Please Police Me?

If I remember rightly, one of my first posts here some years ago was about some riot or other that kicked off in Alcorcón, a suburb to the south of central Madrid. And, early this month of August, London was besieged by rioting youths in an eruption of violence and looting following an initially peaceful protest following an incident where a twenty-something young man was killed by a policeman in Tottenham, North London. The area is probably best known to non-Londoners as being the home of Tottenham Hotspurs (or simply Spurs) football club, who were knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid last season. Juande Ramos was once manager there, and former Madridista Rafael van der Vaart and gangly ex-Liverpool striker Peter Crouch are in the team. Spurs ground White Hart Lane could be seen from helicopter footage surveying the damage, and, although the stadium escaped unscathed, players were terrified.

Youths excited by the adrenalin of breaking glass, burning buildings, pack mentality and the prospect of free tracksuits, trainers and mobile phones spread the word by text, tweet and Facebook and pretty soon there was "copycat" rioting going on in Croydon (a suburb south of London... the picture above is the before and after image of a Croydon family business going up in flames), Brixton, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Oxford (!) and other cities.

British newspapers being what they are, the victim whose death sparked the riots was alternately described as a loving father-of-four (or father-of-six in some places) and a dodgy drug-dealing member of a family of  hardened criminals whose best pal - a fellow who went by the unsavoury nickname of Smegz - was killed by a broken champagne bottle in rather suspicious circumstances earlier this year.

Here's a BBC news video from the morning after the night before, with some extra "history" on the former troubles in Tottenham that have apparently returned, to shed light on the tension in the area...

...and here is a Sky News interview with a cheery gang of "masked" teenage looters...

...and finally, the unfortunately bumbling Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, "comes to the rescue" with a broom 

Obviously you've already clicked on a number of links in the article (you did click the purple blue links, didn't you?), but let's finish with some of the more interesting analyses of the riots:

• Trainers and mobile phones: the objects of our disaffection (The Guardian)

• The Clockwork Riots (New York Post) 

• Cameron: UK riots not caused by race or government spending cuts (Metro UK)

• UK Riots: How the drugs war fits in (Huffington Post)

• Punk spoke up for angry kids. Why won’t today’s bands follow suit? (The Guardian)

• Holiday boredom fuelled riots (London Evening Standard)

• Celebrities unite on Twitter to condemn riots (Daily Mirror)

• Mother who shopped her own Olympic ambassador daughter after riots weeps… (Daily Mail)

• Rap responds to the riots (The Guardian)

• How BlackBerry Messenger was used to plan two nights of looting (Daily Telegraph)

• What isn't behind the riots (Washington Post)

• How the UK newspapers headlined the riots (The Guardian)