Dog Brothers Public Forum

DBMA Martial Arts Forum => Martial Arts Topics => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 08:32:08 AM

Title: Dealing with Social Breakdown
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 08:32:08 AM
I'd like to open a discussion about what a citizen is to do when living in the UK context.  Guns are not a legal option, nor are knives.  What to do?  (I gather the sales of baseball bats have gone through the roof.) What else?   Worth thinking about:  How to organize the neighborhood?
Title: Re: The UK riots
Post by: Doppelgangster on August 10, 2011, 08:38:21 AM
Cricket bats?
Title: Re: The UK riots
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 10:00:28 AM
Good idea :-D

I'm hearing that the authorities are telling neighborhoods NOT to organize  :?
Title: Re: The UK riots
Post by: Cranewings on August 10, 2011, 04:25:12 PM
Good idea :-D

I'm hearing that the authorities are telling neighborhoods NOT to organize  :?

I thought gang battles were the national past time over their:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKBPeLfnCSQ
Title: Re: The UK riots
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 05:40:20 PM
A lot of obvious stuff in here, but perhaps one or two points worthy of consideration:

Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart discusses personal safety during mob violence situations while using the recent London riots as an example.


Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

In today’s Dispatch we’re going to change gears a little bit and take a tactical and a practical look at riots and using the topic of the London riots, discuss how people should behave and what you should do when riots happen.

It needs to be understood that riots and mob activity can and quite frequently do turn violent. It is still very important for regular citizens just to maintain a heightened alert of situational awareness during times of civil disobedience. So what you’re going to want to do is really keep alert as to what’s going on through the news media. You are going to obviously want to keep your eyes and ears open to see what is happening on the street outside your hotel or outside your residence or business. In a lot of recent riots including the London riot, there have been a lot of rumors that the protesters are actually using twitter and instant messaging and blackberries to coordinate their movements. If you can find out which twitter feeds that the protesters are using, that can allow you to really monitor where they’re going, what their intentions are and that can also help you stay one step ahead of them and help you stay out of trouble.

If you are a foreigner you are going to want to make sure that you’re connected with your government and with your embassy. A lot of governments allow you to register and they will send out either text warnings or email warnings to you that will let you know when things are going on. One of the positive things about being registered with your embassy is that if it does become necessary to evacuate from a country — especially a Third World country that’s kind of remote — it’s nice to be on the Embassy system so they know you’re there, they will be looking for you and they will account for you when they are looking for space to get you out whether it is on a ship or an aircraft.

If you are a resident in a city like London or you’re just a visitor, the second thing that you want to do is to start looking at your contingency plans and your fly-away kit. You want to make sure that you have everything you need packed and ready to go in case you need to run. It’s also important to remember that most security measures and physical security measures were made to protect against one threat but not really the mob violence threat. Many times in a mob violence type situation, they can turn into a confining cage that can actually endanger you. If a mob has time and they have sledgehammers, pipes, they can break through bulletproof windows or bullet resistant windows, they can break through heavy doors and they can get into a facility given that time. It may take a half-hour, it may take 40 minutes but they can get through those the security measures so just because you have good security at your site, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be prepared to get out of there and to fly to safety.

One of the things after we’ve gotten intelligence on our eyes, once we examine our contingency plans and our fly-away kits we also then want to figure out exactly where our line is when we’re going to want to withdraw, and this is going to be something that each individual is going to have to come up with themselves; when the rioters get to such and such an intersection such and such block, this is the place where I’m going to want to make my escape and get out of the area.

There are also different kinds of mob violence and it’s important to remember that. In cases like London it’s basically general, you have a lot of looting and some of this is really kind of a financially motivated. You have kids that are hitting sporting goods stores to steal sneakers, they are hitting electronics stores; it’s not really directed against any one group or any sort of ethnicity. However, there are other cases we’ve seen some past London riots, for example the May Day riots in 2000, we had a very anti-globalization campaign going on and in those kinds of riots multinational corporations and hotels and banks and restaurants were attacked just because they were a part of these globalized chains. So really understanding what the riots are about, what’s motivating the mob and who they are going to target is very important in creating your plan and creating your understanding of when you need to pull out of the area. Once the mob is attacking there’s really very little that a person can do to defend themselves or their property and it’s really at that point where you need to forget about the property and be much more concerned about saving life.

Title: The American solution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 05:49:20 PM
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100100323/if-british-shopkeepers-had-the-right-to-bear-arms-vicious-thugs-would-think-twice-before-looting/






If British shopkeepers had the right to bear arms, vicious thugs would think twice before looting




By Nile Gardiner
World
Last updated: August 10th, 2011





Turks on the streets of Dalston on Monday night
 
During the Los Angeles riots in 1992, many store owners in the south central part of the city defended their property against marauding gangs with their own weapons, and succeeded in protecting their livelihoods and thousands of jobs that depended on them. And across the country, Americans admired their bravery, thankful for the Second Amendment to the US Constitution which protects their right to keep and bear arms, and thereby defend themselves, their families and their property. In contrast in London in 2011, shopkeepers were left at the mercy of feral, brutal thugs acting with impunity across whole swathes of the capital as the police were overwhelmed. If they had the right to bear arms and defend their stores with force, it would have been a very different story, and brutal looters would have met firm resistance.
 
Britain’s gun laws are among the most draconian in the world, yet the nation has some of the highest levels of violent crime and burglary in the West, and there is no shortage of gun crime in major cities such as London and Manchester. While criminal gangs are often able to acquire firearms on the black market, ordinary law-abiding British citizens are barred from owning guns for self-defence.
 
The riots in London, the West Midlands and the North West should prompt a renewed debate in Britain over the right to bear arms by private citizens. The shocking scenes of looting across the country are a reminder that the police cannot always be relied upon to protect homes and businesses during a period of widespread social disorder. The defence of life and property can never be entrusted solely to the state, not least when there is a complete breakdown in law and order. As we have seen this week in Britain, when individuals are barred from defending their own property from mobs of vicious thugs, sheer anarchy and terror reins
Title: British humor alive and well
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 09:53:41 PM
http://bigpeace.com/elcid/2011/08/09/sign-in-front-of-brit-shop-says-it-all/
Title: A member of the Unorganized Militia steps in
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 11, 2011, 08:54:25 PM
http://www.epicfail.com/2011/08/11/rioter-fail/
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 11, 2011, 10:15:11 PM
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Rioting-for-Fun-and-Profit

Rioting for Fun and Profit
Paul A. Rahe · 9 hours ago

The riots in Britain are instructive. There is, according to The Wall Street Journal, one neighborhood where the rioters backed off. In the North London neighborhood of Dalton, we are told,

Hundreds of Turkish and Kurdish men, many armed with broken billiard cues, poured onto the streets to protect their businesses and homes from the kind of mayhem that was laying waste to other parts of London.

"They created a barrier and chased the kids back," said Burcu Bay, who works as a waitress at Tugra, a Turkish sweet shop and cafe on Dalston's main thoroughfare. "It was like being in a war."

What happened in Dalston, an area defined by its large Turkish and Kurdish immigrant community, was a rare instance of locals uniting to defy the wave of violence that has swept London in recent nights, leaving a trail of burned-out buildings, looted shops and broken glass. In other areas, rioters encountered little resistance, as terrified locals took cover and stretched police were.


The clashes in Dalston, a ramshackle neighborhood of pawn shops, Turkish social clubs and kebab joints, began when a gang of about 50 youths approached the area from the east, setting fire to a bus and smashing in the windows of a chain restaurant, a bank and an electrical goods shop.

Dozens of local men came out on the street to block their progress. Over the course of the evening, they pushed back the heavily outnumbered troublemakers in three separate surges, driving them away from a cluster of Turkish-owned shops and businesses. Women and elderly men sought refuge in local cafés to watch the clashes from a safe distance.

In some instances, skirmishes turned violent. "The police wanted to arrest one of my friends because he punched some of the guys," said a waiter at the Somine restaurant. "We didn't let them."

A key driver behind the locals' response was the strong sense of communal identity among Turkish and Kurdish residents of Dalston, who saw the rioters as a kind of alien invasion. "These people weren't local," said the waiter. "We've been here for ten years and would have known them if they were from the area."

The article – written by Guy Chazan and Jeanne Whalen with help from Peter Evans – is a nice piece of reporting. It tells you everything that you need to know – right down to the crucial fact that the police wanted to arrest one man for punching a thug intent on stealing his property. What is happening right now in London and in cities to the north could best be described as a self-inflicted wound.

Do you remember the riots a year or two ago in Paris and in other French cities and the burning of cars along the Champs Ėlysées? What you may not remember is something else that was reported in passing at the time – that, for some years prior to these riots, one hundred cars a night were being torched in the cities of France. I passed through Paris not long after these events, and a French professor I know told me that this latter piece of news came as a real shock to her. The truth is that the police had, in effect, abandoned the Muslim neighborhoods and that impecunious, hard-working Muslims living in these neighborhoods, men and women who had scrimped and saved to buy jalopies, had been losing them to the thugs for some time. None of this was reported until the disorders spread from the slums in the suburbs to the wealthy districts of Paris.


Something of the same sort can be said about Britain as well. There are two dimensions to the British story. First – although what we call the right to bear arms had its origins as an English right, guaranteed in the 1688/89 Declaration of Rights and Bill of Rights – that right was  gradually abrogated in the course of the twentieth century. Second – although the right to self-defense, the right to defend one’s person and property when the authorities cannot in a timely and effective fashion provide protection – is a natural right and had always, until recently, been recognized as such in Britain – that right, too, was abrogated in the course of the last century. There is a very fine book on the subject by my friend Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. Entitled Guns and Violence: The English Experience, it was published by Harvard University Press seven years ago. Her two books ought to be force-fed to every member of Parliament.

For some time now – and this was already true, alas, in the Thatcher years – the political class (Labour, Tory, and Liberal) has been united behind the principle that these matters must be left to the police – that, if one’s life or limbs are in danger, one can of course use force to defend one’s person but that one cannot rightfully lift a finger to defend one’s property and that, if the attack extends to one’s person, the force that one deploys in its defense must be strictly proportionate to the threat. If, for example, your home was burglarized over and over again and you secured a gun, a knife, or a baseball bat and killed or harmed an intruder, you would go to prison for a long stay.

