1985 Handsworth riots 1500 police officers drafted into the area, about 45 shops looted and burnt, and a trail of damage running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. As well as racial tension, unemployment was seen as a major factor in the riots; by the time of the riots, fewer than 5% of the black population to have left school that summer had found employment. The riots were the first of a series of similar riots across the country during the autumn of 1985, notably the Broadwater Farm riot in London which also resulted in a fatality (the murder of policeman Keith Blakelock).
1985: The Year of the Spy who revealed Pelton’s identity during an interrogation by the CIA. Pelton received three concurrent life sentences in 1986. Randy Miles Jeffries worked as a clerk for the FBI from 1978 to 1980. In 1983 he received a one-year suspended sentence for heroin possession and attended rehab. A social service worker referred him to Acme Reporting Company, a stenography and reporting company that frequently contracted with federal agencies. Here Jeffries was responsible for photocopying, bundling, and handling classified documents and later disposing of them, unshredded, in a dumpster. On December 14, 1985, Jeffries conspired with a coworker to attempt to sell