Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You

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  1. DonGlock26

    DonGlock26 New Member Past Donor

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    Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You


    “Unusually for me, I hadn’t looked at my handheld in two hours,” de Bois says. But when he did look, he saw something disturbing. Gossip was swirling about more riots that night, with Enfield named as a likely target. De Bois decided he had better cut his race day short. “I never even had a chance to recover my losses,” he deadpans.

    By five in the afternoon, he was on the streets of Enfield Town, along with a handful of police. Was there a riot? No—not really, not yet. But there was a gathering crowd, a mixed-race group of mostly young men, just milling around in small bunches. Some were conducting what de Bois describes as “reckys”—reconnaissance missions—around the town center. “They were just having a good look!” he says.

    Then, at around 6 pm, as if at some unvoiced command, the street exploded. The crowd hit a Pearsons department store, a Starbucks, an HMV. Police were able to move in and contain the violence—or so they thought—to a small part of the town’s shopping district. “Of course, there were side roads,” de Bois says. “But broadly speaking, the looting had been contained. Calm had been restored.” It was a loose version of what the British call kettling, an anti-riot tactic where police keep a disorderly crowd penned in, often for hours, to avoid their causing any more trouble.

    Only then, though, did the situation in Enfield get truly surreal. De Bois was standing outside the sealed-off zone, behind one line of police, in an open area that led to the train station. As he watched in amazement, more and more people—some disembarking trains at the station, some stepping out of cars—continued to pour into the plaza. Riot police were convoying in, too, but their numbers couldn’t possibly keep up. And even if they did, it was impossible to definitively separate the would-be rioters from the bystanders.


    Right behind a line of armor-clad police who had successfully contained a riot, this new crowd of hundreds was gearing up to touch off a second riot. As 7 pm approached, face coverings went up, and a small group walked past de Bois with a crowbar. Gangs began to break windows throughout the plaza—one local jewelry store lost nearly $65,000 in stock. Police would descend on a group, but then the crowd would disperse, only to reconstitute itself someplace else a few minutes later. Part of the issue was a peculiarity of British policing: Largely because most cops lack guns, they can’t easily carry out mass arrests, even in emergencies. Instead, each arrestee is physically accompanied by individual officers for booking. With their numbers already stretched thin, the police could not take looters off the streets without further depleting their own ranks.

    But there was also something strange about the character of this riot, and these rioters—something that seemed to make the violence unstoppable. At base, it was their confidence: their surety that, as they streamed out of their cars and trains, or as they milled around in small groups, or even after they were dispersed by police, they would always find one another in sufficient numbers. As de Bois wandered through the crowd, he buttonholed one of the young men, asked him who they all were and why they were there. “Don’t worry,” said the looter to the MP, in a tone of gruff reassurance. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

    Continued:


    http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_riots/

    This summer will be interesting to say the least. I think the looting and flash mob attacks will continue in ernest.

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