LONDON — Thousands of extra police officers were stationed on Britain’s streets Friday, as the country faced its first weekend since riots raged through suburbs and town centres, leaving a scarred landscape of broken glass and torched buildings.
Police in London, which saw the worst violence, have charged almost 700 people with violence, disorder and looting, and the city’s mayor said Londoners wanted to see tough sentences handed out to the guilty. Hundreds of stores were looted, buildings were set ablaze and five people died amid the mayhem that broke out Saturday in London and spread over four nights across England.
Police, meanwhile, hit back against claims they were too soft in their initial response to the disorder.
Prime Minister David Cameron said officers had been overwhelmed at first, outmanoeuvred by mobile gangs of rioters. He said “far too few police were deployed onto the streets. And the tactics they were using weren’t working.”
That changed Tuesday, when 16,000 officers were out on London’s streets — almost three times the number of the night before. Cameron said the extra officers will remain on patrol through the weekend.
Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, acknowledged that police had faced “an unprecedented situation, unique circumstances” — but said it was police themselves, rather than “political interference,” that got the situation under control.
“The more robust policing tactics you saw were not a function of political interference,” he told the BBC. “They were a function of the numbers being available to allow the chief constables to change their tactics.”
Cameron vowed “swift justice” for perpetrators, and courts were struggling to cope with a flood of defendants.
Across the country, more than 1,700 people have been arrested. Courts in London, Birmingham and Manchester have stayed open around the clock since Wednesday to deal with hundreds of alleged offenders.
The alleged looters and vandals included an 11-year-old boy, a teenage ballerina, a university English student from a prosperous commuter town, and Natasha Reid, a 24-year-old university graduate who admitted stealing a TV from a looted electronics store. Her lawyer said she had turned herself in because she could not sleep for guilt. A judge told her she would probably go to jail when she is sentenced later.