London Sees Twin Perils Converging to Fuel Riot

Luke Macgregor/Reuters

A police officer on patrol near buildings set on fire during a riot in the northern London neighborhood of Tottenham. More Photos »

LONDON — As London surveyed the damage on Sunday after a small anti-police demonstration spiraled into looting and violence that left 26 police officers injured and led to 55 arrests, many sought to cast the blame beyond the rioters themselves.

Multimedia

Photographs

Rioting in Tottenham

Related

• 48 Arrested in London Riots (August 6, 2011)

In Tottenham, the northern London neighborhood at the center of the rioting, residents spoke of twin perils that had converged to leave their streets scarred and smoldering on Sunday.

Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, 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.

The riot was the latest in what has turned out to be a season of unrest in Britain, with multiple demonstrations escalating into violence in recent months. And there was not long to wait until a new one erupted: across London, skirmishes broke out on Sunday between groups of young people and large numbers of riot police officers, which one officer said were drawn from forces around London.

In Enfield, a usually calm suburb, shop windows were smashed and debris lay in the street. In nearby Edmonton, groups of young people gathered near damaged storefronts. In Tottenham itself, roads were closed, a helicopter hovered overhead and squads of police vans swooped in to make arrests in side streets.

The episode in Tottenham began as a small and peaceful march, in which 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?”

Aaron Biber, 89, stooped to pick through the debris of his ransacked barber shop, which he said he had run for 41 years. “This country has changed,” he said. “We’ve lost something.”

Though the rioters, he said, were “lunatics,” he felt that the police had stood by while his business was being savaged. It was a common complaint — many voiced concern that looters in other areas of London had been allowed to smash and steal for several hours before officers arrived.

Connect with The New York Times on Facebook.