iQotD

[avevale_intelligencer]

"Rioting is Nature's way of telling a government that it's not doing its job properly." --H. Sacristan

Of course that is taking the whole thing far too lightly, and I do not want anyone to think I am not desperately unhappy and worried about my friends and about all innocent bystanders who will suffer from this. Please, everyone, be careful, especially when travelling.

Comments

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

Eeek!

Reminds me of the LA riots. Glad you guys are safe.

[howeird]

Please stay safe.

I'm a little confused here. I thought British police did not carry guns, yet the original flap was over a policeman shooting a citizen. But if the police have guns, why have they been so inept in dealing with the riots? Yes I know, typical American wild west attitude, but I'd appreciate an attitude adjustment from someone closer to the issues.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

British Police do not carry guns *as a matter of course*. "Armed response units" are only deployed if specifically needed, i.e. because there is an expectation of encountering armed criminals on the operation in question.

More info (probably mostly correct): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Also I'd dispute that they've been "inept". Their primary concern is to protect public life and limb; property is secondary. If the best way to stop a bunch of people attacking other people is to let them work off their aggression on property, get their faces on CCTV, and then go round and arrest them in the morning when they have much less chance of escape, than so be it.

That said, "riot" is mostly innacurate: What's happening is mostly mass burglary or looting.

[occams_pyramid]

Inept? Well, I suppose that yes, they could very quickly break up the looters by shooting a few of them. The consequences of doing that would be dreadful.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

According to the Countess, who had it from the BBC, the whole thing started when police shot a civilian. (Which you just said. Sorry, I'm tired.)

I go with Buffy: "These? Never helpful."

[howeird]

First, thanks for the explanation, and the link. I cannot find any details of the shooting anywhere I have looked online, so I'm still a bit unsure why that particular officer was carrying a gun at that particular time. But maybe that's part of the family's original protest.

Inept is a strong word, but I use it because several days of police cars being set fire does not bolster my confidence in the police.

Having been a protester (albeit of the peaceful variety) I know first hand what the threat of having a mass of guns pointed in my direction by police can do. No shots need be fired. Tear gas can disperse a crowd with no loss of life and less loss of property and relatively easy recovery by innocent bystanders from the effects.

go round and arrest them in the morning when they have much less chance of escape is a lovely humane idea, but it relies too much on the hooligans going quietly home, and not returning day after day to set fire to different shops.

[howeird]

Agreed. No shots need be fired, the threat is all that is needed. See my reply to pbristow above

[occams_pyramid]

NO

England is not the USA. Even threatening to open fire on a crowd would not be acceptable and would have appalling short and long term consequences.

IT IS NOT AN OPTION IN ENGLAND.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"go round and arrest them in the morning when they have much less chance of escape is a lovely humane idea, but it relies too much on the hooligans going quietly home, and not returning day after day to set fire to different shops."

Not quite. It relies on them going to a location which the Police can trace them to. Tracing people *who have stopped moving* (temporarily, of course) is a hell of a lot easier (within a city such as London or Birmingham) than chasing kids who are on foot and fueled by adrenaline, through a labyrinth of city streets and back-alleys, in the dark, at the same time as trying to defend the nearby citizens from the six other gangs who are operating at the same time in the same general area.

An interview with a Manchester shopkeeper on BBC News tonight illustrates the point: In one evening he's lost his entire business. When asked if he's worried about the nights to come, he says "not really, I've got nothing left to lose now". But when asked about the police, he says "they've been marvellous, when they were here. The problem is there's just not enough of them to contain the problem."

Another interviewee was a lot more angry, but again her complaint about the police was simply that they weren't where she needed them to be when it mattered, which again is simply down to lack of numbers.

And this, IMHO, has been the problem with the approach to policing in this country over the last 20 years or more: The trend has steadily been towards fewer police, with more powers. The result is an overstretched and overstressed force, far too likely to abuse the excessive powers they now hold. Bring back the days of a humble bobby (armed with just a notebook and truncheon and an impeccable sense of customer service) on every corner, I say! =:o}

(Oh the irony: I've just been listening to a recent radio adaptation of one of the very earliest "Dixon of Dock Green" scripts, written in the halcyon days of the 1950s, when a delivery of "naughty postcards" was all it took to betray the operation of a (by definition - in those days - illegal) pornographer.)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Latest info released by the IPCC (shown on the very same Beeb) is that "the firearm found at the incident" had not been fired, and the bullet found lodged in the taxi's radio was a jacketed round of the type consistent with those fired from police weapons. Putting two and two together, the number somewhere between pi and 2*e appears to be that an armed officer confronted an armed person in a taxi, and fired the first shot. Whether he *should* have fired remains to be determined. But of course, the mere fact that he shot first is enough to outrage many people. (This is not, after all, "Star Wars". =:o\ )

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

The threat would have at least 10 times as many people out on the streets in protest the following day/night, with the police's meagre resources thus split between ensuring public safety at the resulting demonstrations and minimising the impact of the night's youthful festivities criminal rampage.

Not to mention the millions of pounds then wasted on post-mortem inquiries into why the hell the police decided to do such a damn fool thing in an already tense and tricky situation.

[howeird]

Thanks. I hear you. A very different culture.