UK police arrest 100 after riots in British capital

Aug. 8, 2011 Reuters



LONDON - British police arrested more than 100 people overnight

in London after shops were looted and officers attacked in a second night

of violence that followed some of the worst disorder seen in the capital

for years.



Nine police were injured in what police called "copycat criminality" in

several parts of London Sunday night, although the damage appeared to be

on a much smaller scale than Saturday's rioting in Tottenham, in the north

of the capital.



London's Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse blamed the violence on a relatively

small number of criminals motivated by greed rather than worries about the

conduct of the police or wider social problems caused by Britain's

sluggish economic recovery.



"This is quite a small group of people within our community in London who

... are frankly looking for stuff to nick (steal). They are picking

particular kinds of stores, whether it's because they want a new set of

trainers or whatever," he told Sky News.



Police Commander Christine Jones said there had been "sporadic disorder"

in a number of boroughs through the night, with more than 100 people

detained, on top of the 61 arrested on Saturday night and Sunday morning.



The first night of rioting began after a vigil for a 29-year-old man shot

dead by police as they tried to arrest him in Tottenham Thursday.

Britain's police watchdog is investigating the incident.



Sunday night, police said there was more looting in north, east and south

London. Around 50 youths damaged shops in Oxford Street, one of the main

shopping districts in central London. In Brixton, south London, several

shops were looted and police kept the area cordoned off Monday morning.



Politicians and police blamed the first night of violence on criminal

thugs but residents attributed it to local tensions and anger over

hardship.



Residents said they had to flee their homes as mounted police and riot

officers on foot charged the crowd to push rioters back.



The Metropolitan Police, which will handle next year's London Olympic

Games in what is expected to be Britain's biggest peacetime police

operation, faced questions about how the trouble had been allowed to

escalate.



APPEAL FOR CALM



Police and community leaders said local people had been horrified by what

happened and appealed for calm.



Local member of parliament David Lammy said many of those arrested had

come in from outside the area and organized the disorder on social

messaging sites.



"The weekend's violence was not a race riot, it was an attack on the whole

of the Tottenham community, organized on Twitter," he wrote in the Times

newspaper Monday. "The grief of one family must never be hijacked to

inflict grief on others."



The riots come amid deepening gloom in Britain, with the economy

struggling to grow while the government is imposing deep public spending

cuts and tax rises brought in to help eliminate a budget deficit that

peaked at more than 10 percent of GDP.



"Tottenham is a deprived area. Unemployment is very, very high ... they

are frustrated," said Uzodinma Wigwe, 49, who was made redundant from his

job as a cleaner recently.



Tottenham includes areas with the highest unemployment rates in London. It

also has a history of racial tension with local young people, especially

blacks, resenting police behavior including the use of stop and search

powers.



The disorder was close to where one of Britain's most notorious race riots

occurred in 1985, when police officer Keith Blakelock was hacked to death

on the deprived Broadwater Farm housing estate during widespread

disturbances.



Locals said there had been growing anger recently about police behavior.

"I've lived in Broadwater Farm for 20 odd years and from day one, police

always pre-judge Turks and black people," said a 23-year-old community

worker of Turkish origin who would not give his name.



Fingers were also pointed at the police for failing to anticipate the

trouble, although Commander Hanstock said there had been no hint of what

was coming.



The London force has been heavily criticized for its handling of recent

large protests against austerity measures, while its chief and the top

counter-terrorism officer have quit over the handling of the News Corp

phone-hacking scandal.



(Additional reporting by Stephen Mangan and Stefan Wermuth; Editing by

Gareth Jones)