Residents in London's Tottenham district were lamenting the death of Mark Duggan, a young man killed after an exchange of gunfire with police on Thursday.
But the situation lost control as angry crowds threw bottles, looted buildings and torched cars.
26 police officers were injured, with eight hospitalized. And 42 people were arrested.
The area at the center of the violence has now been sealed off as police attempt to restore order.
Commander of Metropolitan police Adrian Hanstock said, "Once we saw that situation develop, we deployed people appropriately and eventually took control this morning in the early hours. Today is about restoring calm and bringing peace back to Tottenham."
Some residents link the violence to anger over Britain's poor economic performance, saying they are living amid deep public spending cuts and tax rises. Others question police behavior in the death of Mark Duggan.
Scotland Yard said "copycat" looting had spread to a number of boroughs in the capital's north, east and south, while a mob of about 50 youths damaged property in Oxford Circus, at the heart of the city's tourist area.
Several arrests were made on Sunday night after youths vandalised a police car and smashed windows in Enfield, a north London suburb about five kilometres from Tottenham, the area at the heart of the previous night's mayhem.
Additional police resources were deployed in the volatile neighbourhoods, with three officers requiring hospital treatment after being hit by a car.
Television footage showed riot and mounted police patrolling the streets, as well as images of smashed shop windows and police with dogs detaining at least one man.
Commander Christine Jones said: "This is a challenging situation with small pockets of violence, looting and disorder breaking out on a number of boroughs."
The fresh violence comes after a protest in Tottenham degenerated into a Saturday night rampage, with rioters torching a double-decker bus, destroying patrol cars and trashing a shopping mall in the nearby Wood Green district.
The protest against the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father-of-four who was gunned down by police in disputed circumstances on Thursday, was initially peaceful.
But it got ugly as between 300 and 500 people gathered around Tottenham's police station.
Some protesters filled bottles with petrol to throw at police lines, others confronted officers with makeshift weapons - including baseball bats and bars - and attempted to storm the station.
Within hours, police in riot gear and on horseback were clashing with hundreds of rioters, fires were raging out of control, and looters combed the area.
One video posted to the Guardian newspaper's website showed looting even carried on into the following day, with people lining up to steal from one store just after dawn.
Police said 26 officers were hurt, while three members of the public also needed treatment.
By Sunday, all the injured police officers had been discharged from hospital.
A total 55 arrests were made after Saturday's riots. Prime Minister David Cameron's office described the violence as "utterly unacceptable".
Metropolitan police announced that officers working on the Operation Withern probe would interview witnesses and review hours of CCTV footage to locate the Tottenham rioters.
The devastated area smouldered on Sunday - in Tottenham, streets were littered with bricks and lined with overturned scorched rubbish bins.
Two police helicopters hovered over the burnt-out buildings as residents inspected the damage and firefighters doused the last of the flames.
Very few details of Duggan's death have been released, although police said initially that an officer was briefly hospitalised after the shooting - suggesting there was some kind of an exchange of fire.
According to the Guardian, initial ballistics tests on a bullet which was found lodged in a police officer's radio when Duggan was shot revealed it was a police issue bullet, raising doubts over the early explanation of events.
Duggan was killed when specialist firearms officers stopped a minicab in which he was travelling to carry out a pre-planned arrest.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating Duggan's shooting, said in a statement on Sunday night that a "non-police firearm" was recovered at the scene.
"The IPCC awaits further forensic analysis to enable us to have a fuller and more comprehensive account of what shots were discharged, the sequence of events and what exactly happened," the commission said in a statement.
Duggan's family rejected any suggestion that he had fired at officers. His brother, Shaun Hall, said his sibling would never attack police.
"That's ridiculous," he told Sky News television. As for the rioting, he condemned it.
"There was a domino effect, which we don't condone at all," he said.
The IPCC said it was being assisted by officers from Trident, the unit focused on tackling gun crime in the black community.
Meanwhile, emergency services were dealing with disturbances across London on Sunday night as fresh bouts of rioting and looting broke out.
Six fire engines were dispatched to deal with a blaze at a Foot Locker shop in Brixton, south London, and witnesses saw riot police clash with looters at a Currys electrical store nearby.
As violence spread, about 50 youths gathered in Oxford Circus, central London, and caused damage to property.
Elsewhere, more than 30 youths, many in masks, vandalised and looted shops in Walthamstow Central.
London has seen student and trade union protests turn ugly in the past 12 months but this outbreak of rioting was the worst seen for years away from the capital's centre.
The march against Duggan's death began at Broadwater Farm, a 1960s public housing estate in Tottenham that is notorious across Britain.
No comments:
Post a Comment