Man charged with Blakelock Tottenham riots murder

The Crown Prosecution Service this afternoon announced Nicky Jacobs is to appear in court accused of murder, writes Channel 4 News Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Israel.

Mr Jacobs was 16 when the 40-year-old police officer was hacked to death at the height of rioting on the north London estate in October 1985.

That night Broadwater Farm became hell on earth.

The housing estate erupted following the death of Cynthia Jarrett, when police came to search her home. In the battles which endured through the following night, PC Keith Blakelock became the first police officer since 1833 to be killed in a riot in Britain.

His name still whispers through the stairs and passageways of the estate.

He died after helping firemen put out a blaze in a supermarket. The fire threatened those who lived above it. A mob of mostly black youths suddenly descended, and bottles, bricks, and petrol bombs were thrown.

Hysterical mob

PC Keith Blakelock was seen to run, then stumble, then disappear under a hysterical mob bearing knives, machetes and other weapons. There was an attempt to decapitate him.

Six were originally charged with murder. Three were juveniles who had their cases thrown out after being strip-searched and questioned naked without the requisite presence of a guardian.

The other three were Winston Silcott, Engin Raghip and Mark Braithwaite, whose convictions for murder were overturned by the court of appeal amid claims that evidence had been fabricated.

Case reopened

The investigation was formally reopened in 2003, and two years later police dug up the garden of a house on the estate looking for clues. On the 25th anniversary of PC Blakelock’s murder, it emerged that 10 men had been arrested in London and Suffolk for questioning over the crime.

The officer’s flame-retardant overalls, which for years had been on show to criminologists and trainee police officers at Scotland Yard’s “black museum”, were removed for new forensic tests and analysed using more advanced DNA techniques.