Tottenham: police shooting followed by riots

[Jan Klimkowski]

Photos of Saturday night's rioting, which included the torching of two police cars, a double-decker red London bus, and several businesses and homes, can be seen here.

Some of the looting was criminal opportunism: a computer store (PC World) and a sports goods store selling trainers etc were amongst the first shops broken into and emptied.

However, there's also anger in the community after a local man, Mark Duggan, was shot dead by Scotland Yard firearms officers on Thursday.

The official police story is as follows:

Man shot dead by police in north London during attempted arrest

Mark Duggan died instantly at scene as 'exchange of fire' heard with police after Trident officers stopped minicab

Sandra Laville, crime correspondent guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 August 2011 20.16 BST

A father of three died instantly after an apparent exchange of fire when police attempted to arrest him in north London, it emerged on Friday.

A police marksman escaped with his life when a bullet lodged in his radio during the confrontation that ended in the death of Mark Duggan, 29. The Scotland Yard firearms officer was taken to hospital and later released.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating the fatal shooting, said the bullet and a non-police-issue handgun found at the scene had been sent for forensic tests.

IPCC investigators believe two shots were fired by an armed officer. A spokesman for the IPCC said that at around 6.15pm on Thursday officers from Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police unit that deals with gun crime in London's black communities, with officers from the Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), stopped a minicab to carry out a pre-planned arrest.

"Shots were fired and a 29-year-old man, who was a passenger in the cab, died at the scene," said the spokesman. Photographic and forensic examination was continuing, and a search for CCTV footage was continuing, the spokesman said. A postmortem examination would be carried out as soon as possible.

IPCC commissioner Rachel Cerfontyne said: "Fatal shootings by the police are extremely rare and understandably raise significant community concerns."

The dead man's girlfriend, Semone Wilson, 29, said she had received a text message from him shortly before the shooting. "At about 6pm he sent out a message on his BlackBerry saying 'The Feds are following me', and that's it. That's the last time anyone heard from him."

As the IPCC appealed for witnesses, conflicting accounts of the shooting emerged. One man told the London Evening Standard he had seen officers shoot a man on the ground. But others said a shot was fired from the cab before police returned fire.

The scene was visited by David Lammy, the MP for the area, who said: "I am shocked and deeply worried by this news. There is now a mood of anxiety in the local community but everyone must remain calm. It is encouraging that the Independent Police Complaints Commission has immediately taken over the investigation. There is a need to clarify the facts and to move quickly to allay fears."

"It is very important that our community remains calm and allows the investigation to take its course."

Jay Crowned, 39, who lives locally, last night described the dead man as "a local boy who was loved by the community".

"The whole family is devastated," she said, adding that he had been feeling down since a friend was killed this year.

"His friend was like a brother and he lost him brutally. Since then he's been really down."

Now, the same Guardian crime correspondent is reporting the following:

Initial ballistics tests on the bullet that lodged in a police officer's radio when Mark Duggan died on Thursday night show it was a police issue bullet, the Guardian understands.

The Guardian's crime correspondent, Sandra Laville, reports:

The revelation will fuel the fury in Tottenham about the killing of Mark Duggan by armed officers.

It also undermines suggestions that there was an exchange of fire between Duggan and the police before he died.

The bullet which was found lodged in the radio of one of the officers at the scene is still undergoing forensic tests. But reliable sources have said the first ballistics examinations suggested it was a police issue bullet.

These are very distinct as the Metropolitan Police uses dum dum type hollowed out bullets designed not to pass through an object.

The early suggestion from the IPCC was that the Met officers had returned fire after someone in the minicab opened fire. But the result of the ballistics early test suggests both shots fired came from the police.

Duggan's family are also claiming that whilst he was carrying a gun, it was still in his sock when he was shot dead.

Tottenham could be about to burn again....

[David Butler]

It seems to have spread to Enfield tonight according to people tweeting...Cars on fire and shops looted. No real MSM coverage apart from Sky News who seem to have finally decided to report it....

