London tries tripling police presence to end riots

A property is on fire Tuesday near Reeves Corner in Croydon, south London. A wave of violence and looting raged across London and spread to three other major British cities as authorities struggled to contain the country's worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.
A property is on fire Tuesday near Reeves Corner in Croydon, south London. A wave of violence and looting raged across London and spread to three other major British cities as authorities struggled to contain the country's worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.

LONDON (AP) - London began nearly tripling the number of police on its streets Tuesday to try to end Britain's worst rioting in a generation - three nights of looting and burning by poor, diverse and brazen crowds of young people. Meanwhile, however, the chaos spread to at least one more major city.

Scenes of ransacked stores, torched cars and blackened buildings frightened and outraged Britons just a year before London is to host the Olympics. London's Metropolitan Police force said Tuesday it would flood the streets with 16,000 officers over the next 24 hours, but acknowledged they could not guarantee an end to the violence.

"We have lots of information to suggest that there may be similar disturbances tonight," Cmdr. Simon Foy told the BBC. "That's exactly the reason why the Met (police force) has chosen to now actually really "up the game' and put a significant number of officers on the streets."

In Manchester, which previously hadn't seen violence, police said seven people were arrested Tuesday as youths rampaged through the center of the northwestern city. Firefighters said a clothing store in the city center and a disused library in nearby Salford were set on fire.

Assistant Chief Constable Terry Sweeney of the Greater Manchester police department urged residents to avoid the city center. "A handful of shops have been attacked by groups of youths who have congregated and seem intent on committing disorder," he said.

The riots started Saturday with a protest over a police shooting in London's Tottenham neighborhood, but have morphed into a general lawlessness in London and several other cities police have struggled to halt with ordinary tactics. While the rioters have run off with sneakers, bikes, electronics and leather goods, they also have torched stores apparently just for the fun of seeing something burn.

Rioters, able to move quickly and regroup to avoid the police, were left virtually unchallenged in several neighborhoods, plundering stores at will.

Police in Britain generally avoid tear gas, water cannons or other strong-arm riot measures, but they said they were considering the use of plastic bullets - blunt-nosed projectiles designed to deal punishing blows to rioters without penetrating the skin. Such weapons, formally called baton rounds, still are used to quell riots in Northern Ireland but have never been used by police in Britain itself.

Stores, offices and nursery schools in several parts of London closed early amid fears of fresh rioting Tuesday night, though pubs and restaurants were open. Police in one London district, Islington, advised people not to be out on the streets "unless absolutely necessary."

In central England, police said they made five arrests in Birmingham and dispersed a small group of people who torched two cars in the center of West Bromwich, a nearby town. Shops were targeted by rioters in the city of Wolverhampton, police said.

In London, riots and looting have flared from gritty suburbs along the capital's fringes to the posh Notting Hill neighborhood. The disorder has caused heartache for Londoners whose businesses and homes were torched or looted, and a crisis for police and politicians already staggering from a spluttering economy and a scandal over illegal phone hacking by a tabloid newspaper that has dragged in senior politicians and police.

"The public wanted to see tough action. They wanted to see it sooner and there is a degree of frustration," said Andrew Silke, head of the criminology department at the University of East London.

So far more than 560 people have been arrested in London and more than 100 charged, and the capital's prison cells were overflowing. Several dozen more were arrested in other cities. The Crown Prosecution Service said it had teams of lawyers working 24 hours a day to help police decide whether to charge suspects.

Silke said it will be hard to control the rioting until police make larger numbers of arrests.

"People are seeing images of lines of police literally running away from rioters," he said. "For young people that is incredibly empowering. They are breaking the rules. They are getting away with it. No one is able to stop them."

The unrest was Britain's worst since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s. Groups of young people set buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps on fire, looted stores and pelted police officers with bottles and fireworks.

London's beleaguered police force noted it received more than 20,000 emergency calls on Monday - four times the normal number. Scotland Yard has called in reinforcements from around the country and asked all volunteer special constables to report for duty.

A soccer match scheduled for Wednesday between England and the Netherlands at London's Wembley stadium was canceled to free up police officers for riot duty.

Prime Minister David Cameron - who cut short a holiday in Italy to deal with the crisis - recalled Parliament from its summer recess for an emergency debate on the riots and looting. He described the scenes of burning buildings and smashed windows as "sickening," but refrained from tougher measures such as calling in the military to help police restore order.

Other politicians visited riot sites Tuesday - but for many residents it was too little, too late.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was booed by crowds who shouted "Go home!" in Birmingham, while London Mayor Boris Johnson - who flew back overnight from his summer vacation - was heckled on a shattered shopping street in Clapham, south London.