Tottenham Riot.

The events in Tottenham, London last night (6/8/11 -7/8/11) were a large scale riot. The footage I saw when I got home around midnight was from the small area of Tottenham High Road that the police had re-gained control of allowing journalists to operate.

Events really began on Thursday (4/8/11) evening when police shot and killed a 29 year old black man on Tottenham High Road. In the official version of events the police controversially described the dead man, Mark Duggan as a "gangster" and said he opened fire on an armed police unit as they stopped a taxi he was travelling in. The police officers then returned fire killing Mr Duggan. Obviously the various accounts of the incident that are circulating amongst the local community are very different from the police's version of events. This latest incident comes on the back of an increasing number of young black men who have died whilst in contact with the police. These include the highly suspicious incident in Birmingham in May when Demetre Fraser apparently committed suicide by jumping from the balcony of an apartment block whilst two police officers were in his apartment and a man was heard shouting "They're trying to kill me!" The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) saw no reason to investigate further.

Then on Friday (5/8/11) one of the men jailed for causing or allowing the death of Baby P in the London Borough Haringey was released from prison early amid widespread publicity. Tottenham is in the London Borough of Haringey and both the local police and the local council are seen as complicit in both the Baby P murder and allowing Jason Owens - a hardcore racist - to get away with it.

On Saturday (6/8/11) a so far unidentified and previously unheard of group held a "We Want Answers" demonstration outside Tottenham police station at around 17:00 calling for an explanation of the Duggan shooting. The police responded to this demonstration by more or less ignoring it. No-one came to speak to the crowd and the police pretty much just hid inside the station behind locked doors and closed windows. As the demonstration was breaking up around 19:00 there were a series of pre-planned petrol bomb attacks against two police cars and some shops. When the emergency services (Fire/Ambulance) turned up to deal with these incidents they came under attack from a crowd armed with bricks, fireworks and more petrol bombs. This forced the police to send in teams of officers in full riot gear (long shields etc) to protect the emergency crews. This led to the situation developing into a full scale riot with 49 fires started, shops looted, over 40 people arrested, 26 police officers injured (2 seriously) and they're still searching the burnt out buildings to see if there are dead bodies that need to be recovered.

So the area of London which saw the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots in which PC Keith Blakelock was killed and is also home to a large Jewish community saw massive rioting on the very same day I was uncontactable because I was off doing something controversial that could have ended in disaster. Personally that sounds very suspicious to me. I bet the drugs market in Tottenham shares and importer with the drugs market in Croydon.