Tottenham riots: 26 police officers injured also 42 people arrested

Tottenham riots: 26 police officers injured also 42 people arrested - tottenham riots, tottenham riot 2011, tottenham riots 2011, mark duggan tottenham, mark duggan shot 

Two police cars, a bus and several shops were attacked and set on fire as looting spread to a retail park near Tottenham Hale tube station, where shop windows were smashed and goods plundered from stores.

Teenagers and adults were said to have turned up in cars and filled them with stolen items, unimpeded by police. Others arrived on foot and piled shopping trolleys with looted televisions and other electronic goods.

Police said 26 officers were injured, with two remaining in hospital on Sunday morning. Three members of the public were injured, with two still in hospital. Forty-two people were arrested for offences including violent disorder, burglary and theft.

Politicians united in their condemnation of the rioting. A Downing Street spokesman described the events as "utterly unacceptable".

Further down, the 1930s building once occupied by Carpetright was also gutted, its walls bowed and threatening to collapse.

There were once flats above there too. A watching woman, arms crossed, seemed close to tears. "They don't know if everyone got out."

On the evidence of what I have described it would be easy to say this is a bad place full of bad people. But it is not.

It is a poor place. Unemployment in some of the estates around where I live is among the highest in London.

Some of the housing is desperately run down, occupied – often for a short time – by the capital's poorest. It has few amenities for young people, which have become even fewer since the threat to close down 75% of the borough's youth clubs because of the government's austerity measures.

There is crime, which goes with all of the above.

It is a good place, a vibrant mixed community within earshot of Spurs' White Heart Lane stadium, which had been going through a slow regeneration.

"There is no justification for the aggression the police and the public faced, or for the damage to property," the spokesman said. "There is now a police investigation into the rioting, and we should let that process happen."

By midnight, police had managed to secure a 200-metre stretch of Tottenham High Road, the scene of some of the worst rioting on Saturday night.

But as fire engines entered the street and began putting out blazing cars and buildings, the rioters spread north and west through back streets.

To the north, at Tottenham Hale, an Aldi supermarket was ransacked and set on fire. A nearby carpet shop was also set alight, causing a huge blaze.

Nearby, large groups of youths congregated in the surrounding streets, armed with sticks, bottles and hammers.

Some wore balaclavas and prevented cars from accessing streets as buildings were broken into. Others used large rubbish bins to create burning barricades across the road.

However, some of the most dramatic looting took place further west, in Wood Green, and continued into the early hours of the morning.

Earlier, officers on horseback and others in riot gear clashed with hundreds of rioters armed with makeshift missiles in the centre of Tottenham following the protest into the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four, who was shot on Thursday.

There was still no police presence in Wood Green High Road at 4am, even after dozens of stores had been smashed and raided, setting off multiple alarms.

Around 100 youths targeted game shops, electrical stores and clothing chains such as H&M.

Windows were smashed and the looters – mostly young men masking their faces – swarmed in and emerged with handfuls of stolen goods. "I've got loads of G-Star," said one teenager, coming out of a clothes shop.

Three teenagers ran down the street with suitcases filled with stolen clothes. Around 10 young men stood outside a smouldering Carphone Warehouse, the windows smashed. In suburban back streets, residential front-gardens were used to sort and swap stolen goods.

A teenage boy, who looked around 14, drove a stolen minicab erratically down a side street. On an adjacent street, a man who emerged from his home to find his car burnt out remonstrated with other young men, who ran past carrying clothes.

Passers-by, including people returning home in the early hours from nights out, were stunned to discover the lawless mayhem on the streets.

With no sign of any police, buses refused to take passengers through Wood Green High Road, and traffic was brought to a standstill.

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