I am not making this up. I was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford between 1971 and 1974. I was a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge in the spring of 1999, and I was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford in 2005/6. In the quarter-century that passed between my first stint in the UK and my second, Britain changed. I remember a man living in a rural area being sent to prison for what amounted to life for killing someone who had repeatedly broken into his home.


I remember other things as well. When I was at Cambridge University, my wife and I went into London one evening to go to the opera. Our return on the train was decidedly uncomfortable. Our car – and the other cars nearby – came to be filled with young women and men (mostly the latter) who were drunk and disorderly. There was no one on the train to prevent them from making our trip a real misery. Had we said a word, I have no doubt that the crowd would have turned on us. It reminds me a bit of what it was like in New York City in the summer of 1969. The hooligans were in command.

In fact, it was worse than that. One evening, a group of thugs took the train into Cambridge from a nearby town, walked to Clare Hall, hurled bricks through the windows, broke into the apartments, stole computers, then marched to the train station and journeyed home. No one was ever caught.

I am told that fewer than ten percent of burglaries are solved and that, of those who are convicted, fewer than ten percent do time. In effect, there is no law and there is no order in Britain. You cannot bear arms. You are denied the means of self-defense. It is illegal to use force to defend your property. If you use “disproportionate force” in defending your person, you can and will be jailed. It is demanded that you leave all such matters to the police, and law enforcement is ineffectual. Not surprisingly, even before the riots that Britain is suffering right now, theft and violent crime were considerably greater there than in the United States.

In Britain, they have a lot to learn – or relearn – and it is an open question whether these recent events will give rise to a bout of a rethinking or not. I rather doubt that David Cameron has the backbone, and one cannot look to the Liberals or to Labour. Those associated with the last-mentioned party, which is out of power right now, will whine and whine about “social justice.” In the United Kingdom, as in the United States, a left-liberal is someone who pities the criminal, not the victim.

In the US, we are generally better off. For one thing, we incarcerate criminals. There has been much hand-wringing about this in recent years, as our own left-liberals fulminate against the incarceration rate. But there is one truth that cannot be gainsaid: a criminal who is locked up is not on the streets committing crimes. Lock them up and the crime rate will go down (as it has in the US).

We are better off in other ways as well. The right to bear arms is not only given lip service here. In recent years, it has been reasserted by the Supreme Court. Moreover, in many states, one has a right to defend one’s property. In those states, if someone breaks into my home, I can kill him with impunity. And, finally, thanks in part to the example of Rudy Giuliani in New York, we have policing methods aimed at concentrating attention on high-crime areas and on harassing criminals that really work.


The appearance of flash mobs in Philadelphia and Chicago is, however, a warning. I would like to know more than I do about the incarceration rate in Pennsylvania and Illinois, about the policing methods used, and about the laws pertinent to the right of a shopkeeper to gun down thieves.

In times like these, it is useful to remember the immortal words of John Adams: “We talk of liberty and property, but, if we cut up the law of self-defence, we cut up the foundation of both. . . . If a robber meets me in the street, and commands me to surrender my purse, I have a right to kill him without asking questions.” 
 

 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Bambi on August 12, 2011, 08:26:56 AM
"one can of course use force to defend one’s person but that one cannot rightfully lift a finger to defend one’s property and that, if the attack extends to one’s person, the force that one deploys in its defense must be strictly proportionate to the threat"

I'm fairly sure that he's wrong, Common law in the uk allows people to use reasonable force to prevent any crime, including crimes against property
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 12, 2011, 08:59:37 AM
"one can of course use force to defend one’s person but that one cannot rightfully lift a finger to defend one’s property and that, if the attack extends to one’s person, the force that one deploys in its defense must be strictly proportionate to the threat"

I'm fairly sure that he's wrong, Common law in the uk allows people to use reasonable force to prevent any crime, including crimes against property

I'm no expert in UK law, but I recall more than one horror story of citizens in the UK getting jammed up for legit acts of self-defense.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 12, 2011, 09:10:14 AM
GM is right; even self defense laws in the UK are rather draconian.

That said, legislation is now being considered that a person can use "reasonable force" to defend their property as well.

The key, still undecided is what is "reasonable force". 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 12, 2011, 11:08:31 AM
Woof,
 If a mob is in the process of looting then burning down everything you've worked for and denying you the means by which you support your family then I say it's reasonable to level a weapon at them and start shooting and I think having it widely know that someone will kill them if they engage in this kind of barbarity would prove a strong deterrent from having it happening in the first place.
                                                           P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 12, 2011, 12:27:24 PM
I think you have watched too many movies.   :-)
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 12, 2011, 12:58:39 PM
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TsFXJA9YHlE/TTeIfFOIuVI/AAAAAAAAAQI/VqNzxdhlp5s/s1600/58852252.jpg)

Woof JDN,
 This picture isn't from a movie, it's from the LA riots. These are Korean American store owners keeping gangs of looters from robbing and then burning their store to the ground. Their store still stands where many others were burned down.
                        P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 12, 2011, 01:21:58 PM
Great photo, looks cool, but to my knowledge not one looter was shot and killed from this or any other rooftop.

If they had, and only their property was at stake, i.e. no direct threat to them since they are on the rooftop, they would be arrested and probably
sent to prison for a long time.

Sorry, my movie comment stands; you can't sit on the rooftop with your Barrett 50mm rifle and pick off looters who are carrying away your store's TV or refrigerators.  You can't kill people for "denying you the means by which you support your family".  Unless you or another human being's life is directly threatened, that's murder and you will go to jail far far longer than any looter who stole your inventory.

I suggest you consider the consequences before you start shooting.

Stay home and buy good insurance.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 12, 2011, 01:37:47 PM
Woof JDN,
 If you were in a building and someone set it on fire would you consider your life endangered? BTW four people were shot by store owers in the LA riots.
 

 Professor Pamela Oliver
Department of Sociology 

Deaths in the 1992 LA Riot
Past students expressed concern about my not mentioning White people killed in the 1992 Los Angeles riot. Besides Reginald Denny, who was beaten but not killed, there were three other White people who were killed in front of witnesses during the riot. Of course, these were not the only people killed in the riot. Most who were killed were Black and Latino.

Deaths in the 1992 Los Angeles Riot

 
 Shot by police or NatGuard
 Shot by Store Owners
 Shot by Other, Seen
 Shot, Not Seen
 Arson
 Sticks & boards + stabbed + strangled
 Car accident (incl. hit & run)
 Total
 
Black
 6
 1
 7
 3
 1
 0
 7
 25
 
Latino
 5
 2
 3
 1
 1
 3
 1
 16
 
White
 0
 0
 5
 0
 1
 2
 0
 8
 
Asian
 0
 0
 1
 1
 0
 0
 0
 2
 
Algerian
 0
 1
 0
 0
 0
 0
 0
 1
 
Indian or Middle East
 0
 0
 0
 0
 1
 0
 0
 1
 
Total
 11
 4
 16
 5
 4
 5
 8
 53
 
                                      P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Bambi on August 12, 2011, 02:16:04 PM
"one can of course use force to defend one’s person but that one cannot rightfully lift a finger to defend one’s property and that, if the attack extends to one’s person, the force that one deploys in its defense must be strictly proportionate to the threat"

I'm fairly sure that he's wrong, Common law in the uk allows people to use reasonable force to prevent any crime, including crimes against property

I'm no expert in UK law, but I recall more than one horror story of citizens in the UK getting jammed up for legit acts of self-defense.

I'm no expert in policing in the states, so I avoid judging US police forces solely on the horror stories about police brutality that show up in the media here from time to time.  Coming to conclusions based on emotive cases that get hyped in the press is rarely useful.


Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 12, 2011, 02:17:37 PM
"one can of course use force to defend one’s person but that one cannot rightfully lift a finger to defend one’s property and that, if the attack extends to one’s person, the force that one deploys in its defense must be strictly proportionate to the threat"

I'm fairly sure that he's wrong, Common law in the uk allows people to use reasonable force to prevent any crime, including crimes against property

I'm no expert in UK law, but I recall more than one horror story of citizens in the UK getting jammed up for legit acts of self-defense.

I'm no expert in policing in the states, so I avoid judging US police forces solely on the horror stories about police brutality that show up in the media here from time to time.  Coming to conclusions based on emotive cases that get hyped in the press is rarely useful.



Good point!
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 12, 2011, 02:24:40 PM
Woof JDN,
 If you were in a building and someone set it on fire would you consider your life endangered? BTW four people were shot by store owers in the LA riots.
 



My life might be in danger if the building I was in was on fire, but that still does not necessarily give me the right to shoot the guy who set the fire after the fact especially if I have another way to retreat.  Nor does it give me the right to shoot him if he has already left and is walking down the street with my inventory.

As for the four people shot by store owners, I couldn't find a definitive source.  Is it confirmed or merely speculated that four were shot by store owners?  Further, circumstances of each death are important.

If I'm in the store and you come in with a gun or knife, threatening me, I have every right to defend myself and shoot you. 

I do not have the right to shoot someone for merely start carrying out (stealing) inventory. 

