With 10,000 additional police officers deployed across London on Tuesday night, looting and arson dipped sharply from the anarchic scenes that shook Britain over the previous three days, even as violence ticked up again in several other major cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
Hopes that the worst unrest in Britain in a generation had crested and begun to fall continued to weigh uneasily against fears that more robust police action might fail to put more than a temporary curb on the disorder. Sudden flare-ups continued in parts of London, with minor attacks reaching even into the upscale Knightsbridge shopping district, a major tourist draw.
With a decision not to call in the army, a step the government considered and dismissed on Tuesday, the police force appeared to be stretched near its limit by what amounted to a risky shell game, with forces outside London sending their crack antiriot units into the capital as reinforcements. One redeployed unit traveled from Manchester only hours before scores of youths stormed into that city’s center, setting fire to cars and buildings and looting shops in what local officials described as the worst mayhem to hit the city in modern memory.
The situation posed a daunting challenge for Prime Minister David Cameron, who returned overnight on Monday from a vacation in Italy to take charge of what appeared to have been a faltering government reaction to the mayhem. He flew into a storm of criticism, from residents of the neighborhoods hit by the rioting and from others across a wide political spectrum who said that he should have acted sooner to crack down on the unrest.
Mr. Cameron had hesitated for two days to abandon his break at a villa in Tuscany as the looting and arson spread across London, and then to other cities, from its start in the Tottenham area in northeast London after Mark Duggan, 29, who was said by the police to have been a local gang member, was shot and killed by an officer last week.
On Tuesday, a police oversight body said that forensic tests had shown that both shots fired at the scene had come from a police officer’s Heckler and Koch submachine gun, and that the tests had so far shown no evidence that the loaded Italian-made BBM pistol carried by Mr. Duggan had been fired in the confrontation.
That account, by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, conflicted with the initial police account, which asserted that the police firearms unit had opened fire only after shots had been fired at the officers. But the commission’s spokeswoman, Rachel Cerfontyne, whose cautious statement appeared to reflect the commission’s concern that it say nothing to inflame the violence, said reports circulating in Tottenham and elsewhere that Mr. Duggan had been “executed” with shots to the head were false. He died, she said, from “a single gunshot wound to the chest,” and another to his arm.
For the moment, though, the circumstances of Mr. Duggan’s death appeared to be remote from the forces driving the riots, at least in the assessment of many of those who are most familiar with the neighborhoods affected. Community organizers, neighborhood residents and members of Parliament who represent the districts, including several who, like Mr. Duggan, were of Afro-Caribbean descent, have said, overwhelmingly, that his death, while providing the original trigger for the violence, has had little or nothing to do with the looting and arson.
Among those who have spoken out is Diane Abbott, a left-wing member of Parliament from the Labour Party who represents Hackney, one of the London neighborhoods worst hit by the rioting. Writing in Monday’s issue of The Independent, Ms. Abbott said the pattern of the current disorder was similar to that of the last major racial rioting in London, which occurred in 1986. Now, as then, she said, “parts of the community seem to have been a tinderbox waiting to explode” because of joblessness and cuts in government services.
But she added: “As was the case 26 years ago, nothing excuses violence. There is no doubt that all types of mindless thugs latched onto the disturbances.”
Relatives of Mr. Duggan have also spoken out, sending a message through Ms. Cerfontyne, saying that the violence was “deeply deplorable” and calling for it to end. Angry residents of neighborhoods where homes, businesses, buses and cars have been trashed and set on fire have said repeatedly to reporters that the rioters are a small, unrepresentative minority of miscreants and thieves.
The theme was picked up on Tuesday by Ed Miliband, the Labour Party leader, who visited Peckham, one of the districts heavily damaged on Monday night. “These people who have committed this violence do not speak for the people of Peckham,” he said. “And I don’t think they speak for the vast majority of people across this country.”
Speaking in Downing Street before visiting the south London neighborhood of Croydon, where a large furniture store was burned down and other properties damaged on Monday night, Mr. Cameron took a hard line on the unrest.
“This is criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated,” he said. “People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding.” In Croydon, he assured residents who remonstrated with him about what they described as inadequate police protection during the attacks that “even more robust police action” would be ordered.
Other senior government officials encountered similar popular discontent as they toured heavily damaged parts of the capital. Mayor Boris Johnson, a Conservative like Mr. Cameron who also rushed home from his own vacation abroad, strode down the main street in Clapham hoisting a broom to manifest his support for a large crowd of residents who had formed themselves into a volunteer cleanup brigade. But when he called the rioters “a bunch of criminals” and said they would “face punishment they will bitterly regret,” some in the crowd confronted him, saying that the rioters had a free run of the area for hours, with no sign of police intervention.
“Where were they when we needed them to protect us?” asked Onelia Giarratano, the owner of a wrecked hairdressing salon. She said the crowd that destroyed her business included boys as young as 12, and said they had turned Clapham High Street into “a war zone”.
The government is expected to face similar criticisms in an emergency session of Parliament on Thursday. Members were summoned from their summer recess, in Mr. Cameron’s words, “so we are all able to stand together in condemnation of these crimes and stand together in determination to rebuild these communities.”
For the time being, the government has said that it will not deploy the army into the streets of affected areas, nor adopt nighttime curfews — a measure urged by Ms. Abbott, the lawmaker from Hackney, and some others — though it has hinted that it might allow the use of plastic bullets by police firearms units if the unrest does not subside.
