Police officers at the scene where where three men were killed after being hit by a car in an incident locals some were linking to the violence early Wednesday Aug. 10, 2011 in Birmingham, England. (AP / Rui Vieira)
A move to put thousands of extra police on London streets helped quash potential riots on Tuesday night, as anxious Britons across the country waited to see if the spreading tide of youthful lawlessness would arrive in their hometowns.
Despite having 16,000 officers on hand, the police were still under intense pressure to curb the riots that have been drawing the wrong kind of attention to London just a year before it will host the Olympic Games.
But police hit the ground running Tuesday, making scores of arrests throughout the night, and adding to the hundreds of suspects they have rounded up since the riots first raged on the weekend.
"What happened in London last night was, when community leaders and the police came together, there were significant arrests," said Steven Kavanagh, the deputy assistant chief constable.
"We used buses to make sure some looters were taken away before they got into doing anything, but it was that joint action that made the difference."
With so many suspects in custody, London police have been forced to bus arrested persons out to lock-up facilities outside of the capital. Since Saturday, almost 800 people have been arrested in the capital.
And CTV's London Bureau Chief Tom Kennedy they have assigned some 500 detectives to handle the subsequent investigations, which will require staff to comb through mountains of documentary evidence to identify the perpetrators who have burned down buildings and looted stores.
"That is more detectives than were assigned even to investigated the terrorism of 2005 in London. It's the biggest single investigation in the police force's history," said Kennedy.
Despite the relative calm in London on Tuesday night, looting was seen in other English cities, including in Manchester and Birmingham, where three men were killed after being hit by a car.
The men who died in Birmingham were believed to be patrolling their neighbourhood to fend off any looters. Police said a man has been arrested on suspicion of murder in their deaths.
In Manchester, hundreds of youth ran amok, throwing stones at police, vandalizing stores and lighting a women's clothing store and a library on fire.
Garry Shewan, the assistant chief constable in Manchester, suggested that the rioters in the northwestern city were engaging in criminal acts for no definable reason.
"We want to make it absolutely clear -- they have nothing to protest against," Shewan said.
"There is nothing in a sense of injustice and there has been no spark that has led to this."
Rioters in the central city of Nottingham threw a firebomb through a police station window and set fire to a school and a vehicle. Ninety people were arrested by the end of the night.
Police also tangled with rioters in Liverpool, Leicester, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Bristol and Gloucester.
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