However, my main point in this discussion is that you absolutely do not have the right to sit up on your roof and play sniper, shooting anyone carrying
a refrigerator or TV set.  You will go to jail for a very long time.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Point Dog on August 13, 2011, 01:58:43 AM
Gentlemen, I've avoided entering this conversation.

a) The majority of posters here seem to be of the die-hard republican variety, a political concept with is looked upon with some bemusement in the UK by the majority of the public.  Consider that Obama has good press over here, the only dent being how long it took him to commit initially to Lybia (and people here understand why he wouldn't want to commit his country to another war).  Actually having a meaningful political conversation here is difficult for those of us who live outside of the US as generally wee are ignored or looked down upon.

b) The UK majority public view isn't that we have draconian firearms laws, but more that the US (but strangely not Canada) have too relaxed firearms legislation.

c) I believe Niles Gardiner was quoted as a UK journalist here.  Gardiner is a UK national, but is US educated and spent most of his life in the US (in fact I believe he lives in Washington).  Even die hard conservatives consider him right wing and a throwback to the Thatcher years (I think he was a researcher or advisor to Thatchers government).

d) The 'riots' were only really front page news because parliment was in summer break.

e) The 'riots' were allowed to progress because of MPs instructing the Police to 'stand and observe' rather than intervene initially.  This is because there are 12 legal cases still outstanding from the G8 protests about Police 'brutality'.  Also, the political lords misread the situation as politically motivated, rather than criminally.

f) Once the acting Chief Constable decided that it was criminal, rather than political, 9,000 officers were deployed to take control of the streets.  Tactics included driving armoured vehicles at high speed towards 'criminals' to disperse them (seems to have been effective).

g) The acting Chief has asked that people stop calling them rioters, this implies that there is political motivation.

h) Contrary to what our illustrious Prime Minister would have you believe, the Met have always had the capability and authority to deploy baton rounds, rubber bullets, water cannons, gas and call on two army squadrons of police/riot trained infantry. They have chosen not to.

i) In the cities of Glasgow and Dundee, 'rioters' tried to organise.  They were immediately informed on to the Police by friends and family and arrested within two hours.

j) Despite cutbacks in funding, UK volunteer groups have been out in force on the streets to educate youngsters that this is not acceptable.

k) UK police have been identifying criminals from CCTV footage and conducting twilight raids, with courts in London and Birmingham sitting overnight to try and prosecute.

UK society is not collapsing and we are able to police ourselves against criminals of opportunity without the deployment of lethal force and adding that we have and are able to apply even that.  Which is what kicked off these 'riots' in the first place, but I'm sure you are all aware of that.

UK society is not collapsing
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 07:14:58 AM
Well put; thank you Point Dog.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 07:31:40 AM
b) The UK majority public view isn't that we have draconian firearms laws, but more that the US (but strangely not Canada) have too relaxed firearms legislation.

Sometime back, I did some research and looked at the stats for home invasion/occupied dwelling burglaries in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The US had the lowest rates, especially in the states with the "Make my day" type laws that provided immunity from criminal and civil liability for the use of deadly force in the defense of the home. Those tend to be the states with "shall issue" concealed carry permit laws and the lowest levels of street crime. Funny how that works.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 07:42:33 AM

http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm

Sec. 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is justified in using deadly force against another


to protect land or tangible, movable property:
(1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and

(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:

(A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or

(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and

(3) he reasonably believes that:

(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or

(B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.

**From memory, New Mexico is another state that allows for deadly force to prevent arson. Unfortunately, not every state is that enlightened.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 08:10:12 AM
Great photo, looks cool, but to my knowledge not one looter was shot and killed from this or any other rooftop.

If they had, and only their property was at stake, i.e. no direct threat to them since they are on the rooftop, they would be arrested and probably
sent to prison for a long time.

Sorry, my movie comment stands; you can't sit on the rooftop with your Barrett 50mm rifle and pick off looters who are carrying away your store's TV or refrigerators.  You can't kill people for "denying you the means by which you support your family".  Unless you or another human being's life is directly threatened, that's murder and you will go to jail far far longer than any looter who stole your inventory.

I suggest you consider the consequences before you start shooting.

Stay home and buy good insurance.

There is no such thing as a "Barrett 50mm rifle", JDN. There are Barrett rifles chambered for .50 caliber BMG.

Some people are not content to hide under their beds when there is a threat.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 08:12:39 AM
The way I read this statue, a neighborhood kid could come on to your property at night, steal your bicycle (theft during the nighttime)  and you could shoot him in the back as he pedaled (fleeing away) away to stop him from escaping with your property.

I'm not sure I would call that an "enlightened" law. 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 13, 2011, 08:19:47 AM
Woof JDN,
 You are mixing the lines of what is vigilantism and what is self defense under the law. If you are in a full blown riot, with gangs looting and burning down the buildings around you and they approach your building next, you have every right to stand your ground, in some cases I would say you would be putting yourself in more danger if you tried to leave, and I think it reasonable to you arm yourself to deter them from doing to you what they have done to everyone else up to that point. If they attack anyway then the owner would be justified in shooting at that point. What you described is nothing like that and it is not what I'm saying that I or anyone else should do. Shooting people at random just because they are in the street or even someone that's walking away with some of your stuff is not what I or anyother law abiding citizen should do and you're right that's not self defense and anyone doing something like that is a criminal. You seem to want to paint anyone defending themselves in this type of situation as being a criminal themselves and that simply is not the case.
 The guys on the roof in the picture I posted were up there as a deterrent, when groups approached the building they would warn them to stop and go away and they could this without putting themselves in danger by being down on the street and of course they could see what was coming. Others were inside the building guarding the doors, behind cover, and ready to shoot anyone that tried to break in or set a fire. They didn't have to kill anyone and were successfully in saving their store. An important part about gun ownership that many ignore is the deterrent factor and how many lives are saved because of it. We always hear about how many people died in these situations but there are no statistics for how many lives were saved by firearms and note that many of the deaths were caused by means other than firearms.
                                                         P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 08:21:58 AM

There is no such thing as a "Barrett 50mm rifle", JDN. There are Barrett rifles chambered for .50 caliber BMG.

Some people are not content to hide under their beds when there is a threat.


Who cares?  I don't own one and never will.  You got my point. 

And if there is a "threat" to me or my family, I have no problem using lethal force.  However, different than you, I do have a problem
shooting and killing someone who is no immediate threat to me or anyone else for merely taking property.

IMHO that person is a murderer and deserves a "bed" in jail for a long time in my opinion.  They can sleep on it or sleep under it.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 08:23:53 AM
The way I read this statue, a neighborhood kid could come on to your property at night, steal your bicycle (theft during the nighttime)  and you could shoot him in the back as he pedaled (fleeing away) away to stop him from escaping with your property.

I'm not sure I would call that an "enlightened" law. 

Being a criminal should be dangerous. When criminals get shot, it tends to discourage criminal behavior. It is enlightened and effective.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 08:25:19 AM
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUaoil0wsyU[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUaoil0wsyU
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 08:27:30 AM
Hoooray for the Koreans! Most all S. Korean males were required to serve in the S. Korean military for a few years, so have some degree of weapons training.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 13, 2011, 08:38:30 AM
Quote
UK society is not collapsing and we are able to police ourselves against criminals of opportunity without the deployment of lethal force and adding that we have and are able to apply even that.  Which is what kicked off these 'riots' in the first place, but I'm sure you are all aware of that.

UK society is not collapsing
 Point Dog

Woof Point Dog,
 I'm sure the 4 dead so far will be eternally grateful for that. :-P


A 68-year-old man who was set upon as he tried to stamp out a fire during the London riots has died, becoming the fourth victim in three days of explosive violence that rocked the capital.  
  
Richard Mannington Bowes was badly beaten, suffering head injuries, in Ealing, West London on Tuesday morning (NZT) after remonstrating with teenagers who were setting fire to two industrial bins outside a shopping centre.

Officers who went to his aid were pelted with missiles and driven off, leaving the senior citizen to fend for himself against his assailant.

The Ealing resident was placed on a life-support machine following the attack, but died this morning, Scotland Yard said.
  
"This was a brutal incident that resulted in the senseless killing of an innocent man," Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane, of the Met's Homicide and Serious Crime Command said.

"I still need the assistance of the community who may have witnessed the attack on Richard, to come forward and provide information or images they may have recorded on mobile devices. This information could be crucial in catching his killer."

Police have issued two CCTV images of a man suspected of carrying out the assault, and said he was actively engaged in the rioting and looting that devastated the area. Detectives say the suspect also appears to be known to a large number of youth in the area.

Cameron vows to fight back

British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to hunt down just such criminals and opportunistic looters he blamed for Britain's worst violence in decades, but acknowledged that police tactics had failed at the start of the rioting.
 
"The fightback has well and truly begun," the Conservative leader, grappling with a defining crisis of his 15-month-old premiership, told an emergency session of parliament.
 
"As to the lawless minority, the criminals who've taken what they can get, I say this: We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done," Cameron said.
 
Police have arrested more than 1,200 people across England, filling cells and forcing courts to work through the night to process hundreds of cases.
 
Community leaders say inequality, cuts to public services by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and youth unemployment fed into the violence in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other multi-ethnic cities.
 
Cameron is under pressure from different quarters to ease his austerity plans, toughen policing and do more for inner-city communities, even as economic malaise grips a nation whose social and racial tensions exploded in four nights of mayhem.
 
But he denied deprivation or planned government spending cuts, mostly not yet implemented, had caused the riots.
 
"This is not about poverty, it's about culture. A culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities," Cameron said.
 
The initial police response was inadequate, Cameron told legislators who had been recalled from their summer break. "There were simply far too few police deployed on to the streets. And the tactics they were using weren't working."
 
Defending planned police funding cuts against criticism from opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband, Cameron proposed more police powers, including the right to demand that people remove face coverings if they are suspected of crime.
 


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"I hope that in the debates we have on the causes we don't fall into a tiresome discussion about resources," said Cameron.
 
"When you have deep moral failures you don't hit them with a wall of money."
 
Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said this week a 20 percent cut in police funding until 2015, planned by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, would pose great challenges.
 
"I do sense without question resentment (among police officers) that they are now being portrayed in the routine as corrupt, unprofessional and need sorting out," he told Reuters.
 
The British leader said he would maintain a higher police presence of 16,000 officers on London streets through the weekend and would consider calling in the army for secondary roles in future unrest to free up frontline police.
 
And he promised to compensate people whose property was damaged by rioters, even if they were uninsured. The riots will cost insurers more than 200 million pounds, ($323 million), the Association of British Insurers said, doubling its previous claims estimate.
 
The increase came as British prime minister David Cameron said an 1886 law that allows insurers to pass on some of the cost of riot-related claims to the police will apply, with the government ready to make up any funding shortfall.
 
