STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Police release images of suspected looters in London and Birmingham
- Prime Minister David Cameron says 16,000 police will be in London Tuesday night
- Community clean-up efforts get under way in neighborhoods across London
- Monday night's unrest the worst seen in current memory, the Metropolitan Police say
London (CNN) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed tough action Tuesday to quell rioting in Britain's cities, after tensions between groups of youths and police escalated in London and elsewhere Monday night.
He said more than twice as many police would be on the streets of London Tuesday night, with 16,000 officers drafted in to tackle "criminality, pure and simple."
Violence initially sparked by the shooting death of a 29-year-old man in London spread to other parts of the nation Monday night, with dramatic scenes of blazing buildings and confrontations between police and hooded youths.
The Metropolitan Police in London said Monday night's disturbances were the worst the force "has seen in current memory for unacceptable levels of widespread looting, fires and disorder."
London Fire Brigade said it had "faced its busiest night in recent history" Tuesday, receiving 15 times more emergency calls than usual and tackling "major fires right across London."
Cameron, who cut short his vacation in Italy to hold an emergency meeting Tuesday, has also taken the highly unusual step of recalling lawmakers from their summer break, with Parliament to meet Thursday to discuss the issue.
Speaking after the meeting at Downing Street, Cameron said court processes would be sped up to ensure swift justice for those people involved in "looting, vandalising, thieving, robbing", many of them apparently teenagers.
"People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and make them safe for the law-abiding," he said.
"People should expect to see more, many more, arrests in the days to come," he added. "If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishments."
Sociology professor Paul Bagguley told CNN a disproportionate number of young people seemed to be involved in the unrest, and that those carrying out the looting -- both male and female -- appeared to be motivated by wanting things they could not afford.
But people who have spoken to local ethnic minorities also talked of a sense that trouble had been building up over several months, he said, with some upset by police "stop-and-search" tactics.
The Metropolitan Police released what it said would be "the first of many" CCTV images of suspected looters Tuesday morning, focusing on incidents in London's Lambeth borough and Croydon.
More than 450 people have been arrested in London since the violence began, police said Tuesday. With Metropolitan Police detention cells full, authorities are transporting those they arrest to surrounding police forces.
Forty-four police officers and 14 members of the public were injured Monday night, police said, with well over 200 arrests in the capital.
The head of London's Metropolitan Police has called for all Specials -- volunteer police officers -- to report for duty, as the capital's law enforcement resources are stretched thin.
During the overnight hours, standoffs continued at several locations in London as police in riot gear warily watched roaming groups of youths often just yards away.
In Hackney, where Monday's disturbances first broke out, mother-of-two Graciela Watson watched aghast from her home as young hooligans, known as "yobs" in Britain, barricaded a normally quiet residential street with burning trash cans and clashed repeatedly with police for over an hour.
"It seemed like a war zone. there were youths grabbing bricks from our front wall and hurling them at police," she said.
After police cleared away the violent confrontation, looters -- mostly in their teens and ethnically mixed -- continued to run up her street with stolen goods into the early hours, she said. "There was an atmosphere almost of carnival from the yobs. They were enjoying it, laughing."
Peckham resident Rebecca Skipwith, a 37-year-old charity worker, told CNN she had passed crowds of "hooded-up kids" and a police cordon on her way home from work Monday. Soon afterwards, trouble erupted.
"It's quite bewildering," she said Tuesday morning. "It was horrible this morning driving to work and seeing the smashed-in shops and glass everywhere. It feels a bit of a wilderness.
"I could see a couple of burned out buildings on the main shopping street in Peckham," she added. "I'm worried about tonight, especially because it wasn't particularly well handled. So where's the deterrent?"
In Ealing, West London, a bus was vandalized and set on fire, while the driver was still on board. He escaped without injury.
In Croydon, south of London, a sofa factory and surrounding shops and homes were set ablaze and a 26-year-old man was seriously ill after being found with a gunshot wound, police said.
There was evidence of vandalism in central London, with visible damage to a number of shops. Shops were also looted in Clapham Junction, in south-west London.
Sony Corp. said its only warehouse in London caught fire between late Monday and early Tuesday, with significant product damage but no casualties. The warehouse is in north London's Enfield neighborhood, which has seen scattered protests.
Home Secretary Theresa May, who also canceled her summer holiday to return to London, condemned the violence Tuesday and urged residents to tell the police what they know about anyone involved in the rioting.
