Police flood streets in bid to prevent new violence

ENGLISH police flooded the streets last night to ensure weekend drinking does not reignite the rioting that swept across London and other cities this week, shocking Britons and sullying the country’s image a year before it hosts the Olympics.

Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said 16,000 officers, instead of the usual 2,500, would remain on duty in London in their biggest peacetime deployment — a measure of the perceived public-order challenge.

British prime minister David Cameron, describing the wild looting, arson and violence, in which five people were killed, as “criminality, pure and simple”, called the initial police response inadequate.