"The government will ensure the police have the funds they need to meet the cost of any legitimate claims," Cameron said in parliament, adding that the deadline for filing claims would be extended to 42 days from 14.
 
Under the Riots (Damages) Act, uninsured businesses and households, as well as insurers facing riot-related claims from their customers, can seek partial compensation from the police.
 
Cameron, who has already authorised police to use baton rounds and water cannon where necessary, said he would explore curbs on the use of social media tools if these were being used to plot "violence, disorder and criminality".
 
Public fury over looting

Many Britons were appalled at the scenes on their streets, from the televised mugging of an injured Malaysian teenager to a Polish woman photographed leaping from a burning building, as well as the looting of anything from baby clothes to TV sets.
 
But occupying the moral high ground is tricky in a country where some lawmakers and policemen have been embroiled in expenses and bribery scandals, and top bankers take huge bonuses even as the taxpayer bails out financial institutions.
 
The unrest flared first in north London after police shot dead a black man. That disturbance then mutated into widespread looting and violence.
 
British leaders are concerned the rioting could damage confidence in the economy and in London, one of the world's biggest financial centres and venue for next year's Olympics.
 
The prime minister said criminal street gangs were at the heart of the violence. "Territorial, hierarchical and incredibly violent, they are mostly composed of young boys, mainly from dysfunctional homes," he added.
 
Arguing that police, local government and voluntary workers needed to work together to stop inner-city street gangs, as they had in American cities such as Boston, he said: "I want this to be a national priority."

YES YOU READ THAT FIRST PART RIGHT THE COPS WERE THERE BUT COULDN'T SAVE THE GUY FROM BEING BEAT TO DEATH! THEY RAN AWAY, LEAVING HIM THERE TO FIGHT ON HIS OWN! :-o :-o :-o
[/b][/u]

 http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/fourth-death-uk-riots-4349121 (http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/fourth-death-uk-riots-4349121)

                                          P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: DougMacG on August 13, 2011, 08:46:45 AM
"The majority of posters here seem to be of the die-hard republican variety..."
  - taken as a compliment. :wink: I know the policy here is that thoughtful opposing views are always welcome, seeking the truth, and yours is certainly a thoughtful and informative post.

"...those of us who live outside of the US as generally we are ignored or looked down upon."
  - I hope not!  We get bogged down in US politics but the global reach of the forum is certainly a strength.  

"...US have too relaxed firearms legislation."
  - It's that darn constitution.  Besides protection, the firearm is symbolic of keeping our other rights unless given back freely and legally through the constitutional process.  I don't own any guns.  I also think the strong views here about gun rights come from the martial arts / self defense orientation of the forum as much as from the political leanings.  The desirability of having an armed society is a separate question from the specific 'right' in the U.S.

"Gardiner...right wing and a throwback to the Thatcher years"
  - To me, a compliment for him, though I get the distinction that quoting Gardner from the Telegraph is a counter-indicator of UK mainstream political thought.

Speaking only for myself, the headlines of this unrest reminds me of other problems elsewhere, the car fires of Villiers-le-Bel (Paris) and riots in Rosengard (Malmo Sweden) but that does not mean there are similarities.  As you point out we are learning about the participants and motivations of these in the UK.

I have not posted on this because I don't know anything yet, (except for one post in satire that Libya is recognizing the rioters as the official government of the UK.  No offense intended!)  My personal right wing view is that young people in general would riot less and destroy less if they were busy studying, working and responsible for providing for themselves.
---------------
Topic for another thread and I may be reading this wrong, but why would people be pro-war in Libya but anti-war elsewhere like in Iraq?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 08:50:31 AM
Consider that Obama has good press over here, the only dent being how long it took him to commit initially to Lybia (and people here understand why he wouldn't want to commit his country to another war).

You guys fond of how he has disrespected the UK and worked to undercut the special relationship? I'm sure the queen was enraptured by his teleprompter readings..... :roll:
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 13, 2011, 08:52:41 AM
Woof,
 And the return of Churchill's bust, HOWEVER I think we are getting off topic and focus for this thread on the martial arts forum and need to take some of this to the political thread.
                             P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 09:05:19 AM
Not that it matters a whole lot in our coming election, but Obama is quite popular in Europe.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus-obama-europe-20110626
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 09:12:09 AM
Not that it matters a whole lot in our coming election, but Obama is quite popular in Europe.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus-obama-europe-20110626

Of course, military weakness and financial collapse are very european.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: DougMacG on August 13, 2011, 09:32:41 AM
"The way I read this statue, a neighborhood kid could come on to your property at night, steal your bicycle (theft during the nighttime)  and you could shoot him in the back as he pedaled (fleeing away) away to stop him from escaping with your property."

I don't know if the Texas law is being properly interpreted in the example but people reading that in other states should know you would face possible murder charges elsewhere in that situation.  The self defense laws of the 50 states were linked recently by Crafty.  Recovering the property by other means might include following him home in your car and call the police, if you had time to get your gun and shoot him. 

My view is that entering your premises day or night is more than a property crime.  An intruder with that kind of nerve can be presumed to be dangerous.

It is purely hypothetical anyway because if that it is the right of the homeowner to shoot the burglar, no one is likely to take the bike. 

The question posed is how to deal with property protection if guns/knives etc are not an option.  The hated camera surveillance after the fact seems to be one of the key tools. 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 13, 2011, 09:53:00 AM
Woof,
 I don't think JDN is interested in laws that protect property owners and deters crimes, he's more into making sure rioters can do as much damage as possible so that afterward the government can use it as an excuse to crackdown on the populace at large and introduce more government control and curb the individual rights and freedoms of the law abiding majority, making them even more dependant on the government for protection that the government can't provide. :-P The British citizenry have allowed themselves to be disarmed on the false premise that it would make them safe but what they've done is made themselves defenseless against both criminals and the ineptness of government.
                                                        P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Bambi on August 13, 2011, 10:15:57 AM

Woof Point Dog,
 I'm sure the 4 dead so far will be eternally grateful for that. :-P

4 dead, from only two incidents, In L.A that would probably be called a weekend rather than a riot :lol:  No reports of looters using firearms either, so swings and roundabouts. There was a guy shot and killed in london but apparently not related to the disorder.

Incidentally, the reports that I read about the 68 year old was that there was one police officer present who couldnt come to his aid until reinforcements came, not that multiple officers were beaten back.

If you want to learn anything from these riots it's that unlike any of the UKs previous riots they were mostly motivated by profit rather than protest and that the disorder spread very quickly beyond the epicentre through the use of social media. 


Quote
Of course, military weakness and financial collapse are very european.
[youtube]RzeumERLlBI&[/youtube]

Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 10:24:52 AM

Woof Point Dog,
 I'm sure the 4 dead so far will be eternally grateful for that. :-P

4 dead, from only two incidents, In L.A that would probably be called a weekend rather than a riot :lol:  No reports of looters using firearms either, so swings and roundabouts. There was a guy shot and killed in london but apparently not related to the disorder.


 :-D :-D :-D
4 Dead in L.A. this week?  That IS a good week.  The average is 3 dead EVERYDAY with firearms.
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/sciprc/pdf/FIREARMS.pdf
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 10:43:54 AM

Woof Point Dog,
 I'm sure the 4 dead so far will be eternally grateful for that. :-P

4 dead, from only two incidents, In L.A that would probably be called a weekend rather than a riot :lol:  No reports of looters using firearms either, so swings and roundabouts. There was a guy shot and killed in london but apparently not related to the disorder.


 :-D :-D :-D
4 Dead in L.A. this week?  That IS a good week.  The average is 3 dead EVERYDAY with firearms.
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/sciprc/pdf/FIREARMS.pdf

The vast majority being members of what NPR likes to call "The gang community". What is known in police circles as "public service homicide". Felon A whacks Felon B, and the circle of life completes it's self.

How's those "knife crimes" working out in the UK?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 10:52:01 AM
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1626691.ece

April 8, 2007

 

UK is knife crime capital
 



Will Iredale and Cordelia O'Neill


Another teenage schoolboy was stabbed to death this weekend as Britain was named as one of the knife crime blackspots of the developed world.
 
Paul Erhahon, a 14-year-old from Leytonstone, east London, was killed in a fight involving 12 to 15 youths on Good Friday. He is the sixth teenager to die in a knife attack within the last month.
 
The tragedy occurred as a new study of 28 countries found 13% of violent crime victims in England and Wales had been stabbed or threatened with a knife. Scotland came close behind. Only Spain and Portugal had worse figures, while countries such as Italy, the United States, Estonia and Mexico all had less knife crime.
 
About 2,000 people aged 16 and over in each of 28 countries in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand were asked about their experience of violent crime over the past five years in the study by John van Kesteren, a law professor at Tilburg University in Holland.
 


Related Links
 

Pupils sent to school in body armour







Erhahon was stabbed along with his friend Steven Mafolabomi, 15, who is now in a serious condition in hospital. Both boys managed to stagger a short distance from a block of flats where the attack happened before collapsing in the street. Police have arrested two youths, aged 13 and 19.
 
Detectives, who are appealing for witnesses, say they are keeping an open mind about the motive for Erhahon’s killing. But local residents said the area was plagued by teenage gangs. Erhahon apparently attended the same school as Adam Regis, 15 — a nephew of former Olympic athlete John Regis — who was stabbed in east London last month. Police were not connecting the incidents.
 
Leytonstone residents said Erhahon, who lived with his parents and two younger sisters near the scene of the attack and had ambitions to be a rap musician, had been stabbed once before, a few months previously.
 
A friend of Erhahon said he was part of “the youngers” — the name for youngsters in the area — but emphasised that this was not a gang.
 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2011, 01:19:46 PM
Glad to see Point Dog contributing to the conversation.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 01:34:53 PM

How's those "knife crimes" working out in the UK?

Knife crimes in the UK are working out a lot better than America's gun crimes!    The homicide rate in America, the majority due to firearms, is simply staggering.

