THERE WERE fresh scenes of street violence in the north of England last night as police struggled to contain the rioting that erupted after the shooting dead of a man by officers in London last week. The huge police operation in the capital appeared to be working, however, with little trouble reported.
Last night a police station in Nottingham was firebombed by a group of 30 to 40 men, Nottinghamshire Police said. No injuries were reported. There was looting in Manchester city centre and trouble in Birmingham, Nottingham and other parts of the West Midlands.
Police in the West Midlands made a total of 36 arrests as fresh disturbances saw looting and vehicles set alight in Birmingham, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.
In central Manchester, a gang set fire to a Miss Selfridge shop. Later, about 100 youths looted Foot Asylum in the Arndale Centre, while a Diesel clothing shop and a Bang Olufsen store were broken into.
But West Midlands Police said the disorder was not as severe as Monday’s looting in Birmingham city centre, which led to 142 arrests and saw 13 people taken to hospital.
Last night as many as 16,000 police patrolled London streets. Many parts of the city shut early yesterday and there was a saturation police presence in trouble spots.
Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh raised the possibility of rubber bullets being used for the first time on the UK mainland, but the former PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde, now the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, cautioned that could be a disproportionate response.
“What is happening in London is not an insurgency that is going to topple the country,” said Sir Hugh.
Nonetheless, the damage wrought through the weekend was substantial, and could cost taxpayers €100 million, according to initial estimates by the Association of British Insurers.
One of the buildings damaged on Monday, the Arcadia shopping centre in Ealing, London was in May taken over by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency from the property development company owned by brothers Ray and Danny Grehan.
By yesterday evening, police had made more than 500 arrests and they were circulating CCTV coverage of suspected rioters in the hope of arresting hundreds more.
The arrests included that of a 17-year-old boy who is suspected of orchestrating violence through his Facebook page.
Although much of the trouble has been organised on social media sites, most notably Facebook and Twitter, police are hopeful that information from the same sources will be used to bring prosecutions.
Returning from his holidays, British prime minister David Cameron cancelled all police leave and recalled parliament, for the first time since 2002, to sit for a day tomorrow. He promised that those old enough to commit such crimes would be punished accordingly.
The terms of reference for an inquiry into the cause of the rioting will be decided by a House of Commons committee tomorrow. Proposed cuts to the number of police in cities are likely to be revisited.
The original source of the rioting was the shooting dead by police of father of four Mark Duggan (29) last Thursday.
Mr Duggan was killed by armed officers at Ferry Lane, Tottenham, north London, after they stopped the minicab he was in to carry out an arrest as part of a planned operation.
A statement issued by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating his death, said ballistic test results indicated no evidence that Mr Duggan opened fire at police officers before he was shot dead. – (Additional reporting: Guardianservice)