London's riots: Police battle for trust

London: The city has woken up to a second night of violence, which has spread from Tottenham in north London to areas across the city. The wave of riots and looting have put increasing pressure on the embattled Metropolitan Police and laid bare the divisions in London. Last weekend’s riots in Tottenham came after the fatal shooting of a local man, Mark Duggan, last Thursday. He was under surveillance by Operation Trident, a specialist unit of the Metropolitan Police set up in 1998 to tackle gun crime in the black community , and officers from that unit and a specialist firearms unit stopped a minicab in which he was a passenger. Initial reports describe an exchange of fire , but the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is investigating the chain of events. However, mistrust between the black community and the police and IPCC runs deep. Writer Alex Wheatle said in the Evening Standard :

Many in the black community who I speak to have no faith in the IPCC and believe it is an investigative body that is not fit for the purpose. Over the years we have seen investigation after investigation but no conviction. … All this good intention and goodwill will be undone if young black people perceive the police as an institution that never has to account for its own criminality.

If you really want a sense of how deep this mistrust runs, you only have to look at the wild rumours that have been spreading about Duggan’s death. The IPCC had to issue a statement denying that Duggan had been killed ’execution style’. The commission said in a release :

Speculation that Mark Duggan was ‘assassinated’ in an execution style involving a number of shots to the head are categorically untrue. Following the formal identification of the body Mr Duggan’s family knows that this is not the case and I would ask anyone reporting this to be aware of its inaccuracy and its inflammatory nature.

The police blamed social networks for spreading rumours and threatened arrests if people used Twitter or other services to incite others to violence. In an interview on the BBC Radio 4, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh said social networking contributed to the riots, saying: “Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality.” Media reports also suggest that BBM, the BlackBerry Messenger service , is allowing youth to organise riots more securely than the major social networks allow. Technology journalist Mike Butcher explained how the corporate BlackBerry has become popular amongst British urban youth :

BlackBerries are high functioning phones but cost a fraction of other smartphones like Androids or iPhones, which [are] typically the choice of Twitter users due to the wide range of client applications. As a result BlackBerries have become the weapon of choice of Britain’s disaffected youth.

Digital communications blogger Jonathan Akwue captured some of the messages mentioning BBM and the riots on Twitter such as this one :

:o jd sports Tottenham hale jus got robbed go on bbm do to see da pics!

Cycles of violence [caption id=“attachment_56708” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“Firefights survey the burnt-out shell of a carpet showroom on High Road in Tottenham. Leon Neal/AFP”] [/caption] Officially, the Great Recession ended in the UK in January 2010 , but just a month ago in Tottenham, local MP David Lammy called for an enterprise zone to be created there as those seeking jobseekers’ allowance (unemployment benefit) rose 10% in the area in the last year . Unemployment, public sector cuts and long-standing divisions in the city are contributing to upsets in disaffected communities. Efforts to combat violent crime have, in some ways,  fed mistrust between the local community and the police. Local youth living in public housing estates complain about being stopped frequently by police. Stop-and-search powers are being used by police to combat violence amongst gangs. Youth are being killed simply for travelling into a rival gang’s territory. Government austerity is leading to cuts in local youth programmes including ones to combat gang violence . Mistrust of the police in underprivileged communities in London triggered the riots, but the riots are taking on a darker, more criminal character as they spread. Sunday night, police were attacked and looting broke out in several areas around London. With the battered British economy, violence in the streets, and unpopular Conservative policies, it’s like a bad flashback to the troubled 1980s. Pundits quickly drew parallels to the violence in Tottenham on Saturday night to the infamous Broadwater Farm riots in 1985 . A local woman died of a heart attack when police burst into her home on the Broadwater Farm housing estate, also in Tottenham. It triggered violence which led to the brutal murder of a police officer , PC Keith Blakelock, who was hacked to death with a machete. That unrest came a week after riots in Brixton, touched off by the accidental shooting of a woman by police that left her paralysed. As the violence broke out, British political leaders including Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson were both on holiday , and headlines such as in the Mirror, “ Tottenham riot leaves London burning - while David Cameron poses for pictures with a waitress on holiday ”, have fuelled a sense that while the powerful play, the impoverished pay. The police find themselves in a very difficult position. After having been criticised for heavy-handedness in protests over the last few years, they now are being criticised for not having acted more decisively Saturday night in Tottenham. They are being criticised for not answering questions about the shooting last Thursday, but they are limited in what they can say after the IPCC begins an investigation. They are being asked to curb violence in communities that mistrust them. The trust will take years to rebuild, but the police now find themselves having little time to restore order to a restive city.