Tottenham Riots

Hmmm, that's true. I hate it when you make my own arguments work against me lol

It may be unpleasant for any bystanders but tear gas would be an option i think. It would certainly disperse crowds if nothing else and give police more opportunity to round people up.

P.S. Are you telling me you wouldn't loot Dr. Johnsons head given a chance lol (jk, traffic cones at xmas is the limit for him, but a giant chess piece from Beacon Park might be tempting )

 

Like I said... I heard an old chap say this over the radio!

What is your view on these animals torching peoples property, homes/flats with others still asleep in bed? Do you condone this?

 

Oh, aye. These looters do not in any way have a criminal background or the fundamental societal disconnect, nihilism and misdirected hate that terrorists have. Totally different.

You are still not getting it. What makes people behave themselves is a fear of punishment, social disapproval and, if we're lucky, an internal sense of right and wrong. Not the law or the police, because it can't be everywhere. Most of the time society polices itself.

These guys haven't got any of that. They have no strong parental authority figures; their experience of 'punishment' is often random and meaningless, they experience a fundamental disconnect from society and they have no internal moral compass. So they are out of control. They see stuff, they take stuff. Or break stuff. Or people.

You can try more punishment, but these guys live in neighbourhoods where kids carry knives to school for protection, so that may not impress them. So perhaps you need to reconnect them to society, through their families back at home. See my second post.

The problem is societal disconnect. I know a volunteer of a small charity in Nottingham. She and her friends go out into the city centre at night with some thermos flasks of tea and biscuits and... just talk. To whoever they find roaming those streets at night. Nothing heavy, just a cup of tea and a chat. I know it sounds terribly cheesy and goat-hair-socks-and-sandals-tree-huggy tripe but guess what: in the ensuing month, vandalism and theft in the city centre dropped massively. I mean by huge numbers. Turns out, what those people wanted was not to break stuff and steal stuff, but some attention. I mean, children shoplift and thrash things to get attention, don't they? Extrapolate from there. Kind of makes sense.

Now before you say anything, yes, cups of tea and a chat may not seem a terribly good or effective idea right now. But if Twitter and Facebook and was flooded by the desperate pleas of parents, grandparents and younger siblings, calling rioters by their names and asking them to come home, it stops being so much fun. The principle has been proven to work.

 

One of the worst things to come out of this will be the hundreds of criminals who get away with it all, and no doubt the sueing against the government/police by the looters which will ensue, and no doubt which will be won by the looters.

 

I'm sorry liratheal, but leaving things to "run its course" is just asking for more trouble.

You cannot expect people to just allow things to continue. People are starting to die.

A simple way to remove the "innocent bystander" option is to impose a curfew. If you are in the action after that time, you knew the risks, but you stayed. Tough.

 

Simple fact is the Army is trained to kill people. It is not a police force and it should not have to be. Arming the police with the tools they need - water cannon, baton rounds, even live ammunition - is what is needed.

Yes, we'd all like to see looters summarily executed on street corners. It isn't right, it isn't going to happen.

 

A curfew does sound like a good idea if I'm honest, regardless of what is done aswell as it, since it should leave only those who are looting/intending to loot etc

 

The ARMY are also trained to fight fires... remember a few years back with the strikes and the fire brigade .

A curfew sounds like an excellent idea. Anyone caught out after the curfew is imposed so be dealt with severely!

 

But you added: A little dramatic some may say however; I feel if we show them we're not to be walked over, they may think twice about vandalising other peoples hard earned property!

Of course I don't condone their behaviour in any way whatsoever. I stated above I agree with Rich's post on the reintroduction of the riot act.

 

I think it impairs thinking about a constructive solution to refer to them as animals. Call them names if you want, but remember they are humans.

I don't think that suggesting that shooting people is a basically flawed idea automatically condones torching others.

 

No, I do get it, honestly. The problem I see is that all of the issues compound each other. I agree that most of the initiators of the trouble will have criminal backgrounds and that countering the violence with violence is not the best solution but in this case I do not believe that the nicely nicely approach will work.

As you said there is no punishment, or at least no fear of punishment, and that is down to the government and ,in part, stupid EU legislations about rights and such. Prison should be prison, as I've said before, a concrete box with a bunk and a bucket and nothing else within the cell. Also the idea of hard labour still appeals to me, it's a real punishment, working 10 hour days for absolutely no benefit. And before anyone cries 'you can't treat them like slaves' please shut up, they can be treated like slaves. They broke the law and therefore gave up their right to be treated as an equal.

Without proper forms of punishment, there is no deterrent.

 

Someone whips out the Scandinavia very relaxed prison system=low re-offending rates.

Then again I was talking to someone who lives in Singapore. Apparently crime is almost non existent as punishment is so brutal.

 

I agree with needing harsher punishments, sadly what works in Scandinavia won't work here due to the way people are brought up here (I presume)
If someone isn't scared of the punishment, then it is worthless.

 

Asian cultures like Sinagpore are very different to Euorpean cultures the two are barely comparable.

 

Calling them human implies that they can and do act humanely. There is no compassion, no thought, no shred of humanity in what they are doing. If they act like animals, we should treat them as such.

 

This is exactly what has caused it, they have no morals or ethics due to how they are brought up- Most of us wouldn't dream of setting alight a random persons property, the guilt you would feel for ruining there lives would be far to great- These people are looking for attention and are getting it from their friends

"Oh mate I just torched down that car init" To which the 'mate' would reply "yeah bruv sick" or something along those lines, helping fuel their depraved narcissistic ego and need of aproval from peers which they don't positively get at home. I doubt there is any way of stopping it now its gotten to this stage and would happily see the army come in and clout them over the head each time they broke/vandlised something, it appears to be the only language they understand. I doubt a curfew would work these days however, it is a 24/7 world we live in!

 

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/7337


Get is signed!

 

These 'people' are NOT HUMANS!

They have no respect or regard for other peoples lives so WHY should we treat them as human beings!!!

 

Absolutely could not agree more! If they don't want to act like human beings, who are we to deprive them of their need to remove that label?

Animals, the lot of them.

 

Well said man!