Are British Police to Blame for Extent of London Riots and Looting?

Politics / UK Politics Aug 14, 2011 - 01:08 PM GMT

Best Financial Markets Analysis Article Whilst The US was being stripped of its AAA credit rating London high streets were being stripped of their consumer goods. Many thousands of residents and business owners were all saying the same thing, "Where is the Police?"

The spark for the trouble was the shooting on Thursday 4th August of an Afro-carribean male by police in Tottenham (London) under Operation Trident which targets black on black gun crime, with the initial protest at his killing starting in Tottenham on Saturday 6th, then spreading across London on subsequent nights as rioters and looters took advantage of an apparent lack of police response, utilising social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and smartphone's such as the Blackberry to quickly organise and target rich pickings for consumer goods on high streets.

Rampaging mobs of looters after clearing high street shops of their goods then took the insane step of setting them alight, destroying many livelihoods and homes.

The rioting / looting spread further across England's inner cities with severe disturbances taking place in at least 6 cities including Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool which culminated in the killing of 3 asian males (hit and run) in a group of 80 in Birmingham that had sought to protect their homes and business against looters due to the lack of police response. The killings had risked the start of race riots which were prevented by the victims parent's dignified calls for calm.

However unlike the early 1980's, Britain has become the CCTV capital of the world with more cameras than even totalitarian states which ensures that the vast majority of the rioters, looters and arsonists would be be tracked down and brought to justice, which is small comfort to those that are losing everything during each nights rampage.

Whilst many in the media have focused on the social causes such as economic austerity cuts, social exclusion, lack of jobs for possible reasons why. The truth is that the real reason for 90% of the looting masquerading as rioting was because the Police let it happen.

Britain's extensive 5 million strong CCTV camera's mean that for several years the police has had an apparent policy in action of letting civil disorder / crime take place. Why ? Because then the police are better able to convict with the aid of cctv and other video footage than had they attempted to intervene at the time resulting in lesser charges and fewer convictions. In fact elements of the police have been actively engaged in inciting crime and demonstrations to take place so that evidence can be generated enabling convictions to take place as I wrote last February.

The recent highly public case of under cover police infiltration and incitement operations on climate change activists is further evidence of a defacto police state in action where under cover police officers are inciting protesting groups to break the law. How many more hundreds of under cover police operatives are out there who's primary purpose is to incite a group or protesting crowd into a course of action that they would not have otherwise undertaken so that the police can generate evidence for prosecution.

The Police, by standing back and letting riots take place for several days with little action other than filming the perpetrators is just a continuation of this policy of letting rioting / looting fools generate evidence against themselves.

Unfortunately the lack of police response sent the green light to many more people than the usual suspects as students and those in low paid work that were bitten by the looting bug and fell into the police evidence generating trap and in the process have now likely wrecked their futures as the Police have already arrested near 3000 rioters / looters based on video footage evidence as homes are raided for evidence and suspects arrested.

Off course those that broke the law are nothing more than common criminals that deserve everything that is thrown at them as they are brought to justice, but the Police did take several steps back and allow the Riots / Looting / Arson to take place for several days which resulted in far more crime than would have occurred had the police acted following the initial disturbances in Tottenham and failure to respond to subsequent disturbances. One could speculate that this could have been part of a collective message from the Police to the government as to what it can expect to happen more often if the planned Police cuts are implemented.

Another point to consider is that the frenzy of looting activity was probably further fuelled by the mainstream broadcast press as it pumped out blanket 24 hour coverage of looting across London's high streets without any police presence for hours at end.

Source and Comments: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article29883.html

By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of three ebook's - The Inflation Mega-Trend; The Interest Rate Mega-Trend and The Stocks Stealth Bull Market Update 2011 that can be downloaded for Free.

Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 600 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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Comments

Paul 14 Aug 11, 23:44	standard operating rules Its like when provocateurs are seeded into demonstrations against globalist meetings. A certain amount of footage of lawlessness is needed for the TV News to make the less aware start clamoring for more laws/police/military on the streets/death sentences etc etc. The tragedy is that the people who should be rioting are the ones who never would, and the ones who are will always look/talk/dress/act like scumbags thus undermining any social message that might vaguely occur to the TV-addicted sheeple.
LM 15 Aug 11, 12:48	Sack every Police chief concerned. I can only agree with Mr Walayat here. The Police wanted this to happen. In addition to their 'sit back, and watch the offenders incriminate themselves' approach the Police (throughout the ranks) resent the planned cuts on their numbers and recent prosecutions and criticisms relating to their public order control methods (e.g. the killing of Ian Tomlinson). A good dose of unmitigated disorder was just the ticket. The fact that 3 days later the streets across Britain were flooded with officers is testament to the fact they had the resources to put down the disturbances if they so desired. The head of every Police force concerned should be summarily dismissed. Would this not be the usual expectation when an orgainiastion fails spectaculary to do perform its role?
Paul_B 15 Aug 11, 15:36	British Police responsible for riots LM (above)beat me to it. I had reached the exact same conclusion, too. Senior coppers ordered their officers to stand down as a lesson to the politicians that the proposed cuts would result in this kind of violent disorder. And all the time there were innocent people trapped in burning buildings because the police wouldn't clear a path through for the fire services. Talk about playing politics with people's lives. "Working for a safer London" - what a sick joke.
BONGO 22 Aug 11, 01:43	police Yeah the police are the bad guys, cant do anything right - tell that to all the scared shitless residents who watched their homes and communities go up in smoke.

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