Police reluctance to extinguish burning squad car sparked 2011 riots, report finds
OFFICERS might have strangled the 2011 riots in their infancy if they had taken action to extinguish a burning police car, according to research.
A reluctance to engage to win this and other early symbolic battles created an image of “police defeat”, empowering rioters to escalate the violence, the analysis has found.
The research by Sussex University, based on interviews with perpetrators, concluded that joining together against a common enemy – the police – fostered a sense of “community” among criminal gangs more used to fighting each other, helping fuel the mayhem which involved arson, mass looting and the death of five people.
The unrest that exploded between Aug 6 and 11 2011 was sparked by the death of Mark Duggan, a suspected gang member who was shot by police in Tottenham, and the perceived heavy-handed police treatment of a female protester. The study found the failure to step in when a police car was set alight early in the unrest may have “emboldened” those looking for trouble. “People gathered confidence from apparent police defeat,” said Dr John Drury, the social psychologist who led the research.
“Seeing a burning police car and no police responding gave people the idea that the police were weak. That in turn allowed them to move on to a number of different targets.”
He acknowledged, however, that the design of his study made it impossible to rule out a worse reaction had the police responded strongly. Disorder quickly spread to neighbouring London districts and violence erupted in other towns and cities including Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester and Bristol. Approximately £200million of damage was caused, and police made more than 3,000 arrests.
“The police didn’t always engage, which created the impression the police were incapable of engaging,” said Dr Drury. “It turns out they misjudged that because it emboldened people more than they calculated.”
The psychologists studied Youtube videos and Google Street View images, looked at police reports and arrest records, and interviews with rioters. They found that members of so-called “postcode” gangs actually felt safer during the riots than they did normally, because gang enmity was temporarily suspended.
The research found that most of the rioters were united by pre-existing grievances against the police over tactics such as stop and search.
As Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, subsequently acknowledged stop and search disproportionately affected black and minority ethnic people.
“There was actually a new identity, a new collective sense of self amongst the rioters,” said Dr Drury. “That matters because if people are united for the first time then it’s a basis for a sense of empowerment.”