Did you read the link I posted from UCLA?  3+ die EVERY DAY in LA due to firearms.  Not wounded, not cut, but DIE.

Overall, the homicide rate is 5 times worse in America than England.  More so probably in Los Angeles and other large metropolitan areas.

http://fleshisgrass.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/us-and-uk-murder-rate-and-weapon/

Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 01:37:09 PM
Glad to see Point Dog contributing to the conversation.

It is great to hear a different perspective.  Point Dog, I hope you contribute more often.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 02:48:49 PM

http://reason.com/archives/2002/11/01/gun-controls-twisted-outcome/singlepage

Gun Control's Twisted Outcome

Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.

Joyce Lee Malcolm from the November 2002 issue


 



On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."
 
In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year's Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.
 
None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and 1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America's Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.
 
The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by the world's gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a 1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England's low rates of violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."
 
In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.
 

The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.
 
Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.
 
Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies. Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the proposition that people don't need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.
 
This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal security was ranked first among an individual's rights by William Blackstone, the great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in his moment of need. A century later Blackstone's illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey, cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."

But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual's right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."
 
The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption and a Bolshevik revolution. In the circumstances, permitting the people to remain armed must have seemed an unnecessary risk. And so the new policy of disarming the public began. The Firearms Act required a would-be gun owner to obtain a certificate from the local chief of police, who was charged with determining whether the applicant had a good reason for possessing a weapon and was fit to do so. All very sensible. Parliament was assured that the intention was to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons. Yet from the start the law's enforcement was far more restrictive, and Home Office instructions to police -- classified until 1989 -- periodically narrowed the criteria.
 
At first police were instructed that it would be a good reason to have a revolver if a person "lives in a solitary house, where protection against thieves and burglars is essential, or has been exposed to definite threats to life on account of his performance of some public duty." By 1937 police were to discourage applications to possess firearms for house or personal protection. In 1964 they were told "it should hardly ever be necessary to anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person" and that "this principle should hold good even in the case of banks and firms who desire to protect valuables or large quantities of money."
 
In 1969 police were informed "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person." These changes were made without public knowledge or debate. Their enforcement has consumed hundreds of thousands of police hours. Finally, in 1997 handguns were banned. Proposed exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.
 
Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry in a public place any article "made, adapted, or intended" for an offensive purpose "without lawful authority or excuse." Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon. Police were given extensive power to stop and search everyone. Individuals found with offensive items were guilty until proven innocent.
 
During the debate over the Prevention of Crime Act in the House of Commons, a member from Northern Ireland told his colleagues of a woman employed by Parliament who had to cross a lonely heath on her route home and had armed herself with a knitting needle. A month earlier, she had driven off a youth who tried to snatch her handbag by jabbing him "on a tender part of his body." Was it to be an offense to carry a knitting needle? The attorney general assured the M.P. that the woman might be found to have a reasonable excuse but added that the public should be discouraged "from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them."
 
Another M.P. pointed out that while "society ought to undertake the defense of its members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent offender."
 
In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: "The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy. I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves." But he added: "Unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however large, can do it."
 
That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."
 
The original common law standard was similar to what still prevails in the U.S. Americans are free to carry articles for their protection, and in 33 states law-abiding citizens may carry concealed guns. Americans may defend themselves with deadly force if they believe that an attacker is about to kill or seriously injure them, or to prevent a violent crime. Our courts are mindful that, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife."
 
But English courts have interpreted the 1953 act strictly and zealously. Among articles found illegally carried with offensive intentions are a sandbag, a pickaxe handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper. "Any article is capable of being an offensive weapon," concede the authors of Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, a popular legal text, although they add that if the article is unlikely to cause an injury the onus of proving intent to do so would be "very heavy."
 
The 1967 act has not been helpful to those obliged to defend themselves either. Granville Williams points out: "For some reason that is not clear, the courts occasionally seem to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater moment than the safety of the robber's victim in respect of his person and property."
 
A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:
 
� In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.
 
� In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
 
� In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.
 
� In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted �5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin.
 
The failure of English policy to produce a safer society is clear, but what of British jibes about "America's vigilante values" and our much higher murder rate?
 
Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen found New York's homicide rate consistently about five times London's. Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."
 
Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked, whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance before England's more restrictive policy was established in 1967.
 
The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.
 
The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study, found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."
 
Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America's has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.
 
Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1 percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty" English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government plans to combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect's previous crimes.
 
This is a cautionary tale. America's founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.
 
The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen, confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to "have arms for their defence," insisting upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens. It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the English tendency to decry America's "vigilante values," English policy makers would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which stood them so well in the past.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 03:10:22 PM
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ElT-TkoQT4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ElT-TkoQT4&feature=player_embedded
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 03:24:27 PM
You must be kidding?   :?

You take a ten year old article, saying violent crime, i.e. muggings and robberies are possibly higher in the UK and compare that the homicides in America?  That's like comparing apples and oranges.

Let me repeat in case you missed the statistics.  On a per capita basis, there were three times more homicides, that's deaths, not muggings, or robberies,
in the USA versus UK.  Most of the homicides in America were committed with a gun.  And I bet in America's large cities, if you want to focus and compare London to America's large cities, NY, Chicago, LA, Miami, Detroit, etc. the number of homicides per capita is even worse in America, again, mostly committed with a gun. 

No one likes to be mugged and have their wallet taken.  Or robbed and have their jewels or TV stolen, but homicide means you are dead.  There is a difference,
like an apple and an orange are different.   :-D
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 03:29:28 PM
Read the Reason article.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 03:49:50 PM
I read it; does that change the homicide statistics?  No.
As previously quoted, homicides are three times worse in America versus the UK.  Mostly with guns.

Mugging and being robbed, albeit not pleasant is NOT the same as homicide. 

We are talking deaths here, not your wallet or TV gone missing.  Or a bar room fight because I made eyes at your girlfriend.

Since the war began in Iraq, I bet more people have died in LA County by gunshot wounds than the number of American soldier's by
combat wounds in Iraq.

It's really quite deplorable. 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 03:56:24 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7922755/England-has-worse-crime-rate-than-the-US-says-Civitas-study.html

England has worse crime rate than the US, says Civitas study

 England and Wales has one of the worst crime rates among developed nations for rapes, burglaries and robberies, a major report has found.
 
By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor

7:00AM BST 03 Aug 2010



 



However, offenders are locked up for shorter periods than in comparable countries – raising questions about claims made by Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, that too many criminals were being jailed.
 

The study found that England and Wales ranked highly in a survey of crime rates among more than 30 developed counries, based on the frequency of crimes recorded by police for every 100,000 people.
 

For burglaries and robberies England and Wales had more crimes per 100,000 people than the USA.
 

England and Wales was ranked sixth for burglaries – worse than Sweden, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Italy and Chile - and for robberies, England and Wales was seventh.
 

For rapes, England and Wales was ranked ninth, worse than the likes of Norway, Poland, Sweden, Australia and Germany, while for car thefts, England and Wales was eighth – worse than Slovenia, Chile, Mexico, Greece and the Czech Republic.
 

The figures, from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, draw together crimes recorded by police in the countries studied and is published every six years.
 
They date from 2006 because of difficulties in obtaining accurate comparable figures.
 
Civitas said, where possible, it had cross-checked with more recent pan-European figures, and the rates were broadly the same.
 
Among two other measures, England and Wales fared better, being ranked 16th out of 35 countries for “intentional homicides” and 19th for major assaults.
 
David Green, Civitas’s director, said: “England and Wales are high-crime societies compared with other developed nations. We have a lot of crime compared with other similar countries.
 
“Random checks of later figures for individual nations show that the ranking has not changed significantly. "
 
Mr Green said further analysis had shown that England and Wales had a low “punitivity ratio” compared with other countries because shorter sentences were being handed down by judges.
 
The ratio is calculated by contrasting the number of people convicted in a year per 100,000 population with the number of prisoners in jail as a result of a court sentence per 100,000 population.
 
In a speech in June, Mr Clarke had said that the debate on criminal justice had to move on from the “numbers game” of measuring the effectiveness of policies solely according to the prison population.
 
But Mr Green said: “Mr Clarke said he thought our system was too punitive, but the report also allows us to test the theory that our system is especially severe.
 
"The score for England and Wales, contrary to the claims of Kenneth Clarke, is low. The claim that our criminal-justice policies are punitive is not, therefore, supported by the best available evidence.”
 
A Home Office spokesman said last night: "This data is now more than four years old, but highlights that we have a high level of crime compared to other countries.
 
"This backs up the perceptions of many communities who have real concerns about stubbornly high level of serious crimes.
 
"This Government will reform the police to make them more accountable to their communities and cut bureaucracy to get officers onto the beat and fighting crime."
 
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said:‬‪ ‬‪"Between 1995 and 2009, the prison population in England and Wales grew by 32,500 or 66 per cent. But this rise has not had a comparative effect either on public confidence in the criminal justice system, or on reoffending.
 
"Nearly half of all offenders sent to prison are reconvicted within a year of release, creating a revolving door of crime
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 03:58:25 PM
I read it; does that change the homicide statistics?  No.
As previously quoted, homicides are three times worse in America versus the UK.  Mostly with guns.

Mugging and being robbed, albeit not pleasant is NOT the same as homicide. 

We are talking deaths here, not your wallet or TV gone missing.  Or a bar room fight because I made eyes at your girlfriend.

Since the war began in Iraq, I bet more people have died in LA County by gunshot wounds than the number of American soldier's by
combat wounds in Iraq.

It's really quite deplorable. 

And what are the circumstances of those homicides in LA county? Are they distributed on an even basis across the county, or are they clusted in certain geographical areas and associated with certain behaviors?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 04:03:19 PM

And what are the circumstances of those homicides in LA county? Are they distributed on an even basis across the county, or are they clusted in certain geographical areas and associated with certain behaviors?

As for the circumstances of each homicide, I have no idea.  Frankly, I doubt if they are distributed evenly across the county.  Probably like Iraq, they are clustered in certain geographical areas and associated with certain behaviors.  Probably anti social behaviors if I had to guess.   :-D
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 04:04:36 PM

And what are the circumstances of those homicides in LA county? Are they distributed on an even basis across the county, or are they clusted in certain geographical areas and associated with certain behaviors?

