The Police are Starting to Lose This.

The rioting in London has now entered it's third day.

At around 15:30 today (8/8/11) police stopped and searched a young man in Hackney (the Olympic Borough.) When the police failed to find anything illegal about the man they came under attack from an angry crowd armed with fists, bricks, bottles and sticks which forced the police to abandon their patrol cars. Eventually police reinforcements arrived and the situation developed into a full blown riot with burning barricades being erected, buses and trucks being hijacked and shops being smashed and looted. This riot is still ongoing now (20:15) and appears to be escalating. To give you an idea of the anger involved I earlier saw footage of a masked man walk up to a line of a dozen police officers in full riot gear and just punch one of them full in the face. That is not something you see everyday.

As word of the riot in Hackney spread another large scale disturbance started in Lewisham with crowds fighting the police and each other, setting fire to cars and looting. At around the same time (17:00) another major disturbance started in Peckham with a bus being hijacked and set on fire, fights breaking out all over the place and a parade of shops being set on fire. As with the situation in Hackney the disturbances in Lewisham and Peckham are still ongoing.

The situation has got so serious that both the Mayor of London and the UK Home Secretary have been forced to return from their holidays early. Even though they've combined their efforts the Metropolitan Police, the City of Westminster Police and the British Transport Police are now so overstretched that they been forced to call in reinforcements for 12 other police forces including some as far away as Newcastle. At the risk of sounding dramatic I seriously think that if this continues we're about two days away from the army having to be deployed but yet our Prime Minister is still on holiday.