Police and court responses
Police and court responses
This chapter investigates the police procedures during the riots in their ports and addresses the court cases that followed. People arrested by the police following the port riots appeared before the courts in a series of trials in the weeks and occasionally months after. Most of white people caught during the rioting were convicted. It is shown that legal discrimination was introduced in some of the London prosecutions; only in the aftermath of the August rioting at Canning Town did it seem to be absent. Frequently, black and Arab people in the rioting were accused with police assault and weapons offences. The cases of self-defence are also reported. In general, Britain's black and Arab populations were victimised by white crowds, targeted by police in arrest procedure and often given harsher sentences by the courts than white people convicted of similar offences.
Keywords: police procedures, port riots, court cases, rioting, legal discrimination, London prosecutions, self-defence, Britain, police assault, weapons offences
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