London Riots

The riots in London last summer were as a result of the shooting of a 29 years old man named Mark Duggan by officers of the Metropolitan Police in Tottenham.It became evident as the riots went on for days and spread to other cities like Birmingham,Manchester and Liverpool that the riots had gone beyond the killing of Mark Duggan.Many people joined the protest to protest against other issues in the society,looters both young and old,male and female saw a chance to break into stores and cart away valuable goods that they could not afford hitherto the riot.
 
According to Lewis et al.(2011) a research by The Guardian in collaboration with the London School of Economics into the cause of the riots showed that some of the reasons for the riots were:

• People saw it as an opportunity to vent their anger and frustration towards the police.
• Most of the people that participated in the riots were young and unemployed people who saw it as an opportunity to loot.
• The poor handling of the shooting by the Metropolitan Police also angered people to join the riots.
• People saw the riots as an avenue to vent their anger towards government and some of it's policies.

Personally I feel that most of the reasons above are purely personal.People saw this as an opportunity to protest against the government.Some of the rioters might have had experiences with the police that is why they were eager to partake in the protests that led to the riots.If the police can look into its relationship with the citizenry and also check indiscriminate use of firearms future occurrences such as this can be avoided.

REFERENCE:
Lewis,P.,Newburn,T.,Taylor,M. and Ball,J.(2011),'Reading the riots:Rioters say anger with police fuelled summer unrest',The Guardian, 4 December [Online]. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/05/anger-police-fuelled-riots-study (Accessed:09 March 2012).