[David Butler]

This is all kicking off again tonight and appears to have spread outside of London to Birmingham as well now....Plenty on UK news sites like the BBC and Sky

Of course David Cameron feels no need to cut short his holiday as the capital burns and the world questions whether we are fit to host the Olympics next year..

[Jan Klimkowski]

This is all kicking off again tonight and appears to have spread outside of London to Birmingham as well now....Plenty on UK news sites like the BBC and Sky

Of course David Cameron feels no need to cut short his holiday as the capital burns and the world questions whether we are fit to host the Olympics next year..

PM "call me Dave" Cameron, and Buffoon Boris, the Mayor of London, are both now "interrupting their holidays" and "flying back" to Blighty.

The most useful thing they could do is don a firefighter's uniform and start hosing down some blazing buildings.

Check any English newspaper website for the technicolour pyromania and looting.

[Jan Klimkowski]

London, we have a problem....

London riots: how did the Metropolitan police lose control of the capital?

The Met's public order unit CO11 left bruised, exhausted and, for second night running, out-manoeuvred by rioters and looting

Paul Lewis and Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 August 2011 19.15 BST

The Metropolitan police's embattled public order unit, CO11, once prided itself on being the world leader in containing disorder. At 3am yesterday, its exhausted officers slept in police vans lined up in Enfield town centre, bruised, exhausted and, for the second night running, entirely out-manoeuvred.

For hours they had been chasing groups of youths around Enfield, Ponders End and Edmonton, in north London, using dogs and batons to disperse anyone seen looting shops.

Any doubt that police were unable to control the violence was dispelled hours later, around 5pm yesterday, amid further outbreaks of looting in Hackney and other areas of the capital in broad daylight.

The home secretary, Theresa May, who flew home from holiday to deal with the fallout from the riots, will have asked commanders of the UK's largest police force: how did you lose control of London?

For the third day running, CO11's territorial support group (TSG), nicknamed the "Muscle of the Met", suffered the humiliation of requiring support from colleagues in neighbouring forces.

Some will rightly claim police cannot hope to contend with hundreds of roaming youths intent on causing destruction and breaking into unprotected properties in the middle of the night.

That challenge has been exacerbated since disturbances started on Saturday, initially limited to one street in Tottenham and, later in the night, Wood Green.

The contagion that saw looting spread across a 10-mile stretch of London in the early hours of Monday poses obvious resource issues. Analysts argued the Met suffered from a combination of bad luck, poor intelligence and overstretched forces. But there may be more long-standing and tactical reasons for its failure to quell the violence.

In Tottenham on Saturday police were accused of failing to open dialogue with protesters who had gathered outside the police station following the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan.

"Years ago there would have been a lot of dialogue," said David Gilbertson, formerly a Metropolitan police division chief superintendent at Tottenham. "We would have gone out of our way to ensure that the organisers of a protest group would have been brought into a station like that even if others were stood outside."

It took hours for police to change from regular uniforms to riot gear, and even longer for them to begin almost half-hearted attempts at preventing looting.

Officers concentrated almost all their efforts in regaining the territory on the high road, lost during the earlier protest.

There were hardly any attempts to prevent looting, with police only marching in formation and sealing off roads.

"You have an obligation to protect life and property and to do that you need to have a strategy," Gilbertson said. "The simplest thing to say is that you don't let groups gather. If it has gone beyond that then you drive them beyond where they are likely to cause damage. There are some blindingly obvious places you don't let them get near, such as shopping areas."

But there is a problem. During the last decade CO11 has mainly been restricted to dealing with protest. Pre-announced political demonstrations, which are either officially advertised or promoted via Twitter, allow police to plan in advance.

It is common for police to begin with a low-profile presence, wearing high-visibility jackets and soft hats; rows of TSG backup will usually be parked in nearby back streets. At larger protests CO11 will ensure metal barriers are erected, in an attempt to confine groups. Surveillance officers will be placed on roofs; plainclothes officers mingle in the crowd.

