London riots: 450 detectives in hunt for looters (CCTV images posted online )

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Detectives diverted from other inquiries and CCTV images posted online as police tell looters: 'We will find you'

Sandra Laville, crime correspondent | Tuesday August 09 2011 17.40 BST


CCTV images of Croydon youths during the riots
Photograph: Metropolitan police

More than 450 detectives have been assigned to hunt for rioters and looters in the biggest criminal investigation ever mounted by the Metropolitan police.

Commander Simon Foy, head of the homicide and serious crime command, who is leading the investigation, said he was considering asking other forces to provide detectives to help as the number of arrests continues to rise.

Foy has taken detectives off all other inquiries to concentrate on finding those who have been rioting. His team is trawling through CCTV images and a most wanted page shows images of scores of young men and women, some with their faces clearly visible, in an attempt to get the public to help identify looters.

In the last three days 525 people have been arrested across the capital. The youngest rioter, police said, was 11 and many of those arrested and charged are under 18.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/london-riots-detectives-police

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024120/London-riots-2011-suspects-Photos-released-know-looters.html">Do you know these looting suspects? Police release just TWELVE pictures (but we've found 30 more to be going on with)

[chill_wind]

1. Proof enough that in a country with one of the most heavily

CCTV monitored citizenry and cities on earth, security cameras are no crime deterrent for crime of this scale.

OTOH, a high probabability many of them will be found.

(Some interesting data and discussion)

Britain's Police State: London arrests based on CCTV identification. Britain adopts Chinese model of policing protest? (Dec 2010)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22478

[Stella_Artois]

6. Perhaps not

But at least some of them stand to be caught.

In fact, i read that in another city police have raided a number of addresses today and recovered thousands of pounds worth of stolen goods.

[dipsydoodle]

19. Incase you hadn't noticed

most of those pictures are from ground level police cameras : not CCTV

[TheMadMonk]

21. Oh really. The average Peeler is 12' plus tall is he?

Every single one of the 12 pics in the OP (and most of those in the article) are taken at a DOWNWARD ANGLE.

[Proletariatprincess]

2. Sooooo....

all the powers of the Metro Police are now devoted entirely to finding looters. All other crime prevention is secondary.
Given that London is perhaps the most surveiled city in the world, it shouldn't be too difficult to identify looters.
While workers and young people all over Europe are demonstrating against their government, in London they are merely looting.....
I Don't know what is really going on there, but I know that crimes against private property in capitalist countries, no matter how trivial, are always taken more seriously than the crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful against the working classes.

[MineralMan]

3. Excellent image quality. If the photos are published in the papers,

people who know these people and don't like them will turn them in. Anyone who would loot a shop or take part in other such activities has enemies. Just because of who they are. I notice here in the Twin Cities that publication of such images always seems to result in a quick arrest. People see the photo, say, "That asshole? I hate his/her guts." Then they make the call and ID the person to the police.

As they say in the UK, "It works a treat."

[Duende azul]

5. And? Does that seem desirable to you?

[MineralMan]

7. Yup. It seems desirable to me.

Looting is a crime that affects the people who are running businesses that serve the community, hire the locals, and that are probably running on fumes most of the time, especially the small shops and places like fish and chips joints and the like. They live there, too. Do you truly think they deserve to be robbed and burnt-out? I do not excuse looters and arsonists in these situations. Nope.

Looting is just criminal in these situations.

As for my local area, one of the people they caught recently was a murderer who killed a young woman. A security camera caught his image and he was IDed by an ex-girlfriend who had been beaten by him. So, yes, I think it's desirable. Does it not seem desirable to you?

[T_i_B]

9. It's worth remembering....

...that while the protests did start from a peaceful protest about a police shooting it quickly became an excuse to burn and steal as much as possible. As such this rioting has long ceased to be in any way political and it is now basically just organized crime trying to take advantage of an overstretched police force.

[BNJMN]

24. Funny, I didn't know you were speaking for all the rioters...

...or that they even had one voice.
I guess you must be making your assumptions from the corporate owned media, and backing the wealthy elite as they loot the public of their hard earned 'entitlements'...just as they're doing here and elsewhere.

How brave of you.

[T_i_B]

26. And you are speaking for the looters are you?

You certainly haven't got much clue as to what people in the UK actually think of this crap.

[Nihil]

27. And yet you appear to be doing exactly the same thing ...?

> Funny, I didn't know you were speaking for all the rioters...
> ...or that they even had one voice.

Funny how defenders of thieves & muggers crawl out of the woodwork ...


> I guess you must be making your assumptions from the corporate owned media,

Your guess is wrong but it is particularly amusing to read your own
assumptions drawn not just from the corporate-owned media but from the
other side of the Atlantic to boot!

:rofl:


> How brave of you.

Spoken like a true asshole who has no clue about the actual situation.

:eyes:

[T_i_B]

10. Dupe

Sorry.

[Duende azul]

12. The question wasn`t about your opinion on looting.

It was about what you are willing to concede as a response.

I get it, don`t address the causes, crank up repression (to eleven) instead.
Some of your colleagues here were willing to shoot looters on sight. You could sense their fantasies of beeing there with their guns in hand.

