Philip Scott Burgess got arrested for encouraging his friends to set up a riot on their town.
Hours’ later looters started an onslaught on a shopping precinct in Salford, Greater Manchester, just a short mile away from his home, prior to the time that trouble spread to Manchester City Centre.
The widespread chaos involved scenes of aggression, criminal damage and raiding as an army of thugs took to the city’s streets.
To put a stop to the riot, a large police operation got launched in an effort to bring the situation under control and police officers and vehicles got assaulted before the situation got brought under control.
The accused posted messages under his profile name of ‘Philip Rio Burgess’, Burgess created racist comments regarding the ethnicity of the rioters in the days, which followed the trouble on August 9, even urging “Bring bk the riots”.
On August 16, a group of police came to his house to arrest him. The police worked all day long in identifying and targetting any offenders involved in the looting and rioting.
Burgess, from Salford, got sentenced to be jailed for three years at Manchester Crown Court yesterday following the time that he pleaded guilty to three counts of publishing written material in stirring up racial hatred and encouraging or assisting the commission of a riot.
Burgess had published a message at 11.44am on 9 August 2011, which states: “Message to all – we need to start riot’n we need to put Manchester on the map, first lets riot king street Manchester, haha.”
At about 4.30pm, that day, Burgess posted an offensive message on his profile, on which he has hundreds of friends, regarding the ethnicity of some of the raiders.
Over the next few days, he posted three more racist and inciting comments that include the following post on the
Manchester Riot – Updates 2011 Facebook page – “Salford5 for life. Bring bk the riots.”
PC John Hepke from the Bolton West Neighbourhood Policing Team says that the prevalent disorder in Manchester city centre and Salford drew doubt and shock.
Everyone witnessed the shameful scenes of violence, looting, and arson and it is clear that social networking sites got used to incite clear elements of this disorder.
During that time, Greater Manchester Police swore that they are going to identify anyone involved in using social networking sites in stirring up hatred, and once Burgess been exposed; their team in Bolton got brought in to scrutinize.