CWL

appropriatedisorder:

Generally all the poorest parts of London…

onenesswiththecosmos:

cwnl:

onenesswiththecosmos:

I see a few people justifying the actions of the rioters by appealing to police brutality over the years, and I am not denying the corruption for a moment, but what I am saying is these riots (for the most part) are NOT about challenging the status quo for the better or bringing a change to the…

I’m noticing a trend here, almost everyone seems a lot more concerned over the businesses and damage done to property rather than the gruesome damage done prior to these riots. I mean people actually brutally killed at the hands of police officers and attempting peaceful protesting only to be silenced would reasonably make a group be that angry. Not saying the actions are right, but I am saying the actions should have been expected and avoided in the first place. Now the blame will go to the looters and petty thieves rather than the men involved in bring the economy and community to those measures.

Of course the lives that have been taken unjustly are far more important, but what I was getting at is the only thing these riots have achieved is further damage instead of justice for Mark Duggan and those like him who were killed by the police for evidently no reason. 

To demand change and then cause further damage isn’t progress. I agree with you in that, these horrible acts committed by the police should have been avoided in the first place, but the way they are being dealt with is wrong and the priorities of these rioters, at large, to not lie in bringing justice to the system. This is very evidently an excuse to act unlawfully. 

Put yourself in their shoes, they did demand change. They demanded it peacefully and nothing happened. They were either ignored or forced to comply to their agenda or else. What would you have them do? This situation was forced because of the inaction of the Met and now the rest of the citizens are paying for it. People really need to focus on where the problem really lies so that it doesn’t happen again or least quickly stops. Had they heard the outcries and suggestions this would have never happened. And again I get what you mean with the destruction, but sometimes when you need attention you need to hit them where it hurts, and for them, they’re funded by business and so they hurt businesses instead. Look at the total amount of damages to people done in these riots now compared to the damages done to property and you will see a trend here. That is has nothing to do with harming their own people but rather shaking up the establishment. Me noting this in no way means I favor it, I’m just saying I carry a level of understanding with what is going on there because it’s almost the same here in New York, with the unlawful practices the NYPD uses and how none of the thousands of minorities that get locked up every week from racial profiling are ever heard. As if ignoring the problem ever helped, the Met ignored the problems, and this is what they got. They had their chance at a peaceful confrontation.

As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here’s a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent? “Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”

The TV reporter from Britain’s ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. “Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

The riots that began in Tottenham and have spread across London over the past few nights are a predictable consequence of the breakdown in trust between large and growing numbers of alienated youth and the Metropolitan Police over recent years. A culture of corruption at the top has long been tolerated within the Met, which has infected the entire force with a gung-ho attitude and mindset when it comes to policing on the ground.  This has reached the stage where nothing less than a root and branch structural reform will suffice if public confidence is to be restored. 

In recent years we’ve witnessed the police execution of Jean Charles De Menezes at Stockwell tube station and the officers responsible being exonorated.  Worse, in what was a low point for then mayor, Ken Livingstone, the existing Met commissioner, Ian Blair, kept his job while the commanding officer of the operation, Cressida Dick, not only kept her job but was later promoted. 

The confrontational approach to policing the 2009 G20 protests, involving the kettling of large numbers of protestors for hours on end, and where Ian Tomlinson was killed as a direct result of an incident of police brutality as he attempted to make his way home, has since been joined by recent revelations surrounding the corrupt relationship that existed for years between Met officers and the Murdoch press, involving ranking detectives and officers accepting bribes for confidential information regarding ongoing criminal investigations.

Along with the myriad daily incidents of police brutality and corruption experienced by those living in low income communities around London, the shooting dead of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on Thursday in what is daily emerging were dubious circumstances, has resulted in an inevitable explosion of anger and violence. 

For people to have confidence in the police the police must be accountable to the communities in which they operate. As things stand the Met are unaccountable and have been for far too long. In fact increasingly the Met has appeared more akin to an organised militia intent on enforcing its writ via confrontation rather than consensus and cooperation with the public it is meant to be policing and protecting, especially young people living in low income and working class communities. 

The ongoing economic crisis and the increased level of social and economic injustice it has presaged as a direct result of the government’s response is another factor in these events that cannot be ignored. The blatant and callous disregard for the human cost of the swingeing cuts to the welfare system is made worse by the lack of pain being endured by those responsible for the recession, the banks and the rich. 

Law and order without justice is impossible to maintain for long in any society, and the outburst of rioting and anger London is currently witnessing will have come as no surprise to anyone living in the communities concerned. 

Time and again events prove that where there is no justice there can be no peace.

onenesswiththecosmos:

“Two police cars, a double-decker bus and a shop were set alight in north London on Saturday night during riots sparked by the fatal shooting of a man by officers last week.”