London's Burning: riots in Tottenham and Wood Green

[matgb]

Overnight, the events in north London have, simply, been horrifying to watch. As news unfolded on Twitter I began switching from BBC to Sky and back again trying to see if anyone, at all, knew what was going on. News reports are concentrating, naturally, on the riots themselves and the shooting that's supposedly sparked them.

Earlier in the week, a fairly well known resident in his late 20s was shot by police, reportedly responding to shots fired at them. However...

From what I can gather from Twitter and other sources, there was a planned, peaceful, protest outside the police station about the shooting. Then this happened:

@andrewtindall Andrew Tindall

protester from original peaceful protest cites police attacking 16 year old woman as one of the sparks of tonight's riot. #tottenham

3:22 AM Aug 7th via TweetDeck

@thespyglass Anna Machell

Resident to BBC: At station protest today a 16 yr old girl approached police asking questions, they "set upon her with batons". #tottenham

3:22 AM Aug 7th via web

These are, naturally, unconfirmed reports. ETA: both are based on seeing ‪this BBC News witness broadcast but appear to have been corroborated. ETA2: ‪16 YEAROLD OLD GIRL ATTACKED BY TOTTENHAM RIOT POLICE!‬‏ - YouTube You can make out the police beating someone on the ground, it's very grainy, but...

But if true? The initial spark for violence wasn't a man being shot. It was a 16 year old girl being beaten by the police in front of a crowd of demonstrators. Is it true? I have no idea.

I, broadly, agree with Steve:

In the UK,
a) having a gun and
b) firing it at CO19 (armed police)
are both very bad ideas. So is
c) sitting next to a person firing a gun at CO19, which is the other possibility.

...

We won't know the details for a while yet. There's an IPCC investigation... but the last few of those might have just as well had the word "whitewash" stamped on them in red ink.

...

I hope we find the truth about Tottenham's grievances and the police actions, but I'm not going to cheer on looters and bus-burners in the meantime. Not all action is heroic.

That's three choice extracts, I recommend reading the whole post.

If those tweets are for real? If the police genuinely did beat an unarmed, non-violent 16 year old girl who was shouting at them in front of a non-violent protest? That's horrifyingly wrong.

Reports of fires and looting in Wood Green as well as Tottenham are unconfirmed but sources are credible. A Home Office minister is the MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, she also happens to be one of the Lib Dem MPs I respect immensely.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The Metropolitan police is giving every indication of being completely out of control, not just for their close links to News of the World journalists.

Lynne? Not just for the sake of your constituents, but for the country, make sure the Met are sorted out and the investigation is full, thorough and open?

I hope those with friends, family, etc in the area are OK. I'm going to bed, insomnia can only keep me awake for so long.

ETA: Guardian NewsBlog has two different witness statements saying that a girl was attacked by police, one of which says she threw something at them first. But

the girl was then "pounded by 15 riot shields". He said that the police "launched into her with startling force using both batons and shields. She went down on the floor but once she managed to get up she was hit again before being half-dragged away by her friend."

One teenage girl throws something, she'sbeaten to the ground by 15 riot shields? FFS. Heavy handed tactics never work in a tinderbox, what are the Met on?

(I've applied some formatting to the two copied tweets to attempt to make them look good, that CSS only exists currently on the Dreamwidth version of this post so might look awful on friends pages, reading pages or in feedreaders, do let me know if it messes things up particularly badly.)

Comments

[rhythmaning]

I've had a look on Twitter - #woodgreen, @neilsonandrew and @paullewis, mostly - and it sounds like the rioting here was confined to looting in the High Street: it seems to be mostly taking advantage of the situation than fighting against any specific wrongs.

[hano]

yeah, right now it sounds like the looters were opportunists rather than anything else. Sounds like the Big Green Bookshop is ok, just seen Tweets confirming that. It's f**king scary though, the Wood Green looting went on for hours and there wasn't a policeman to be seen till dawn.

[rhythmaning]

To be honest, letting the looters get on with it might be the best way to deal with looting. I doubt sending heavy handed police in would help resolve anything.

Looting, though, could really damage the neighbourhood economy: those shops are employers. I can understand people's anger at the police, local politicians and government. But attacking local businesses is a pretty stupid way of expressing it.

[hano]

I agree, wrecking the place is less than helpful. But this is what happens when people feel they have nothing to lose coupled with a burning sense of entitlement.
Anyone seen or heard anything from Lynne Featherstone?

[rhythmaning]

I was about to search Twitter to find out. But even MPs are allowed a holiday! David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, has issued a statement.

[rhythmaning]

Nothing from Lynne on Twitter since 22/7.

[matgb]

Guardian's reporting she's made a statement, but not got full text, still looking. Suspect she's been told she has to be careful with her words as police issues is part of her dept's job as well.

[rhythmaning]

That makes sense. I don't agree with knee jerk reactions anyhow. The causes of riots in Tottenham may be different from those in Wood Green, and jumping to conclusions will help no one.