Guyanese heritage politician condemns London riot

LONDON, CMC – As rioting and looting in Tottenham spilled over into other Caribbean communities and into a second night Sunday, the Guyanese-heritage politician who represents the impoverished North London riding, has rapped “mindless people” for the disturbances that have “ripped the heart” out of the community but joined a growing chorus of calls for answers to the incident that sparked the troubles.



“What happened here on Thursday night raised huge questions and we need answers,” said David Lammy, who represents the Tottenham area of North London in Parliament. The Labour Party politician’s parents are Guyanese.



“The response to that is not to loot and rob. There are homeless people standing back there. We have officers in hospital, some of whom are seriously injured. It's a disgrace. This must stop.”



The riots which began in Tottenham, spread late Sunday to nearby Walthamstow, Enfield in North London and then went south to Brixton, home of the largest settlement of Caribbean immigrants and their descendants.



The troubles were sparked Saturday after 29 year-old Mark Duggan was shot dead by two policemen of the specialist firearms unit near the busy Tottenham Hale railway station on Thursday.



He was shot during a police operation to stamp out gun crime in the black community.



At the time, Duggan was a passenger in a mini-cab. It is reported that three bullets were fired – two hit Mr Duggan and the third lodged in an officer’s radio.



The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the shooting but an angry community demanding immediate answers massed at the Tottenham Police station on Saturday.



The dead man’s relatives and friends said a small peaceful protest arrived at the station on Saturday evening, but no one was apparently was available to give them answers to their questions.



It is understood that Duggan’s partner, Semone Wilson, with whom he has three children, and other family members were not allowed to see his body until 36 hours later.



The riot has caught the Metropolitan Police in the midst of its own little local difficulties. Last month, Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and another top officer resigned in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal involving politicians, police and the press.



While no successor has yet been named, the killing and the disturbances have all happened while the Haringey borough police commander, Detective Chief Superintendent Sandra Looby, who has responsibility for Tottenham, is on leave.



Acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner Tim Godwin, his deputy Bernard Hogan-Howe and the Assistant Commissioner in charge of Public Order Lynne Owens called an urgent top-level meeting Sunday morning amid concerns that the violence would overflow into several open-air celebrations, including those marking Jamaica’s 49th anniversary of independence.



Some incidents were reported from as far apart as Enfield in North London to Brixton in South London, but the extent of the violence of the previous evening was not repeated.



Tottenham still bears the scars of the serious communal riots of October 1985 which were triggered by the death on Cynthia Jarrett while the police were searching her home.



PC Keith Blakelock was killed in the ensuing violence in the neighbouring Broadwater Farm housing estate.



Relations between the police and the community have not been helped when the three men sentenced initially for Jarrett’s murder were released on appeal after it had been found that the relevant police notes had been tampered with.



Duggan’s brother Shaun Hall appeared to distance his family from the rioting but suggested a chain of events sparked the troubles that have already led to more than one hundred arrests and left several police officers injured.



"We're not condoning any kind of actions like that at all,” he told the Sky News cable channel. “It seems to be the press who are generally saying that it is linked to my brother… Some questions were supposed to have been answered, they weren't answered, therefore there was a domino effect from that; we don't condone that at all.”



He continued: “I know people are frustrated, they're angry out there at the moment, but I would say please try and hold it down. Please don't make this about my brother's life, he was a good man.... We're all devastated about the mishap, we don't actually know what has actually happened.”



Hall said the family did not want Duggan portrayed as a gangster, and showed the television channel pictures of his brother to back up claims that he was a family man.



He dismissed as "utter rubbish" allegations that Duggan had shot at police.



“My brother's not that sort of person. He's not stupid to shoot at the police - that's ridiculous," he told Sky News.



The former chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority Lord Toby Harris called for the speedy release of any facts emerging from the shooting, even if they may at first appear to inflame the situation.



"Either way it can calm things down. The biggest concern is the allegation of a cover-up. If it is found the weapon [belonging to Duggan] was fired, or if the opposite is the case, it gives confidence that someone is taking it seriously and investigating, and would calm things down,” he said.