Watching Tottenham burning down made me feel like a parent forced to watch their troubled child slip further out of reach. A community that had so little on Saturday evening, has even less this morning.
Tottenham's reputation is already tarnished by the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots, but as someone who started my journalism career on its streets, I know hundreds of people and organisations who have dedicated their lives to improving the community for no reward other than to see it uplifted. I know the police, too, have worked to rebuild up a relationship with young people through initiatives like the Haringey Police Community Consultative Group. All of this has been undone in an instant.
I mourn with the people who are proud of Tottenham and the rich parts of its history. I empathise with those who choose to live and send their children to schools there while others would prefer to criticise; condemning Tottenham on its reputation, not its reality. It is those people who are the victims of the events of Saturday night. Some are now standing in the ashes of their lives after their homes have burned down. Businesses and services that provide for families are gone. If the High Street was lacking before, it is a ghost town now.
Opportunistic looters, driven by mob mentality, opportunism and shameless greed, stole food, drinks, mobile phones and carpets. Finding slim pickings in Tottenham, they turned their attentions to Wood Green. These were not the people who, hours earlier, had attended a peaceful protest following the shooting of father-of-four Mark Duggan.
There is an anger that has built up over seasons of discontent that Tottenham and its people deserved so much more than it has been getting.
As the saying goes, those who cannot remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. No matter how many steps the police believe they have taken to rebuild the relationship with the community, police cars still got booed when they drive through Farm, as Broadwater Farm is known. A dislike of the police is embedded in some Tottenham sub-cultures.
Of all the footage I've seen, one image sticks out: the youths attacking a parked police car with a venom that transcended the television screen and spent chills down my spine. Using stones, parking cones, bricks and whatever they could get their hands on, they battered the vehicle for everything it represented; for every time they are stopped-and-searched; for friends and family that have been killed in police custody.
Young people in Tottenham were angry in 1985 and they are still angry now. This is what needs to be addressed. It is young people with whom the powers that be need to reconnect with. Instead, they have lost youth centres; their youth workers, their EMA and can't find jobs. Until then, Tottenham will remain stuck in a cycle of poverty where history of the worst kind will continue to repeat.
We can't use words and phrases like 'disenfranchised' and 'most deprived ward in the country' without reflecting on what it means. People may ask: why would anyone burn their own community down? It is tantamount to self-harm. The bottom line the youths do not feel a part of the community. There is still very much an 'us' and 'them' mentality.
In the background on the BBC, a heckler shouted at the MP David Lammy, "don't just be on their side, be on our side".
Friends and family attended Tottenham police station demanding answers over Mark Duggan's death. They don't condone the rioting that happened last night, but they are unsympathetic. As someone told me, you can rebuild a building, but you can't bring back someone back to life or give children back a father.
This year, peaceful marches have been happening in Birmingham and London over the deaths of reggae icon Smiley Culture, a father-of-two Kinglsey Burrell and 21-year-old Demetre Fraser who all died following police contact.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) are already investigating these deaths, and now add Mark Duggan's name to that list.
Unless these investigations are down independently, transparently and swiftly, the rage will continue to burn in hearts, minds, and, worse, on streets.