London Riots 2011
Kerrie Neal
James Grubb
History 111
May 3rd 2013
The BlackBerry Riots In the summer of 2011, the city of London, England was disheveled. With what started as a simple police brutality protest soon turned the city upside down with riots clustering in almost every borough. Parliament abruptly returned from their summer holidays to quickly address the chaos dismantling their city’s wellbeing. Just under 2,000 riot related arrests were made by the Metropolitan police and just under 4,000 throughout the entire country by the end of September. 73% of those arrests were charged with burglary and public order offences. Although the riots resulted in advanced criminal tracking and identification, the rioters used social media resources to commit organized burglary, arson, and other various crimes to cause enormous damage to the city. The Tottenham borough of London, England holds the highest unemployment rate of the city and rivals for the top spot in the entire country. Riots central to Tottenham are not a rare occurrence. High rates of minority controlled gang activity and gun violence have been reported through the past decades. On August 4th, 2011, the 29 year old male, Mark Duggan, was shot and killed by police officers. The lack of CCTV coverage of the area where Duggan was shot proved to be a point of confusion by witnesses in court. A definitive account of the exact series of events that occurred that night was never confirmed. Multiple eyewitnesses reported different actions of the police and Duggan, but all of the accounts pointed to Duggan’s possession of a handgun and his unaggressive actions towards authority with it.
Tottenham is a largely ethnically diverse city, with 45% being of an ethnic minority. Mark Duggan was African American and Tottenham had been battling racial aggression between the police and the public since the summer of 1985 when the Broadwater Farm riots occurred. The 1985 riots were largely police brutality and race based, much like
James Grubb
History 111
May 3rd 2013
The BlackBerry Riots In the summer of 2011, the city of London, England was disheveled. With what started as a simple police brutality protest soon turned the city upside down with riots clustering in almost every borough. Parliament abruptly returned from their summer holidays to quickly address the chaos dismantling their city’s wellbeing. Just under 2,000 riot related arrests were made by the Metropolitan police and just under 4,000 throughout the entire country by the end of September. 73% of those arrests were charged with burglary and public order offences. Although the riots resulted in advanced criminal tracking and identification, the rioters used social media resources to commit organized burglary, arson, and other various crimes to cause enormous damage to the city. The Tottenham borough of London, England holds the highest unemployment rate of the city and rivals for the top spot in the entire country. Riots central to Tottenham are not a rare occurrence. High rates of minority controlled gang activity and gun violence have been reported through the past decades. On August 4th, 2011, the 29 year old male, Mark Duggan, was shot and killed by police officers. The lack of CCTV coverage of the area where Duggan was shot proved to be a point of confusion by witnesses in court. A definitive account of the exact series of events that occurred that night was never confirmed. Multiple eyewitnesses reported different actions of the police and Duggan, but all of the accounts pointed to Duggan’s possession of a handgun and his unaggressive actions towards authority with it.
Tottenham is a largely ethnically diverse city, with 45% being of an ethnic minority. Mark Duggan was African American and Tottenham had been battling racial aggression between the police and the public since the summer of 1985 when the Broadwater Farm riots occurred. The 1985 riots were largely police brutality and race based, much like