A police station in Handsworth, Birmingham, is set on fire. One in Nottingham is firebombed. Cars burn in south Liverpool. There's rioting in the centre of Manchester, in Salford and West Bromwich.
In the Bootle area of Merseyside a dumper truck is used to break into a post office. A couple of lads on a moped came right up to the line - they were counting us and then they went back. Then the whole crowd started marching up the road, with a four-door saloon car as a figurehead. It was absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, attempted murder.
Rioters are not just attacking the police and looting - they start to set fire to their own neighbourhoods, including shops with residential flats above. Among the targets is a local landmark, the year-old Reeves furniture store.
Lewisham has roaming groups of people stirring up trouble. At least people loot a Tesco in Bethnal Green. Fires are started in Lambeth, petrol bombs thrown in Hackney. Because we wanted to see everything on fire. To show them, 'what can you do now? There's nothing you can do'". And I felt good. Mr Cameron says there are contingency plans for water cannon to be used at 24 hours' notice.
The Ministry of Justice says there are enough prison places for all. The shops ran out of stuff. All the phone shops went instantly. Magistrates' courts in London, Solihull and Manchester among others stay open through the night to fast-track those already in custody for disorder-related offences. The shops did not trouble them. That's the shops their mums and their gran have to go to. The post office - they've got grandparents - there's no post office for the elderly.
Police combed CCTV footage to identify culprits. Over the following months, more than 2, people were traced, charged and convicted. Like, I'm on it. And it was blatantly obvious they were stolen. And then someone asked me for a pair and I gave them a pair, and the street cameras caught my face. There was no official government inquiry after the riots, but there were reports by other bodies.
Opportunism, social deprivation, discontent with the police and unemployment were all mentioned, but a single overwhelming cause for what happened over those five days in August was not pinpointed.
Over the days that followed, the police were roundly criticised. The Met later acknowledged that its inability to monitor social media meant it could not get ahead of events. Analyses following the riots found that police tactics were hampered by inadequate numbers, that they should sometimes have intervened more promptly and assertively, and that intelligence was flawed.
They all praised the bravery of the officers on the frontline. Ministry of Justice figures show a total of 1, offenders were jailed for their part in the trouble. Rioting was seen as an aggravating factor. Sentences were longer and more people were sent to prison than would normally be expected for the same charges under different circumstances.
Nice little story for them, isn't it? You know, like World War Two and that with my great-grandads. If it was to happen again, I would happily join in. Anything against the police, I would happily join in. I was there for revenge. For once they were living on the edge, they felt how we felt. They felt threatened by us. I had the opportunity to take my dog out for a walk in the park.
London youth services cut in half since riots. Metropolitan Police Service. London Fire Brigade. Inquest: The death of Mark Duggan.
Image source, PA Media. At the end of the rioting, five people had died, hundreds were injured and scores were homeless. Image source, Getty Images. Some rioters described the affected areas as "combat zones". Thursday 4 August.
Image source, Duggan family. Friday 5 August. Saturday 6 August. Image source, Alan Stanton. Friends and family of Mark Duggan went to Tottenham police station to "get answers". The first night, violence spread from Tottenham police station along High Road. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Police have condemned a wave of "copycat criminal activity" across London in a second night of looting and disorder. Sunday 7 August. Rioters have described the disorder as having "a party atmosphere". JD was one of the chains targeted across London. The unrest that followed started in Tottenham, where Duggan grew up, and soon spread across the rest of the country in over 66 different areas including wider parts of London, Birmingham and Bristol; shops were looted, buildings set alight, stand-offs with armed police officers ensued.
Mr Smith described the chaotic scenes which unfolded in West Croydon and Brixton across south London; over five days around 15, people participated in the unrest, five people died and the financial cost to the country was around half a billion pounds. What leads to this happening in our society where people have no other way to make themselves heard to the point at which they have to go out and make a physical stand for what is right?
Pointing to austerity, social deprivation and the rise in university tuition fees, Mr Smith said the atmosphere was thick with anger and resentment. There was looting As Mr Smith echoed, the disturbances were also underpinned by a growing sense of frustration among Black communities around policing tactics namely stop and search tactics which disproportionately targeted Black men.
This was cited as a major source of discontent and many reported that these searches were often heavy-handed; figures at the time showed only about 10 per cent of more than a million searches led to an arrest. In the wake of the unrest, the then-government commissioned a Riots Communities and Victims Panel to investigate key issues around the event.
Among other things, it recommended the Met improve their relationships with Black communities. But little has changed. Smiley Culture died from a single knife wound to the heart during a police raid on his Surrey home in March , ruled as suicide at an inquest. For example, reggae artist Smiley Culture died from a single knife wound to the heart during a police raid on his Surrey home in March of the same year.
In , the coalition government, building on a Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment, pledged to restore rights to non-violent protest. Clearly, riots are not the same as non-violent protest. And indeed, the coalition government went out of its way to argue that the riots had no political content of any kind.
But the riots nonetheless did totally derail this reform agenda. Over the next few years, protests came to be marred by increasingly aggressive policing , while courts took the lead in setting anti-protestor precedents.
The turn towards a more punitive and authoritarian approach to protest policing has hardened in the last few years. This is particularly obvious with the response to the non-violent direct action protestors known as the Stansted 15 , who were wrongly prosecuted under legislation intended to deal with terrorism.
It is also clear in the massive, routine surveillance of demonstrations and, more recently, the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill that the Home Office is now seeking to enact.
But, ten years on, the massive experiment in so-called emergency justice that followed them does look like an important turning point. More prosecutions, faster trials and longer sentences may soon be the norm not just for riots, but for protests of any kind.
Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Crowds protesting the death of Mark Duggan at the hands of the police sparked protests across the country.
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