As for the circumstances of each homicide, I have no idea.  Frankly, I doubt if they are distributed evenly across the county.  Probably like Iraq, they are clustered in certain geographical areas and associated with certain behaviors.  Probably anti social behaviors if I had to guess.   :-D

Think there is a disparity between say Santa Monica and Watts?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 04:08:56 PM
Sure, although Santa Monica is a rather odd place.
http://projects.latimes.com/homicide/neighborhood/santa-monica/

Then again there is a disparity in sections of London.  Or Iraq.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 04:12:09 PM
True enough, however when you look at homicides in the US, there are clear demographic trends related to perp and victim that spikes US homicide stats.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 04:28:14 PM
I understand, that is why I'm trying to compare LA to London.  I think they share many similarities; size, diverse population, rich and poor areas, numerous immigrants, etc.

I am not comparing Cambridge to LA or some idillic town in America to London.

ps I couldn't open your link
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 04:32:50 PM
Go to this page then look up homicide stats.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: JDN on August 13, 2011, 04:36:45 PM
Odd, that one won't open either.  Gotta go, but I'll try again later.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 04:37:44 PM
Now mugging is worse in London than in Harlem
by MICHAEL CLARKE, Daily Mail
 London is now more dangerous than Harlem, according to figures released yesterday.

The chances of being mugged in Britain' s capital are 25 per cent higher than in the oncenotorious area of New York.
The statistics will put extra pressure on David Blunkett, as he struggles to contain a big rise in muggings on the streets of Britain's cities.
The figures, produced by the Conservatives, will also increase the Home Secretary's frustration with the Metropolitan Police which, say critics, is failing to tackle violent crime in the capital.
Mr Blunkett wants to know why the Metropolitan force has a similar budget to the New York Police Department but manages to field 30 per cent fewer officers.
He is also furious that murder rates in parts of London are soaring while in New York they are at a record low.
Now the Conservatives have produced figures showing how key parts of the American city also outperform London over mugging.
The Tories have found that in Harlem last year there were just 5.9 robberies per 1,000 residents.
Across London the figure was 7.4 attacks.
In some inner-city boroughs the level of street crime was even higher.
Lambeth, which includes Brixton, saw 24 muggings per 1,000 people - four times the Harlem rate.
Westminster - which includes Downing Street and Buckingham Palace - had 12 robberies per 1,000 residents.
The borough of Islington, where Tony Blair lived before becoming Prime Minister, saw 9.3 attacks per 1,000.
Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin said last night: 'You are now more likely to be robbed in London than you are in New York's Harlem.
'These latest figures validate the fears and concerns of London residents.'
Mr Letwin added: 'Labour promised to be tough on crime, but it is clearer by the day that there are fewer police on the beat and violent crime is rising across the capital's streets.'
Latest Metropolitan Police crime figures show street crime is rising in every London borough.
In some areas it has leapt by more than 70 per cent in a year. By contrast Harlem - the traditional home of black New Yorkers - has seen a major fall in crime since the 1980s when it was dominated by heavily armed drug gangs responsible for a spate of murders.
In the last five years crime has fallen 60 per cent and the murder rate is down 72 per cent.
The fall in crime is attributed to tough policing - at times the area has been flooded with patrol officers to drive the gangs off the streets - plus millions of pounds in government grants to rebuild the area and attract new businesses.
Major retailers like Gap and Disney are moving into the area and it is fast becoming a major tourist attraction.
Property values are soaring and unemployment is down.
Mr Blunkett has warned the Metropolitan Commissioner Sir John Stevens that he has six months to get street crime under control or face seeing his force taken over by the Home Office.
Metropolitan police chiefs blame soaring violent crime on the need to put thousands of officers on antiterrorist patrols in central London in the wake of September 11.
But a recent crackdown on mugging using hundreds of traffic officers to hunt street robbers has had some impact.
More money for overtime to keep up the pressure on muggers was announced in last week's Budget.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-111162/Now-mugging-worse-London-Harlem.html
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 04:50:03 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8698193/How-to-recover-Britains-streets-for-civilisation.html

Yes, yes, I blame the parents. Yes, and the slack teachers. And the greedy bankers, pop videos, mass immigration, social media, celebrity culture, MPs’ expenses, hamburgers, and no doubt lots of other nasty things, if you will give me a moment to think of them.
 

But although it may be therapeutic to work off one’s feelings in this way, I wonder if it is the best use of valuable time just now. There are many things in our society which – on the whole, luckily – politicians cannot do much about. On Thursday, they hurried home from their holidays for a day to discuss the rioting and looting. Let us take advantage of this moment to think of what our elected leaders, and the public authorities answerable to them, can actually do.
 

As someone who was a young journalist the last time a wave of disorder swept through the country, I am struck by a great change that has taken place. Contrary to what you may have read, this change is not that violence has increased. It was in 1981 that horrible things like attacking fire engines, trying to kill policemen and using riot as a cover for mass looting first showed themselves in mainland Britain. Although the technology is different today, allowing the criminals to bring trouble to more places, the ferocity of violence has been, if anything, slightly less bad than in Brixton or Toxteth 30 years ago.
 

No, the difference lies in public attitudes to what has happened. This time, the attitudes are much better. Then as now, of course, most ordinary citizens were unequivocal in their disgust at rioting. But in 1981, the prevailing culture among our ruling elites was different. The weight of the BBC, local government, trade unions, officialdom, came down on the police for being too harsh, and, needless to say, on the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, for the same crime. The chairman of the Merseyside Police Authority supported the rioters, saying: “They would be apathetic fools if they didn’t protest.” In Parliament, Michael Foot, the Labour leader, hurled anathemas at the evil Thatcher. In the capital, a young man called Ken Livingstone took over the Greater London Council in a post-election coup, and began attacking the police.
 

In the Commons on Thursday, the Opposition was as good as gold. David Cameron politely invited Ed Miliband to agree with him, and Mr Miliband politely did. Except on police numbers (with Labour wanting more of them), there was no way of distinguishing between one party and the other. Faced with overwhelming public anger and opinion polls in which 90 per cent wanted water cannon and a third even wanted live ammunition for the police, MPs knew which side their bread was buttered. In 1981, an MP saying that he supported the police was making a controversial political statement. This week, he was uttering a commonplace. So great is the moral pressure that even the criminal justice system, which for years has said that it is utterly impossible to speed up its processes, has suddenly found that its courts can, after all, work through the night.
 
So the Government must not use this political unanimity as an excuse to change the subject – as Mr Cameron seems rather inclined to do – to moaning about “cultural” problems in the whole of society. Let it alter the culture which it truly can affect – its own.
 
The basic trend of public policy since the Brixton riots has been to make it harder for the police to deal with crime. It has not been a question of money. Since 2000, public spending on the police in England and Wales has increased by 36 per cent in real terms. Numbers have risen by 14,000, plus 16,000 community support officers. “Resources” are not a problem, although their allocation certainly is (why, for example, have only a fifth of Met officers had public-order training?).
 
The problem has been a refusal to accept that the need for civil peace must come first. After Brixton in 1981, the Scarman report ushered in an era when police relations with “communities” – a euphemism for ethnic minorities – began to trump their duties to the only community which matters, that of all citizens. The Macpherson report in 1999 went so far as to make race awareness almost the first principle of policing, enunciating the insane, McCarthyite doctrine that “a racist incident is one which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”. In Northern Ireland, the needs of “community” were invoked to abolish the Special Branch and thus all intelligence on the most serious criminals. More recently, the rights of protest have been considered so important that the pressure group Liberty has actually sat in police control rooms monitoring the handling of demonstrations. And “kettling”, itself a timid way of handling riots, is considered an infringement of human rights.
 
Some of the reforms were undoubtedly prompted by bad practices in the police. But the overall result has been risk aversion, in the ranks and among the leadership, with the public paying the penalty. Sir Hugh Orde, the head of Acpo, who is trying to claim the credit for this week’s “surge”, wrote in the Guardian this week that British policing is “premised on human rights”. It isn’t. Sir Robert Peel invented it more than 150 years before Tony Blair injected human rights into British law. British policing is founded on exercising the minimum use of force required to keep the peace. Thanks to the importation of “human rights” (from European countries where, oddly, the police are more brutal than our own), keeping the peace has become much, much harder.
 
We all saw the police hanging back from making arrests during this week’s troubles. The reason is that, under current rules, arrests are a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. They require at least two officers and inordinate processing time. If there is “insufficient evidence”, the police can be sued for false imprisonment. The scenes all over England this week were uniquely appalling in their scale, but in the character of the police response they were very like what happens in hundreds of towns every Saturday night. Young people tip out of the pubs behaving badly, and the police, worried by what they might be accused of, just watch them. It is visible proof of the old saying that for evil to triumph it is necessary only for good men to do nothing.
 
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 13, 2011, 05:07:35 PM

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/274492

August 13, 2011 7:00 A.M.
The New Britannia
Big Government corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically.





The trick in this business is not to be right too early. A week ago I released my new book — the usual doom’n’gloom stuff — and, just as the sensible prudent moderate chaps were about to dismiss it as hysterical and alarmist, Standard & Poor’s went and downgraded the United States from its AAA rating for the first time in history. Obligingly enough they downgraded it to AA+, which happens to be the initials of my book: After America. Okay, there’s not a lot of “+” in that, but you can’t have everything.
 
But the news cycle moves on, and a day or two later, the news shows were filled with scenes of London ablaze, as gangs of feral youths trashed and looted their own neighborhoods. Several readers wrote to taunt me for not having anything to say on the London riots. As it happens, Chapter Five of my book is called “The New Britannia: The Depraved City.” You have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat me to Western civilization’s descent into barbarism. Anyone who’s read it will fully understand what’s happening on the streets of London. The downgrade and the riots are part of the same story: Big Government debauches not only a nation’s finances but its human capital, too.
 
