2.30 am. Kept busy with the swarm of rioters at the city centre from early evening until late in the night, the police finally arrived on battered Bromsgrove Street. They patrolled the city in large groups, stood watch on corners, but Birmingham is a city of many alleys and slender streets where a criminal--or a thousand--may hide. And by 2.30, it didn't matter--the wave of youthful, hoody-clad crime had already made its loud and furious way out towards the fringes of the city by then.
