-abiding, north London community this weekend.
The flashpoint for this violence was a fatal shooting of a suspect last week by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Operation Trident team. It is for the IPCC to get to the bottom of that incident. For the police, the challenge is to win back the faith of the people of Tottenham.
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