(Long) London Riots
Aug. 8th, 2011 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thekusabishatQuite frankly, I don't know what's going on anymore.
What happened in Tottenham the other night looked bad enough, and then there was news of it spreading to Enfield the next night. A few hours later, looting and fire-setting started on the highstreet here, right at the end of my road... in Brixton, the south of London, the complete opposite end of the city. M&S and Foot Locker were set on fire, H&M was eventually lit up after it had been emptied (there were reports of a girl trying things on inside before stealing them), McDonald's was completely smashed up. Currys was looted, and the kids took the freshly-procured iPads from there to McDonalds, where they sat and played with them. There were stories of a lone employee in McDonald's, wiping down the tables, and of men being seen walking down the road with washing machines on their backs (strong?). My own friend saw two hooded kids walking down our road, carrying a plasma TV between them.
Now, tonight, it's spread to Croydon. A bunch of hoodies were caught swinging from a TV in Ladbrokes, caught by a Sky reporter, but whoever installed the TV was great because it didn't budge. The city is starting to look like a warzone. It's pathetic and there are no excuses. I'm not even entirely sure that the majority of the violence in Tottenham can be explained, certainly not excused, but there is certainly no reason for what's happening in the rest of the country.
Luckily, when the trouble started here, it began to rain fairly heavily. It helped to put the fires out, and even so we needed six fire engines - one of which was badly damaged after it was hit with a petrol bomb. I have no doubt that they would have come down this road, if the majority of it wasn't blocked off by works they've been carrying out on the water pipes for the last few months. I never thought I'd be grateful for those to be there, but I think I am. I do however hate to imagine what would've happened if they had come down this way, and set anything alight, because there is no way any fire engines could've got in (the entire road is fenced off because of the holes in the ground).
This area has seen its fair share of riots in the last couple of decades, most recently the 1995 riots (which I was luckily too young to remember), but nothing like this. It's a miracle that no one has been killed yet - looting is one thing, but arson on flats and family houses is just disgusting. A man has reportedly been shot in Croydon, but seems to be okay. I don't think that was so much the riots as likely gang violence within riots, like the fight between two rival gangs who met at the hospital on the way to pick up their injured friends, but even still... I can't see that doing any good. There were more than 100 people arrested here alone, and at the time it seemed to be the worst of the lot. Fire brigades can't get through, and the police are constantly being pushed back by idiots tossing bins and kicking down walls to get bricks for ammunition. A Croydon building which survived the Blitz has been completely burnt down and is still blazing. Some of the looters are apparently now trying to break into houses, as well.
The police simply are not doing enough. I know that their numbers are stretched rather badly, but even when the riots here occurred, when things were relatively quiet, it took almost an hour to get any police on the scene. This is doubly as bad considering that our police station is on the same road as the trouble was occurring and they made no effort to stop it at any point. A helicopter was circling all night, right through the morning, when I finally went to sleep. I woke up to see Hackney and Croydon on fire.
This is getting scary.
What happened in Tottenham the other night looked bad enough, and then there was news of it spreading to Enfield the next night. A few hours later, looting and fire-setting started on the highstreet here, right at the end of my road... in Brixton, the south of London, the complete opposite end of the city. M&S and Foot Locker were set on fire, H&M was eventually lit up after it had been emptied (there were reports of a girl trying things on inside before stealing them), McDonald's was completely smashed up. Currys was looted, and the kids took the freshly-procured iPads from there to McDonalds, where they sat and played with them. There were stories of a lone employee in McDonald's, wiping down the tables, and of men being seen walking down the road with washing machines on their backs (strong?). My own friend saw two hooded kids walking down our road, carrying a plasma TV between them.
Now, tonight, it's spread to Croydon. A bunch of hoodies were caught swinging from a TV in Ladbrokes, caught by a Sky reporter, but whoever installed the TV was great because it didn't budge. The city is starting to look like a warzone. It's pathetic and there are no excuses. I'm not even entirely sure that the majority of the violence in Tottenham can be explained, certainly not excused, but there is certainly no reason for what's happening in the rest of the country.
Luckily, when the trouble started here, it began to rain fairly heavily. It helped to put the fires out, and even so we needed six fire engines - one of which was badly damaged after it was hit with a petrol bomb. I have no doubt that they would have come down this road, if the majority of it wasn't blocked off by works they've been carrying out on the water pipes for the last few months. I never thought I'd be grateful for those to be there, but I think I am. I do however hate to imagine what would've happened if they had come down this way, and set anything alight, because there is no way any fire engines could've got in (the entire road is fenced off because of the holes in the ground).
This area has seen its fair share of riots in the last couple of decades, most recently the 1995 riots (which I was luckily too young to remember), but nothing like this. It's a miracle that no one has been killed yet - looting is one thing, but arson on flats and family houses is just disgusting. A man has reportedly been shot in Croydon, but seems to be okay. I don't think that was so much the riots as likely gang violence within riots, like the fight between two rival gangs who met at the hospital on the way to pick up their injured friends, but even still... I can't see that doing any good. There were more than 100 people arrested here alone, and at the time it seemed to be the worst of the lot. Fire brigades can't get through, and the police are constantly being pushed back by idiots tossing bins and kicking down walls to get bricks for ammunition. A Croydon building which survived the Blitz has been completely burnt down and is still blazing. Some of the looters are apparently now trying to break into houses, as well.
The police simply are not doing enough. I know that their numbers are stretched rather badly, but even when the riots here occurred, when things were relatively quiet, it took almost an hour to get any police on the scene. This is doubly as bad considering that our police station is on the same road as the trouble was occurring and they made no effort to stop it at any point. A helicopter was circling all night, right through the morning, when I finally went to sleep. I woke up to see Hackney and Croydon on fire.
This is getting scary.
