A five-year-old boy who couldn't run as fast as his school mates was arrested for stone-throwing during a day of sustained loyalist rioting in north Belfast, a senior police officer revealed yesterday.
PSNI assistant chief constable Duncan McCausland also disclosed that schoolchildren in north Belfast were being sent mobile phone text messages yesterday, instructing them to engage in so-called recreational rioting.
The boy was lifted in Cambrai Street off the Crumlin Road on Monday evening after a day of serious trouble when police were attacked with petrol and paint bombs and other missiles.
"His so-called friends were running too quick and that's how we caught him. He had been throwing stones. He was taken home to his parents and handed over with a strong telling off," said Mr McCausland.
The PSNI said the rioting was orchestrated by the UVF in retaliation for police seizing a machinegun from the organisation during searches in north Belfast on Monday morning. The gun was used in a UVF display of strength in the Woodvale area of north Belfast on Saturday.
Mr McCausland said young people were being recruited by the loyalist paramilitary group to take part in the trouble, some of which was also organised to try to prevent police gathering forensic evidence.
"If you look at any of the television pictures of the rioting you will see adults in the background.
"There are text messages being sent around schools telling people there's going to be trouble and telling them to come out. It's been clearly orchestrated. There is no issue about that," he added.
"The last thing we want is for people to get involved in recreational rioting again," said Mr McCausland.
His colleague, assistant chief constable Sam Kinkaid, instancing how "orchestrated" rioting erupted in the nationalist Short Strand as police were investigating the murder of Robert McCartney, said loyalists were apeing some of the rioting techniques of the "republican movement".
He said the trouble in north Belfast through much of Monday and into the early hours of yesterday morning involved more than 100 young people, most of them trying to conceal their faces with scarves.
The violence on different occasions tended to simultaneously stem from four different areas of north Belfast to stretch police resources.
Mr Kinkaid and Mr McCausland also explained how the rioters were so street-wise that they intentionally targeted specific evidence-gathering trucks, to try to destroy video and other evidence that could be used to convict them.
They said they were forced to deploy additional police resources to tackle the rioting and the continuing UVF-LVF feud, which since July has seen four people murdered by the UVF.
