Police deployed extra forces on the streets of London to prevent a fourth night of unrest amid Britain’s worst rioting since the 1980s. The capital was calm during the evening even as the unrest spread to Manchester, northern England’s biggest city.
London’s Metropolitan Police put 16,000 officers on duty overnight, up from 6,000 the previous evening, when violence flared across the capital. A total of 685 people have been arrested in London since Aug. 8, when the unrest began in the suburb of Tottenham, after a local black man, Mark Duggan, was shot and killed by police who stopped his car intending to make an arrest. The violence has seen gasoline bombs thrown and vehicles, homes and businesses torched.
In Manchester, rioters set fire to a property in Salford, west of the center, and Miss Selfridge, a clothing retailer in the main shopping area, Greater Manchester Police said. Television pictures showed looters running from the Arndale shopping mall, store windows smashed and groups of young people being confronted by officers in riot gear. Police said they made at least 47 arrests, including one man on suspicion of using Facebook Inc.’s social networking site to incite disorder.
‘Senseless Violence’
“Over the past few hours, Greater Manchester Police has been faced with extraordinary levels of violence from groups of criminals intent on committing widespread disorder,” Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan said in a statement. “This is nothing more than senseless violence with no absolutely no regard for people, their property or livelihoods.”
Prime Minister David Cameron will preside over another meeting of the government’s emergency committee to discuss the unrest at 9 a.m. today. The prime minister, who broke off his vacation in Italy as the riots spread, recalled Parliament to meet in emergency session tomorrow.
“I’m determined, the government is determined, that justice will be done,” Cameron said outside his Downing Street office. “This is criminality pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated.”
West Midlands Police said last night it arrested 229 people since the evening of Aug. 6 in Birmingham, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton for offences including violent disorder, burglaries, criminal damage and looting. It said it was dealing with small-scale unrest yesterday evening, with some stores broken into and cars set on fire.
Nottinghamshire Police said on its Twitter feed that the Canning Circus police station was firebombed by a group of 30 to 40 men. It said eight people had been arrested and there were no initial reports of injuries.
BlackBerry Messaging
BlackBerry smartphone maker Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) said it is helping police probe reports the company’s messaging service was being used by rioters to plan the disturbances.
A total of 111 people have been charged in London, police said today, including at least 69 with burglary, six with handling stolen goods, two with assault on police and five with possession of offensive weapons.
Though student-led protests against increases in university tuition fees descended into unrest last year, this week’s rioting has been the worst in London since at least 1985, when violence broke out in Tottenham in the north of the city and Brixton in the south after the deaths of black women during police searches.
Insurers face a bill of “well over” 100 million pounds ($162 million), Nick Starling, director of general insurance at the Association of British Insurers, said in an e-mailed statement.
The violence comes a year before London stages the 2012 Olympic Games and at a time when the capital is seeking a new chief of police. Commissioner Paul Stephenson quit last month as a scandal over phone-hacking at News Corp.’s now defunct News of the World newspaper escalated.
“People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets and make them safe for the law-abiding,” Cameron said.
Tonight’s exhibition soccer game between England and the Netherlands at Wembley Stadium in northwest London has been postponed, England’s Football Association said in a statement. “We do not need the additional burden of a crowd of 80,000 people on our streets tomorrow,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
The police said that between 400 and 500 officers are investigating the riots. Police are posting pictures of suspects and requesting that the public alert them to messages boasting about looting.
London Mayor Boris Johnson broke off his vacation in North America and toured the Clapham Junction area in southwest London yesterday, encouraging groups of locals who gathered to clear up the damage. Cameron also visited districts hit by the unrest.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating the Aug. 6 Tottenham shooting, said in a statement yesterday that there was “no evidence” that a non-police handgun found at the scene was fired during the incident.
To contact the reporters on this story: Eddie Buckle in London at ebuckle@bloomberg.net; David Goodman in London at dgoodman28@bloomberg.net; or Ben Edwards in London at bedwards35@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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