As part of my promotional efforts, I chanced to find myself on a TV show the other day with an affable liberal who argued that what Obama needed to do was pass another trillion-dollar — or, better yet, multi-trillion — stimulus. I think not. The London rioters are the children of dependency, the progeny of Big Government: They have been marinated in “stimulus” their entire lives. There is literally nothing you can’t get Her Majesty’s Government to pay for. From page 205 of my book:
 
“A man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute.”
 
Hey, why not? “He’s planning to do more than just have his end away,” explained his social worker. “Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights.”
 
Why do they need a Dutch hooker? Just another hardworking foreigner doing the jobs Britons won’t do? Given the reputation of English womanhood, you’d have thought this would be the one gig that wouldn’t have to be outsourced overseas.
 
While the British Treasury is busy writing checks to Amsterdam prostitutes, one-fifth of children are raised in homes in which no adult works — in which the weekday ritual of rising, dressing, and leaving for gainful employment is entirely unknown. One tenth of the adult population has done not a day’s work since Tony Blair took office on May 1, 1997.
 
If you were born into such a household, you’ve been comprehensively “stimulated” into the dead-eyed zombies staggering about the streets this last week: pathetic inarticulate sub-humans unable even to grunt the minimal monosyllables to BBC interviewers desperate to appease their pathologies. C’mon, we’re not asking much: just a word or two about how it’s all the fault of government “cuts” like the leftie columnists argue. And yet even that is beyond these baying beasts. The great-grandparents of these brutes stood alone against a Fascist Europe in that dark year after the fall of France in 1940. Their grandparents were raised in one of the most peaceful and crime-free nations on the planet. Were those Englishmen of the mid-20th century to be magically transplanted to London today, they’d assume they were in some fantastical remote galaxy. If Charlton Heston was horrified to discover the Planet of the Apes was his own, Britons are beginning to realize that the remote desert island of Lord of the Flies is, in fact, located just off the coast of Europe in the north-east Atlantic. Within two generations of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, a significant proportion of the once-free British people entrusted themselves to social rewiring by liberal compassionate Big Government and thereby rendered themselves paralytic and unemployable save for non-speaking parts in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And even that would likely be too much like hard work.
 
Here’s another line from my book:
 
“In Britain, everything is policed except crime.”
 


Her Majesty’s cowed and craven politically correct constabulary stand around with their riot shields and Robocop gear as young rioters lob concrete through store windows to steal the electronic toys that provide their only non-narcotic or alcoholic amusement. I chanced to be in Piccadilly for the springtime riots when the police failed to stop the mob from smashing the windows of the Ritz and other upscale emporia, so it goes without saying that they wouldn’t lift a finger to protect less prestigious private property from thugs. Some of whom are as young as nine years old. And girls.
 
Yet a police force all but entirely useless when it comes to preventing crime or maintaining public order has time to police everything else. When Sam Brown observed en passant to a mounted policeman on Cornmarket Street in Oxford, “Do you know your horse is gay?”, he was surrounded within minutes by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, handcuffed, tossed in the slammer overnight, and fined 80 pounds. Mr. Brown’s “homophobic comments,” explained a spokesmoron for Thames Valley Police, were “not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area.” The zealous crackdown on Sam Brown’s hippohomophobia has not been replicated in the present disturbances. Anyone who has so much as glanced at British policing policy over the last two decades would be hard pressed to argue which party on the streets of London, the thugs or the cops, is more irredeemably stupid.
 
This is the logical dead end of the Nanny State. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the British welfare regime in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want” to be accomplished by “co-operation between the State and the individual.” In attempting to insulate the citizenry from life’s vicissitudes, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. As I write in my book: “Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity.” The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate. Marriage is all but defunct, except for William and Kate, fellow toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims. From page 204:
 
“For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population”.  
 
I believe it is regarded as a sign of insanity to start quoting oneself, but at the risk of trying your patience I’ll try one more, because it’s the link between America’s downgraded debt and Britain’s downgraded citizenry:
 
“The evil of such a system is not the waste of money but the waste of people.”
 
Big Government means small citizens: It corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically. Within living memory, the city in flames on our TV screens every night governed a fifth of the earth’s surface and a quarter of its population. When you’re imperialists on that scale, there are bound to be a few mishaps along the way. But nothing the British Empire did to its subject peoples has been as total and catastrophic as what a post-great Britain did to its own.
 
There are lessons for all of us there.
 
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 15, 2011, 08:58:46 AM
Quote
Since the war began in Iraq, I bet more people have died in LA County by gunshot wounds than the number of American soldier's by
combat wounds in Iraq.

It's really quite deplorable.  
 JDN
Woof,
 Yes it is deplorable but you seem to want law abiding citizens that have to live in areas like this to be unarmed and defenseless. I know, I know, you fantasize that a complete gun ban here in the U.S. would disarm everyone and solve the problem. Everyone would just turn in their guns and anyone that had an illegal firearm would be arrested. My question is since there seems to be no limit as to the number of criminals in LA with illegal firearms, why aren't they being arrested now? Besides that even if it were possible to collect every firearm in the country, there would be such a blackmarket demand for them that they would be flowing over the border like bales of pot. There are plenty of laws on the books and none of them stops criminals from being criminals. There are laws against murder that hold much worse punishment than breaking a gun ban law would but that doesn't seem to slow them down. We have police departments that are loaded for bear and look for all the world like elite military units nowadays but about the best they can do for a murder victim is to protect the crime scene and outline their body with chalk.
 I don't know what the answer is to all the crime and violence or how to stop it but I know how to protect myself and family. Firearms are a big part that knowhow.
                                             P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 15, 2011, 09:00:23 AM
Mexico has strict gun laws.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 15, 2011, 09:07:38 AM
Woof,
 Yeah, they have strick drug and immigration laws too.
                          P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 15, 2011, 09:12:53 AM
Actually they decriminalized drug use a few years ago.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 15, 2011, 11:14:11 AM
Woof,
 For possession of small amounts for personal use, yes.
               P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Spartan Dog on August 15, 2011, 11:45:51 AM
Glad to see Point Dog contributing to the conversation.

I too was glad to read your post, Point Dog, and I was also glad to read see some encouragement by Guro Crafty and others, regarding getting other viewpoints.  There were also posts here, by some who disagreed, but nonetheless came across as welcoming a different viewpoint, and the chance to debate the issue.

There also seemed to be a minority who disagreed, and came across quite differently.  Guess this is why people like Point Dog and myself don't much bother posting in such discussions.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Point Dog on August 15, 2011, 12:25:04 PM

I too was glad to read your post, Point Dog, and I was also glad to read see some encouragement by Guro Crafty and others, regarding getting other viewpoints.  There were also posts here, by some who disagreed, but nonetheless came across as welcoming a different viewpoint, and the chance to debate the issue.

There also seemed to be a minority who disagreed, and came across quite differently.  Guess this is why people like Point Dog and myself don't much bother posting in such discussions.


Hey C-Spartan ;) (I still love that name!  :-D )

What happened here is small potatoes compared to what you guys have had recently.  I try not to judge other countries/cultures because I'm not there and not living the problems.  When I saw the severity of what happened in Greece I thought that it would never happen here ;) [Still hasn't, but it certainly looks possible now]

Though I'd add that the Greek protests were political, whereas the London problems were criminal.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Point Dog on August 15, 2011, 12:33:34 PM
I also meant to ask the US posters (and any other nationality too).  Out of curiosity how much sports related violence does your country suffer? Baring in mind that the US is probably 50 different countries all with different flavours...

I ask because in London, Birminingham, Manchester and Glasgow (others too, but they're the worst) we have a lot of football (soccer) related 'tribal' violence.  This is something that our Police are very experienced in dealing with.  If you look at the violence in the London riots compared to what happens when there is a Birmingham derby, you have to ask why it was allowed to continue? (Police are very effective at containing the football thugs)
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 15, 2011, 12:46:14 PM
PD,

Not that violence is unknown at sports venues here (drunk people with different allegances packed in close proximity can result in such things) but we don't have anything that approximates europe's "football hooligans", with the possible exception of the fans of the Raiders (American football) team.

I attended a lecture from a London Met Constable years ago that detailed the intelligence gathering and exchange between european police agencies tracking the "Hooligans" as they traveled to different venues for matches. The closest thing we have to that here is how some correctional facilities here separate known rival gang members in custody.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Spartan Dog on August 15, 2011, 12:46:53 PM
Hey C-Spartan ;) (I still love that name!  :-D )

 :-)

What happened here is small potatoes compared to what you guys have had recently.  I try not to judge other countries/cultures because I'm not there and not living the problems.  When I saw the severity of what happened in Greece I thought that it would never happen here ;) [Still hasn't, but it certainly looks possible now]

Though I'd add that the Greek protests were political, whereas the London problems were criminal.

What is happening in Greece is, as you know, different than the UK riots.   There are serious underlying social problems here, as compared to the UK and US.  These in turn have greatly contributed to the economic mess.  Things now are quiet only because most people here are on holiday (I wonder how it is that they still can afford it).  This fall there may be further disturbances.  

Yes, the focus here was "political", but I think it might more accurately be described as economic.   There are specific segments of society here who are at the forefront of the "disturbances" - trade union activists, unemployed young "anarchists", etc...These people tend to be the ones who actually try and goad the police into fighting.  The majority of people are upset, may protest, make noise, but the ones actually throwing the moltov cocktails and confronting the riot police are not a sizable proportion of those actually demonstrating.

I am reluctant to say much on the Greek situation, because there are several segments of Greek society who are partly responsible for the mess, each in different ways.  But to get back to the topic of this thread, Greece may not be in full-fledged social breakdown, especially now that it got another loan, but the repercussions are going to be felt for years, and I think that there is great potential here for further rioting, though different in character than that in the UK.

I can only hope that in the long term, at least some lessons will be learned.  Over and out Point-Dog  :-D
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2011, 01:56:33 PM
Glad to see Point Dog and Dog Kostas in the conversation.

I would raise the question that even when we note that the Greek riots and the British riots are arguably different in nature, is there not a certain commonality with the French riots/car burnings, even though the group involved there is defined by religion?

