Police Were Ordered To Stand Down As London Burned

Inadequate response led public to call for martial law

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet

Precisely as we reported yesterday on the back of numerous eyewitness reports, it has now emerged that police were ordered to stand down and let London burn during the first few nights of rioting, an action that quickly led to a frightened public to demand troops on the streets, rubber bullets, water cannons and curfews.

On Tuesday we highlighted the “lackluster police response, with numerous reports from the public that police stood back and allowed looters to pillage both large department stores and private small businesses for hours on end.”

According to eyewitnesses to the initial riots in Tottenham, police were seen “standing back and allowing rioters to cause havoc,” a trend that continued during subsequent nights before Prime Minister David Cameron ordered 10,000 extra police officers to patrol London last night.

This has now been confirmed by sources within Scotland Yard who said police were ordered to “stand and observe” even as brazen acts of violent crime were committed against both people and private property, a directive which prevented them from arresting any of the troublemakers.

“They had apparently been told to try and contain any violence but not to haul away offenders who would instead be identified through video footage later,” reports the Daily Mail.

The decision to order police to stand down is being explained as a reaction to public outcry following the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller who was killed by riot cops during the G20 summit in 2009.

However, as we have exhaustively documented, authorities routinely allow chaos to spiral out of control, even to the extent of hiring their own provocateurs, in order to manipulate the public into demanding greater police state measures that ultimately only serve to oppress legitimate dissent against the state.

The police’s inadequate response quickly led to calls for martial law, curfews and the use of water cannons on streets in England for the first time, a power that Prime Minister David Cameron has now authorized.

Britain’s most widely-read newspaper The Sun ran a poll today which found that two thirds of Brits support the use of rubber bullets to deal with rioters, while 33 per cent supported the use of live bullets.

“Curfews are backed by 82 per cent, using tear gas got 78 per cent support and Tasers 72 per cent,” states the report.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for PrisonPlanet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.