"We can bring an end to this with robust policing and the help and support of local communities," she said.
A community clean-up effort began Tuesday in London, with organizers using Twitter to get volunteers together in their local areas, using the hashtag #riotcleanup.
Organiser Dan Thompson, who runs a network aiding small businesses on the south coast, said many thousands of people were supporting efforts to help local shopkeepers.
"I thought the quickest, best thing was just to help them get cleaned up this morning, get trading again," he said. "It's a city people love and to see it destroyed in the way it has been is shocking stuff."
The rioting has forced the postponement of at least two sporting events. England's international soccer game against Holland, due to be played at Wembley on Wednesday, was canceled. And football club West Ham United called off Tuesday night's match with Aldershot Town.
"Whilst neither the club or police anticipate any issues around the game itself, the club has to comply with the police request," a statement on West Ham's website said.
The developments come as reports of violence and vandalism flowed in from other parts of the country.
West Midlands Police arrested some 133 people overnight in Birmingham, about 120 miles north of London, Chief Constable Chris Sims said. Officers were making more arrests Tuesday and had released images of suspects, he added.
He said a number of shops had been attacked but the city center was "open for business" Tuesday. A small police station was also burned down, Sims said.
Many of the young people arrested or caught on camera were "astonishingly young teenagers, girls and boys," he said, as he appealed to parents to keep their children at home Tuesday night.
In Leeds, about 170 miles north of London, police reported no rioting early Tuesday, but said there were "pockets of isolated disorder." A car was set on fire and a man was taken to hospital with serious injuries after an alleged shooting.
In Bristol, in south-west England, police said several shops and vehicles were damaged Monday night and "a number of main roads have been closed to allow officers to take control of what is currently a volatile situation."
"Officers are urging people to avoid the city center at this time. People already in the city centre should leave the area and go home," Bristol police said in a statement early Tuesday.
Disturbances also were reported in the Liverpool area, about 180 miles northwest of London, with police there saying officers had responded to "reports of vehicles on fire and criminal damage" in south Liverpool.
A representative of London Mayor Boris Johnson said Monday evening that the mayor was cutting short his family holiday in North America to return to London.
Johnson called the violence "utterly appalling," saying: "People have lost their homes, businesses and livelihoods through mindless violence."
Questions have been raised over what the disturbances may mean for security during the London Olympics next year.
A spokeswoman for the London 2012 organizing committee told CNN: "A lot of detailed work has taken place regarding security plans for the Games and we will continue to review them together with the Met Police and the Home Office over the coming year."
Police said the rioting and looting in other parts of the capital were "copycat" events conducted by opportunists and criminals.
"This is not about the black community and the police, it's about young people and the police," said Shaun Bailey, a youth worker, in a statement circulated by the mayor's office. "And let's not beat around the bush and pretend this is some type of social justice protest -- it's sheer criminality."
The violence started in Tottenham -- the ethnically diverse, working-class suburb north of London's center whose residents are predominantly Afro-Caribbean -- after the shooting death Thursday of Mark Duggan, a black man, as he was seated inside a cab.
Officers from Operation Trident -- a Metropolitan Police unit that deals with gun crime -- stopped the cab during an attempted arrest. Soon afterward, shots were fired, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said.
Duggan, a father of four, was killed. Shooting deaths are rare in England.
The commission divulged neither who shot Duggan nor why police had stopped the cab, with the incident still under investigation.
Some reports suggested that Duggan was held down by police and shot in the head, but the IPCC has denied this.
"Speculation that Mark Duggan was 'assassinated' in an execution style involving a number of shots to the head are categorically untrue," the IPCC said in a statement.
The IPCC said evidence from Thursday's shooting scene, including a non-police firearm, was to undergo forensic testing.
The man's family and friends, who blamed police for the death, gathered Saturday night outside the Tottenham police station to protest.
The protest began peacefully but soon devolved into riots as demonstrators -- whose numbers included whites and blacks -- tossed petrol bombs, looted stores and burned police cars.
Tottenham was the site of riots before. In 1985 Floyd Jarrett, who was of Afro-Caribbean origin, was stopped by police near the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham on suspicion of driving with a forged tax disc, a document all British vehicles must carry.
A few hours later, officers raided the nearby home of his mother, who collapsed and died during the raid. Rioting erupted shortly afterwards and a police officer, Police Constable Keith Blakelock, was killed. Like the current violence, a protest outside Tottenham Police Station sparked the 1985 conflict.
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