[News reports suggested that in Brixton, an area of south London which has seen significant riots against the police in a troubled past, young people had attacked police and looted an electronics store and a bicycle store, carrying off televisions and cycles. The police said that a sports store, Foot Locker, had been set on fire. They were by no means the only “pockets of violence, looting and disorder,” according to a police statement. Three officers were taken to the hospital after being hit by a “fast moving vehicle” in the east London area of Waltham Forest. Around 30 young people in masks had gathered to loot in neighboring Walthamstow, there was a fight at King’s College hospital in south London and a supermarket was looted in another once-obscure north London suburb, Ponder’s End. Gatherings also required police attention, the statement said, in the middle of London, at Oxford Circus and in Islington.]
By Ravi Somaiya
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Rioting in Tottenham
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The violence erupted late Saturday after a small anti-police demonstration in Tottenham, north London, spiraled into looting and violence — the latest episode in what has turned out to be a season of unrest in Britain, with multiple demonstrations escalating into violence in recent months.
Then, across London, skirmishes broke out again on Sunday between groups of young people and large numbers of riot police officers drawn from forces around the city. Sunday night’s clashes, which the police called “copycat violence” seemed less dramatic but more widespread than Saturday’s.
A senior police officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh, told BBC radio that, while there were too few police on duty in Tottenham on Saturday, on Sunday “social media and other methods have been used to organize these levels of greed and criminality.”
“This has changed from a localized issue to organized criminality,” Mr. Kavanagh told Sky News later as television footage showed looters raiding a sports clothing and other stores.
In Enfield, a usually sleepy area in north London, store windows were smashed and the police had cordoned off a shopping area, one officer said, in order to gather evidence against those who had stolen. Broken glass and discarded items — masonry, bottles, even a shoe — that had been used as missiles against the police littered the ground on some streets.
At 1 a.m. in nearby Edmonton the streets were filled, despite the rain and the hour, with dozens of young people. Some had smashed their way into a Carphone Warehouse store and were browsing.
News reports suggested that in Brixton, an area of south London which has seen significant riots against the police in a troubled past, young people had attacked police and looted an electronics store and a bicycle store, carrying off televisions and cycles. The police said that a sports store, Foot Locker, had been set on fire. They were by no means the only “pockets of violence, looting and disorder,” according to a police statement. Three officers were taken to the hospital after being hit by a “fast moving vehicle” in the east London area of Waltham Forest. Around 30 young people in masks had gathered to loot in neighboring Walthamstow, there was a fight at King’s College hospital in south London and a supermarket was looted in another once-obscure north London suburb, Ponder’s End. Gatherings also required police attention, the statement said, in the middle of London, at Oxford Circus and in Islington.
London’s deputy mayor in charge of policing, Kit Malthouse, said that these were young people “intent on violence, who are looking for the opportunity to steal and set fire to buildings and create a sense of mayhem, whether they’re anarchists or part of organized gangs or just feral youth frankly, who fancy a new pair of trainers.”
When asked about impact on preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games, which will be held at a site close to many of the hotspots, Mr. Malthouse said it was “pretty rotten for London, it does not look good.” The Games, and the $14 billion project to prepare for them, had been slated as a boon for London’s impoverished areas. Thousands of jobs were promised to local residents, but only hundreds materialized.
With several British leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron, out of the country on vacation, the home secretary, Theresa May, was reported on Monday to be flying home to oversee the official response.
Residents of Tottenham spoke of twin perils that had converged to leave their streets scarred and smoldering.
Frustration in the impoverished area, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services. At the same time, a widely held disdain for law enforcement here, where a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse, has only intensified through the drumbeat of scandal that has racked Scotland Yard in recent weeks and led to the resignation of the force’s two top commanders.
While the police said on Monday that those carrying out the violence were criminals, some politicians focused on the victims. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said: “It is completely unacceptable and the people who have suffered are those who have lost their businesses, shopkeepers who have lost their shops, families who have lost their homes and many people who felt very frightened in their own neighborhoods.”
The episode in Tottenham began peacefully on Saturday when small numbers of residents gathered outside a police station to protest the killing of a local man, Mark Duggan, in a shooting by police officers last week. Scotland Yard has said that Mr. Duggan, who was riding in a taxi at the time of the shooting, was the subject of a “pre-planned operation” by officers. The police officers involved in the shooting have been quoted in newspapers as saying that they had come under fire, which slightly wounded one of the officers, before they began to shoot.
It was unclear where things went wrong on Saturday night, and there were conflicting accounts.
A statement by Scotland Yard said the flashpoint came when police cars were attacked at 8:20 p.m. by “certain elements” — a phrase that other police comments suggested meant local troublemakers who used the protest as a chance to act violently. But Tottenham residents talked about rumors of a physical confrontation between a police officer and a 16-year-old girl that enraged the demonstrators.
The march turned into a pitched battle between hundreds of officers, some on horses, and equal numbers of rioters, wearing bandannas and armed with makeshift weapons that included table legs and an aluminum crutch. Looting throughout northern London continued past dawn, leaving streets littered with glass. In daylight, residents emerged to survey buildings, many considered landmarks, that had been left gutted and smoldering.
A local man, who said he was a bus driver but did not want to give his name for fear of reprisal, warned that unless endemic youth unemployment in Tottenham was curbed, “this will happen again. These kids don’t care. They don’t have to pay for this damage, we do. Working people do. What do they have to lose?”
The police said, in a statement, that there “was no indication that the protest would deteriorate into the levels of criminal and violent disorder that we saw.” The force’s priority had been to preserve life, the statement said, though the looting was “regrettable.” It said a major inquiry had been started to find and arrest those responsible for the violence.
Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months.
Late last year, students demonstrating against a rise in tuition fees occupied a building near Parliament and clashed repeatedly with the police. Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were attacked in their Rolls-Royce as protesters — some of whom were subsequently jailed — shouted “Tory scum,” a reference to the Conservative Party’s traditional links with the aristocracy, and “off with their heads!” In March, a reported 500,000 people marched against the cuts, with some protesters occupying the exclusive food store Fortnum & Mason — Prince Charles’s grocer.
The Metropolitan Police force, once one of Britain’s most respected institutions, has also been severely criticized for its role in the anti-austerity riots — for use of excessive force, or for being perpetually unprepared for the sheer levels of rage unleashed on London’s streets.
The force’s former commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said last year that he was “embarrassed” by the failure to prevent protesters from occupying buildings. Sir Paul is one of two senior officers who were forced to step down last month as information about links with The News of the World tabloid emerged as part of the phone hacking scandal that has enveloped Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain. Senior officers have been openly chastised by politicians, and the police investigation into newspaper abuses is also looking into allegations that police officers had been bribed.
Concern in the government has risen to the point where Prime Minister Cameron, a strong advocate of a police shake-up, has pressed for the search for the next head of Scotland Yard, due to be appointed within weeks, to be widened to include successful candidates from outside Britain. He has urged that William J. Bratton, a former police commissioner in Boston, Los Angeles and New York, and now chairman of the New York security company Kroll Associates, be considered for the job. But the result has been another political imbroglio, with the threat of a veto from Home Secretary Theresa May and protests from police organizations.
