Were there in London on Wednesday disorders due to a series of videos on TikTok inviting people to organize a meeting to rob some shops on Oxford Street, a well-known shopping and very touristy street. For a few hours, the situation was described as “chaotic”, and there were scuffles between the dozens of teenagers who had gathered to attend the event and the police, who had strengthened their presence in the area in anticipation of thefts and other crimes. In the end, nine people were arrested and 34 others were removed.
The videos had gone viral on both TikTok and Snapchat earlier in the week, where they circulated under the tag “Oxford Circus JD robbery”: the invitation was precisely to meet at three in the afternoon on Wednesday in Oxford Street to loot the sports shop JD Sports and other businesses in the area. A poster that appeared in a video suggested wearing gloves and balaclavas; he also said not to carry weapons and advised not to participate if he was unable to run.
Police struggled to contain the girls and boys who had gathered in front of the JD Sports store and nearby McDonald’s and were running around the street. Images circulated on social media show officers chasing teenagers out of shops and trying to stop others, including using batons. A witness told theIndependent that she was caught up in the riots after walking out of a streetside Apple Store, believing she was in the midst of a stabbing or violent attack. Another person described the situation as chaotic.
An optical shop and a pharmacy have closed temporarily turning customers away for fear of damage and theft. Traffic was also blocked for a few minutes. However, there were no reports of an actual looting at the sporting goods store.
The situation was handled within about five hours. Nine people were arrested on suspicion of having attacked police officers or intending to commit theft, while 34 were removed as part of the measure issued by the mayor, who for 48 hours had given the police the power to intervene to disperse people. Two others were arrested in Essex, north-east London, on charges of planning thefts to some shops also because of the trend on TikTok.
A few days earlier, something similar had happened in Manhattan: thousands of people gathered in Union Square Park after youtuber Kai Cenat announced that he would give away three hundred PlayStation 5 consoles to anyone who showed up. Even then the sudden gathering and frantic attitude of the crowds caused serious disturbances: some started throwing bottles and fireworks, others blocked traffic and the entrance to the local train station, climbed onto the roofs of cars and in some cases clashed with at least a thousand police officers called to intervene, who still took a few hours to disperse the crowd.
Oxford Street is located in central London and is the busiest shopping street in all of Europe. It is estimated that about every day they pass through it 500 thousand peoplebetween residents and tourists. London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Tuesday asked people to stay away from the area due to the risks associated with alleged looting which had been encouraged through social networks, which he described as a “nonsense». The British Interior Minister Suella Braverman instead he wrote on X (known until recently as Twitter) that the people who caused these riots must be “tracked down and put in jail”, adding that “this type of lawlessness seen in some American cities cannot be allowed to reach the streets of the United Kingdom”.
He was also among the people who were removed by police on Wednesday Mizzy, an eighteen-year-old rather followed on TikTok who had recently made himself known for stealing a woman’s dog and for some “jokes” deemed rather grotesque and offensive, until he was arrested. Mizzy, whose real name is Bacari Bronze O’Garro, was also suspected of having participated in the attempted looting along the street: she said he knew nothing about it and was in the area to go to the movies with friends.
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