Wednesday - August 10, 2011

a reporter wonders if, “they will be coming for us tonight”

Some first hand accounts of encounters with sub species running riot ...........

I have nothing to add that would shed light or be interesting.

CALL THE POLICE, THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD THUGS SNEERED. THEY WONT COME

Nicole Mowbray
Daily Mail

THERE was no sign that Monday night’s trouble would affect me as I hopped on my bicycle to make the six-mile journey home from work.
I’d been monitoring the news – violent clashes in Hackney and widespread looting in Peckham and Lewisham – but seen nothing to worry me about the ride to Brixton, South-West London.

There had been problems locally on Sunday night, however, and Brixton Underground station and high street remained closed throughout the next day. Cycling home would be easiest, I thought – and besides, at 7.4 pm, it was still light.

My journey is pretty, taking me through Battersea Park and up into Clapham. Turning off the busy Queenstown Road on to Silverthorne Road, my attention was drawn to a boy – around seven or eight years old – standing in the street at the entrance to the Robertson housing estate.

To my shock, as I slowed down, he threw a rock at me. It hit my handlebars with a loud clang.  Furious and disbelieving, I dismounted to give the little hoodie a telling-off. But then he bent down, picked up another rock – about the size of his palm – from a pothole and, with surprising force, threw it at my bike. It hit my arm. About eight of his friends, all under the age of 12 and dressed in tracksuits, arrived from nowhere, throwing stones and bottles of water that smashed over the road in front of me, soaking me and my bike.

The barrage was over in seconds, but as I started rummaging in my bag for my phone, they shouted ‘ call the police you f ****** stupid b****, they’re not going to do anything’, before casually sauntering off.

Angry and a bit shaken, I walked a few metres to the street corner, where I was greeted by groups of teenagers – and some 20-something women holding children by the hand – heading in the direction of Lavender Hill.

They were excitedly screeching about ‘going on the rob’ – one was even giving her friend a list of items to loot.
At this stage, I knew nothing of the trouble at Clapham Junction – but these people were larking about like they were off to a funfair, not a riot.
The sense of anarchy was palpable, and although I didn’t ring the police, I fear those eight-year-olds would have been right.

“feral rats” as young as 13

A baby clothes’ shop owner whose Ealing business was looted spoke of her anger at the “feral rats” as young as 13 who joined in the riots.

Liz Pilgrim, 43, who runs Babye, a boutique in Ealing, west London, near Ealing Studios, said she went to the store when she heard it was being attacked by youths.

She found it on fire, with her stock strewn across the streets, railings and even hanging on nearby trees on the green opposite.
Mrs Pilgrim, a mother of two who opened the shop seven years ago, said it was just “mindless violence” and had left her heartbroken.
“I am just absolutely devastated,” she said. “I just didn’t think that you could have something like that happen here.
“I think that we have a generation of youths disengaged from society, disenfranchised who just don’t care.

“They think this is fun, they don’t get the bigger picture. It is mindless, wanton violence.”

She said she had witnessed rioters as young as 13 tearing through Ealing. “I saw youths going back to cars last night after the riot.

“They were like feral rats. I saw a bus stolen and the passengers hijacked in it. If this doesn’t stop there is going to be a fatality,” she added.
“The number of young people I saw…, the parents must be to blame.

“Why were they out at that time of night? Where has respect gone? Where have values gone?”

She said she could not understand why someone would attack a baby shop and called for a tougher approach by police.
“It’s a mindless mob mentality,” she said. “We don’t want this namby pamby, messing around approach.

“I feel sick. I feel in shock. It is just so upsetting. It is mindless – a community turning on itself. Who would have thought there would be mob rule in Ealing?”
Mrs Pilgrim also called on David Cameron to “get a grip” and send in the Army to deal with the violence.

“My message to the Government, to David Cameron, whom I hope to meet, is to get a grip and if we can’t cope with the use of police officers that are on the street having to deal with this violence, then for Heaven’s sake get the Army involved or somebody who can deal with these young people. It seems so commonsensical to me.”

