The Riots: In Their Own Words - Episode 1 - The Rioters

First Broadcast:
Monday 13 August 2012 at 21:00
BBC Two
BBC Productions

I am posting this slightly later than usual as I've only just caught up, having been away on holiday.  I hit BBC iPlayer immediately as this was a must-see for me!

The riots fascinated me, everything about them.

There has been a question mark against the reasoning ever since, and I felt this programme could finally provide an answer, considering it was broadcasting the words of the rioters themselves.

Yes, the controversial police shooting of Mark Duggan is what caused protests initially, but why did local businesses eventually come under attack?

"They just wanted money... everyone had their own reasons, and I guarantee about 80% of them never had anything to do with Mark, really."

One rioter looted and destroyed certain shops because they had failed to employ him in the past or because they had previously questioned his age, asking him for ID.  To me, these situations do not justify the extent of the violence.

Rioters were setting buildings on fire in attempt to remove all traces of DNA.  What shocked me the most was that the rioter mentioned above even admitted to blocking entrances to burning buildings to prevent the fire engines from gaining access.  Do these people have no guilt?

Many rioters were just jumping on the bandwagon, for they had no reasons to attack the businesses and, probably, no knowledge of why other people were doing so.

"You just think, 'wow, I'm getting all this free stuff,' and you're not gonna get caught 'cause there's so many people doing it."

The stupidity of some of the rioters, in their beliefs that the police would just forget the whole event once it was over, was quite amusing.  One girl was shocked to see her face in a picture taken by a CCTV camera.  This was in London, where there are over 400,000 CCTV cameras in total - 14 for every person [Ratcliffe, 2012].

So why would people ignorantly join in and think they weren't going to get caught, just because the police weren't attempting to arrest everyone at the scene?

But some people felt their violence towards the police was entirely justified.  

One scene that highlighted the irony of this statement involved a young rioter complaining that the police are always stopping him and searching him "for no reason," as he reached into his bag and pulled out about 8 bags of weed and lit a spliff.  

Now I know why these rioters have such disillusioned views.

In support of this, a statement that amused me that was one girl who got angry at an older boy who took things from her and her friend that they had just looted.

She even said, "we took it, so it's ours."

That was a taste of medicine that didn't go down well.

This programme was full of adrenaline and excitement - the kind of documentaries I like the most.  It was incredibly interesting to hear the rioters points of view, and it only strengthened my negative opinion towards them.  And rightly so.  

Another question I had that this programme answered - why did the rioting stop?

"The shops ran out of stuff."

Disgusting.

References

Web page:RATCLIFFE, J. 2012. How many CCTV cameras are there in London? [online] Available from: http://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-london/ [Accessed on 19 August 2012]


Image from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l3y0v