No one of the depicted people is convicted of anything. But you are willing to risk destroying their lives on a possible chance they might have been involved. In this you have to trust a policeforce that will happily grab every chance to let us forget what caused all this.
Maybe these folks just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

24/7 surveillance? Getting people used to telling on each other at a scale unimagined before? Don´t you think, that might come back to bite you in the ass sometime? Maybe a teabagger/religious nut government armed with these instruments might be interested in who attended the latest peace rally, who entered an abortion clinic ...whatever.

Your anecdotal story, where surveillance helped solve a crime, doesn`t make up for the greater dangers total surveillance implies.

And since you seem an advocate for total transparency and public exposure should the mere chance of a crime exist:
I can´t remember having heard your voice in defense of Bradley Manning. The crimes he exposed are of a far greater dimension than a spontaneous looting ever might be.
Why are the suspects of these crimes not publicly exposed?

[dipsydoodle]

16. The police issued those pictures

They are not people they want to question : they are people they want to arrest.

[dipsydoodle]

15. Me too

See here too : http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/

On the front page of the actual newspaper they've got a massive spread on the subject with even more pics - occupies the entire page.

[T_i_B]

8. If they did like them before

finding out that they are ruining their own towns should cause a few people to re-think their friendship with threse scrotes. Social media in the UK is picking up on this in a big way so let's hope that it sends a fair few rioters to jail.

[Duende azul]

4. Agents withdrawn from the Murdoch inquiry, among other tasks.

They do have their priorities in order, don`t they?
Go for the little offenders first.

From your link:

The workload is mounting quickly. Detectives have been taken from antiterrorist inquiries and some from Operation Weeting, the phone-hacking inquiry, because of the scale of evidence that needs to be investigated.

The pressure is on the Yard to move people quickly through the system, such is the number of those arrested. The cells were to be cleared by Tuesday night to make room for an anticipated further round of arrests

A good opportunity for the yard to sweep their corruption and crimes under the rug.

And for a little perspective and a moment of contemplation go with Sinéad O'Connor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n14lwdpYkAA
Black Boys On Mopeds

[Fastcars]

11. If it were my town, home and/or business being burned...

I would want every available LEO to work at putting a stop to it.

[Duende azul]

13. Gosh, these agents are not on the streets to prevent anything.

They are investigating. And they are not investigating the Murdoch crimes while they are going after alleged looters.
Sad fact is, Murdoch et al. are looting on a far greater scale.

Seems a misplacement of resources to me.

[BooScout]

14. Why?

Oh, we should not focus on people who rob, beat, steal, loot, destroy property, commit arson and endanger the lives of millions of UK citizens then?

Trust me, the Murdoch phone hacking mess, whilst I would love to see him convicted and jailed...........it's just not as high on my priority list as seeing the scumbags responsible for the past few days of mayhem arrested and jailed.

Seems a misplacement of your own priorities to me.

:eyes:

[dipsydoodle]

17. You seem to have no clue

as to how our police operate here in the UK. Its the desk boys at The Yard on the Murdoch enquiry : not the uniformed brigade out in the streets or the CID which are the subject of the OP.

[Duende azul]

20. Nope. Read the original piece from the guardian

and you will notice that detectives have been withdrawn from the Murdoch case.
The desk boys. Withdrawn to screen the evidence for looting.
Of course not to be in the streets. That was the misconception of the poster I answered to.

[Proletariatprincess]

22. Excellant post.

I sense a cover up operation too. Fires are easy to start and blame on someone else and they certainly draw the attention and make for good video footage.
We don't know, of course, but any time I hear the hightened concern about looting and property damage, my BS meter goes up.
The Brits are not beyond false flag operations.

Thanks for the Sinead O'Connor link...nice addition to this thread.

[Matilda]

23. I'm not generally on the side of the police,

and there is a strong suspicion that the man who police claimed shot them at the start of all this did not fire at police at all. It looks as if police overkill, literally in this case, could be the tinderbox that set all this off.

But neither do I think the rioters deserve any sympathy - there's no doubt that it was they who looted and started the fires, plenty of witnesses. And they're not making any political or social point by attacking West End stores, looting Harrods or Selfridges - many of their victims are small local shopkeepers who've put all they have into building a small business, only to lose it, often with their homes as well. Attacking the working class, often struggling, is not the way to make a political statement.

One young looter in Manchester, face covered, summed it up in an interview with a BBC journalist last night: "I'm here for the money". He couldn't articulate it any better than that - no political or class warfare action, no particular hatred of the police - just whatever he could grab for himself. He said it all, really.

[BNJMN]

25. Foolish to lump all the "looters" into one group. [nt]

[Nihil]

28. All of the looters have a common purpose - greed - so it's not "foolish" at all. (n/t)

[dipsydoodle]

18. Watch the birdie

and smile you suckers - burglary carries up to 10 years at Wood Green Crown Court.

[jakeXT]

29. Big Brother please save us

Do they have biometric ids for every citizen yet?

[dipsydoodle]

30. More pictures up today

which for some obscure reason include the fat girl again. What's she doing : auditioning ?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolitanpolice/sets/72157627267892973/