The Met's preferred tactic in recent years has been the controversial "kettle", in which large numbers of police are drafted in to contain protesters, sometimes for hours on end.

But roaming groups of youths cannot be effectively kettled. And unlike activists they will often return to the site of trouble, seeking direct confrontation with police.

The looters appear to have been more savvy. Large groups targeting shops have been melting into a nearby estate in seconds at the first sound of sirens arriving.

By the time looting began in other parts of north London and in Brixton in the south on Sunday, police had changed their approach. Large numbers in protective gear were on the scene with shields and batons waiting for trouble.

Mounted police officers were used to disperse youths as soon as trouble began. There were more than a dozen dog-handlers in Enfield alone. Police pursued groups as they travelled en masse through London, reacting quickly to any sign of looting by sprinting in and baton-charging everyone in the vicinity.

"The dog is gonna bite you, get back," one officer shouted as men attacked a shopfront. It was a generally heavier approach; another officer shouted: "Fucking move or you'll fucking get it."

That tough approach could backfire. "What you have in a riot is a series of people with different commitments," said Dr Peter Shirlow, an expert in Northern Ireland policing at Queen's University Belfast.

"You will have the hardline, which is intent upon violence, you will have onlookers and you will have those who may be relatively sympathetic. What happens is that if the police are harsh with those who are more militant then you simply draw in those who are mildly connected, but still connected to those who are willing to use violence."

So far the more heavy-handed and reactive policing strategy failed to prevent looting, although it has arguably prevented the kind of sustained attacks that caused huge fires in Tottenham on Saturday.

When riot vans lined a shopping centre in Edmonton Green after it was announced as a target for midnight on Sunday, groups of youths were simply diverted into side streets, finding smaller businesses to attack. Police were in tow, but always a minute or two after the damage had been done.

The seeming impossibility of controlling the looting leads to another question: if brute force won't stop the disorder, could there have been a better approach to hearts and minds?

The dire relations between young people and "the Feds", as some call police in north London, has been obvious in recent days. "We hate you," one woman told a police officer who had come to attend to her stabbed friend in Ponders End.

While most of the BBM BlackBerry Messenger communications imploring others to take part in the protest have concentrated on looting and theft, many have encouraged people to "Guck da Fed".

There is a sense that, through widespread looting, young people have discovered a way to beat their police adversaries.

One BBM message said: "What ever ends your from put your ballys on link up and cause havic, just rob everything.Police can't stop it."

Dr Michael Rosie, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh, said: "A key lesson to be learned, as in all such instances, is that communication is fundamental. Police seemed taken by surprise by the rapid escalation in Tottenham that suggests that they need to be more proactive in talking to, liaising with, the community."

[David Butler]

Some horror stories on now of private houses now being attacked. Police not answering calls and nowhere to be seen...Telegraph is saying that the Ledbury Michelin star restaurant in Notting Hill was raided and the customers mugged...Photo's on Twitter claiming to be the police station in Handsworth Birmingham in flames...David Cameron's Big Society working out nicely

[Ed Jewett]

Photos from Cryptome:

http://cryptome.org/info/totten-protest/...rotest.htm

[Ed Jewett]

"Live blog [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/a...night-live ] covering the London Riots (3rd night and spreading). Each group appears to be about 150 strong. They disperse quickly when challenged. Reassemble quickly at a new location via SMS texting (Blackberry). Locations of riots in London (see Google map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ll=51.5...5,0.298691 )



http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/glob...-2011.html

[Magda Hassan]

Look like the police are on a go slow against the proposed cuts. Saw Ken Livingstone saying much the same thing too when interviewed on the Beeb.

Looks bloody scary from the images. So many poor people have lost their homes. Seems they are trying to blame 'anarchists' for the flames. I think it is arsonists. Could even be police. No proof in either case. Lots of damage to clean up and many lives ruined.

[Magda Hassan]