Almost exactly a year before the city plays host to the Olympic Games, the riot and violence has raised concerns for the city’s security. Theviolence spread outside London, with serious eruptions of violence in Birmingham and Liverpool, but the scale of events in the British capital was unprecedented, and utterly overwhelmed the city’s 32,000 police.
Police called in hundreds of reinforcements and volunteer police officers but even with armoured vehicles in some of the worst-hit districts, the police still struggled to keep pace with the chaos unfolding across London, in the central city of Birmingham, the western city of Bristol and the northwestern city of Liverpool. Prime Minister David Cameron said some 16,000 police would be on London’s streets on Tuesday night, up from the 6,000 on duty on Monday.