Tragedy of man beaten by rioters left fighting for life… but no one knows who he is as thugs stole his wallet and phone

By TOM KELLY and REBECCA CAMBER

A man left in a life-threatening condition after bravely remonstrating with rioters has not been identified - because the thugs who attacked him fled with his wallet and phone.  hopelessly outnumbered, a single police officer watched as the lone man,

said to be white and aged in his mid-40s to 50s, was set upon by a large mob of armed black teenagers after he confronted them for setting two industrial bins alight.
His relatives still don’t know that he was attacked by the pack of rioters - because police haven’t been able to work out who he is so they can break the bad news.

daily mail for more

‘Bleeding, I called 999. A tired man told me to go home’

Andrew Gilligan reports on his own experiences of the lawlessness that swept across much of London and elsewhere.

It was one of those microseconds when you know exactly what is about to happen, without the slightest chance of stopping it.
The big black boy rode his bike straight at me, crashing me off my own and leaving us both tangled up on the ground. Then four more of them were racing towards me, clawing at my legs to get them off my bike, kicking me in the head as I tried to hold on. Two minutes later, it was all over. Ten minutes later, no doubt, it was being used to loot a newsagent’s.

Bleeding a little, I thought I might as well call 999. It was a recorded message. After four and a half minutes, a tired man answered. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “You know what’s going on. We have to give priority to saving people’s lives. I suggest you just go home.”

He was right, of course. I was in Hackney - which, that evening at least, was a law-free zone. That’s the worst thing about riots. Across much of London on Monday night, if someone had decided to break down your door and rape your daughter, there would have been nothing to stop them. There would have been no one to call.
When I was mugged, I was on my way home from a day in Tottenham, listening to the stories of the people who had lost far more and been at far greater risk than me, burned out of their homes at 30 seconds’ notice.

They called 999 too, frantically, desperately, as the riot moved closer. There were 100 police just up the road. The emergency operator could do nothing but listen to their terror.

I finished my journey in a cab. Three or four times, we had to stop and skirt round hooded boys spilling into the road, our windows closed and the door lock on. If they had fancied my taxi, there would have been nothing I or the driver could have done about that, either.

Even on Monday, the victims of Tottenham, black and white, were already tired of outsiders blaming racism, police brutality, or cuts. (What were they rioting about in prosperous, suburban Enfield – rising season-ticket prices?) The real reason for the rioters’ behaviour is much simpler: because they can.

Forget BlackBerry Messenger. After seeing — on television — how much leeway the looters of Tottenham were allowed, every criminal and every excitement-seeking child in London took note.

By the next day, critical mass had been achieved. Disorder had erupted on a scale much more difficult to suppress than the original outbreak.
There are, and always have been, plenty of people keen to break the law. On my taxi ride, I saw many other youngsters in twos and threes, hoods up, looking for the next crowd to join.

These are sights, with variations, that I have seen in foreign conflict zones: the loss of state authority and the loss of individual inhibition from being in a big group. But in London, the geography of fear is particularly potent.

Unlike Los Angeles or Paris, the riots are not happening in ghettos where nobody goes. They are happening amid the organic gastropubs and latte bars. Alongside poverty, inner London is full of the sort of middle-class progressives who agree with Ken Livingstone that the rioters “feel no one at the top of society, in government or City Hall, cares about them or speaks for them”.

I predict a lot of those people, as they cower behind their sash windows, are revising their views tonight. The hardening of liberal opinion in London is palpable, and is taking even the likes of Boris Johnson by surprise.

In my neighbourhood, Greenwich, they boarded up the shops at noon. God knows how much damage this is doing to the economy. It’s a beautiful, sunny evening. But our area is empty, like so much of inner London, as we wait in our homes with the TVs on to discover if;

THEY WILL BE COMING FOR US TONIGHT.

gilligan/telegraph

Posted by peiper     on 08/10/2011 at 01:26 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • CULTURE IN DECLINE • UK •  
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