London's burning

“Police attacked as London burns,” headlines The Guardian, reporting on riots in the UK capital that began on Saturday night and spread through the weekend. The unrest started in the northern borough of Tottenham, after protests at the fatal shooting of a man by police on Thursday boiled over. Police cars and buildings were set ablaze, and by Monday, the left-leaning UK daily reports, more than 160 people had been arrested, 35 police officers injured and rioting and looting had spread to neighbourhoods in the south and east of London. The Home Secretary was also returning from holiday to deal with the developing crisis.

Crowds were “looting stores in daylight”, reports the right-leaning Daily Telegraph newspaper, and even -- in very English fashion -- “forming orderly queues to steal clothes” from one wrecked shop.

Nothing excuses this disgraceful behaviour, writes one Guardian commentator, but the police, and especially its gun crime unit, must also be careful to avoid inflaming tension and to mount a proper inquest into the shooting that sparked the riots. Otherwise, inhabitants of London’s poorer boroughs may legitimately feel that they are “overpoliced as criminals and underpoliced as victims.”