In other words, does the multi-culti progressive socialism of the Euro models tend to produce this result?   

Also to wonder-- where do things go from here?

Separate point:  As much as I enjoy lively political conversation, remember we are also allowed to examine unorganized militia issues and practical matters e.g. a tennis racket should be able to pass muster in an intensely NPE (non-permissive environment) like Great Britain, but should serve as a rather effective stick.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2011, 07:24:42 PM
I always wondered about carrying a fire extinguisher in the car and should a chaotic situation develop wherein my truck was enveloped simply spraying everybody within range.   Does anybody know about whether this would run the risk of damaging the eyes of the nefarious n'er do wells?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 16, 2011, 07:34:13 PM
I always wondered about carrying a fire extinguisher in the car and should a chaotic situation develop wherein my truck was enveloped simply spraying everybody within range.   Does anybody know about whether this would run the risk of damaging the eyes of the nefarious n'er do wells?


It is possible. Frankly, I'd be more than willing to stomp on the gas to evade the scenario, including running criminal assailants over. Using an extinguisher is a waste of time and resources.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2011, 10:19:22 PM
The intended meaning of "wherein my truck was enveloped" is that I am blocked from departing.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Bambi on August 17, 2011, 02:31:29 AM
I also meant to ask the US posters (and any other nationality too).  Out of curiosity how much sports related violence does your country suffer? Baring in mind that the US is probably 50 different countries all with different flavours...

We're right dext door and we don't get the same threat level, fans aren't segregated en route to the grounds or in the grounds.  Some local soccer teams will attract  the kind of morons that the english/scottish firms do but the attendance figures for local soccer is really small so it's rarely a big deal when they do kick off, this would be as bad as it gets:

[youtube]jrzTpaa6tqw[/youtube]

I thought that hooliganism in the UK had dwindled due to the advent of season tickets etc or is it just that the policing has contained the problem?

Actually, now that I think of it the only time I've seen any fans kick off at a sporting event here, was an MMA show  :lol:
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 17, 2011, 04:04:23 AM
The intended meaning of "wherein my truck was enveloped" is that I am blocked from departing.

Blocked by what?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Point Dog on August 17, 2011, 04:46:52 AM

I thought that hooliganism in the UK had dwindled due to the advent of season tickets etc or is it just that the policing has contained the problem?

Actually, now that I think of it the only time I've seen any fans kick off at a sporting event here, was an MMA show  :lol:

Thanks.  I was using soccer as an example as it's our 'biggest' sport.  I suppose in the US the analogy would be 'American Football' (sorry, just can't bring myself to call it just 'Football' ;) ), baseball or basketball.

Season tickets or not, you still get nobs ;)  I worked security at a few Hearts/Hibs games in Edinburgh (a slightly toned down version of a Celtic/Rangers game in Glasgow).  I was VERY impressed with the Police tactics, the use of horses and dogs.  Their snatch and grab methods of specific people from the crowd were smooth!
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2011, 06:30:48 AM
@GM

"The intended meaning of "wherein my truck was enveloped" is that I am blocked from departing."

"Blocked by what?"

Other cars on all sides e.g. at a red light.
=======

@PD:  " I was VERY impressed with the Police tactics, the use of horses and dogs.  Their snatch and grab methods of specific people from the crowd were smooth!"

Please describe :-)
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 17, 2011, 09:06:19 AM
Crafty,

Do you make sure to leave room in front of your vehicle? Sure, dense urban traffic makes things much more difficult, but if you are sure to stop where you can see the rear tires of the vehicle in front of you touch the roadway, you have room to manuver in an emergency.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: prentice crawford on August 17, 2011, 10:25:20 AM
Woof,
 From the "members only" site he already has that info; what he's talking about is the worse case scenario of being intentionally surrounded, trapped and mobbed. If it's that bad I guess you could set yourself on fire and just run amok among them. :evil:
 Oops! Did I mention that the "members only" site has info not shared here? :wink:
                 P.C.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2011, 06:48:06 PM
GM:  Remind me to tell you of the carjacking I foiled using exactly this technique.  In the meantime, please don't be obtuse  :lol:  

PS: PC is quite correct  :wink: :-D
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Point Dog on August 18, 2011, 04:15:47 AM

@PD:  " I was VERY impressed with the Police tactics, the use of horses and dogs.  Their snatch and grab methods of specific people from the crowd were smooth!"

Please describe :-)

In essence the mounted officers (who have light armour on horses with certain areas protected) are the blunt object that drives a wedge into the crowd (often from different starting points to target a certain part of the crowd), are followed in the corridor they create by canine officers and riot 'snatch' officers.  The dogs act as a 'finer' tool than the horses to isolate small groups and drive them out of the crowd into Police lines.  I assume the riot officers (who have no animal) are there for even 'finer' tuning if required.

A story:

I was working at a Hibs/Hearts game (LOTS of sectarian violence), I'm working the queue for the turnstyles carrying out searches for weapons/booze and explaining to an elderly couple that it would be a discrimination to them NOT to search them ;) (A big history of 'retired' gang members in their pensionable years smuggling in weapons for their grandkids).

A shout goes out from the Police lines (who filter people towards to the turnstyles) "GET HIM!"

A lone man is legging it from the Police line towards where we are carrying out the search.  Myself and the two men working with me position ourselves to intercept, there is a definate 'Hell yes, game on!' attitude to the three of us (we've been searching people in the freezing cold for over 40mins by this point).

Just as we think we're going to get to do something, a horse gallops out of nowhere and sideswipes him into the wall, pinning him there.  This was an awesome thing, as he was a couple of metres from the wall to start with!  Three canine officers appear and whilst the horse 'smears' off of him the dogs come in to corner him against the wall.  A 'gap' appears that he tries to escape through but a Police van has now done a 'skidding slide' into the mouth of the gap with the back doors open.  The dogs chase him into rear of the van where it appeared three officers were waiting to 'help' him escape the dogs  :-D

We were both amazed at the smoothness and speed (seriously, from the shout to the van leaving, less than 20seconds), and disappointed that we never got to put a boot in ;)
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2011, 11:59:32 AM
Fascinating!
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on August 18, 2011, 04:18:37 PM
GM:  Remind me to tell you of the carjacking I foiled using exactly this technique.  In the meantime, please don't be obtuse  :lol:  

PS: PC is quite correct  :wink: :-D

Just seeking clarity.   :wink:
Title: A moment of contrast
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2011, 10:22:59 PM
Not really :-D

Moving along now , , , here's a moment of contrast (for the record, I suspect the US would fare equally poorly in the comparison) :

Japan Earthquake: Ethical Residents Return $78 Million From Rubble

 

First Posted: 8/18/11 04:45 PM ET

 

While looting often becomes an issue post-disaster, it's been the exact opposite in Japan.

 

Since the March earthquake and tsunami that leveled much of Japan, thousands of wallets containing a total of $48 million in cash have washed ashore -- and been turned in, ABC reports. In addition, 5,700 safes containing $30 million in cash also have turned up.

 

Ryuji Ito, professor emeritus at Japan's Yokohama City University, tells the Daily Mail that these acts of integrity are simply reflective of the culture:

 

"...The fact that a hefty 2.3 billion yen in cash has been returned to its owners shows the high level of ethical awareness in the Japanese people."

 

And doing the right thing doesn't just end with the people who found the money. Japanese officials have also worked tirelessly to track down owners and return safes and other valuables.

 

Police in Miyagi prefecture searched for residents at evacuation centers and made their way through missing person reports and address forms at the post office, according to ABC. Police also met with mayors and called any cell phone numbers they could find.

 

Officials tell the news outlet that the difficulty lay in determining whether homes were gone and if the owners were actually still alive.

Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Tony Torre on September 01, 2011, 07:16:27 AM
I witnessed the riots of the 70's, 80's and 90's here in Miami.  During the McDuffy riots they actually bused us out of school.  During the Mcduffy riots I learned many things.  First of all the scumbags are organized and pick their targets ahead of time.  Targets of opportunity will be taken advantage of immediately.  A teen age boy was sodomized by other teenage boys which precipitated the busing of kids out of our school.  The groups divided among racial and ethnics lines.  The rioters planned to loot, pillage, and burn the neighboring Cuban neighborhood.  They where met by a HIGHLY armed group causing them to return and burn their own neighborhood.  Everybody knew what was going on by word of mouth.  With cell phones and social media modern riots will probably be more widespread.  During the time of the L.A. riots we had our own here probably inspired by news footage. 

Tony Torre
Miami Arnis Group
www.miamiarnisgroup.com
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2011, 07:59:19 AM
Being of a prior generation, this point about cell phones and social media is one that for me is easy to forget , , , During the Rodney King riots here in LA in the early 90s this was not a factor, but the next time the excrement hits the fan this will be a new variable the significance of which I cannot predict.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: DougMacG on September 01, 2011, 08:19:36 AM
"...this point about cell phones and social media..."

I recall that the start of the Arab spring uprising in Tunisia was both triggered by crackdowns on social media and organized on them.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1210.msg45202#msg45202
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2011, 08:24:07 AM
The other possibility is of a breakdown in order that is triggered precisely by the breakdown of these things (worst case scenario due to EMP as a result of nuke detonation, or perhaps mere terrorism taking out a system or Chinese hacking or , , ,)

What happens if the internet itself goes off-line?
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Tony Torre on September 01, 2011, 08:49:52 AM
On the flip side cell phones and social media is also a great tool for the good guys.  In a shtf scenario getting reinforcements may be very useful.  In a grid down scenario cb's, walkie talkies or even bells or whistles could be very useful for sounding the alarm.  The Koreans in LA , the Turks in the UK and the Cubans in Miami where very effective because they where organized.  I think communication is a very powerful tool the civilian good guys very often overlook.

Tony Torre
Miami Arnis Group
www.miamiarnisgroup.com
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: DougMacG on September 01, 2011, 09:25:44 AM
Avoiding a complete shutdown is one of the advantages of the internet's decentralized design loaded with redundancies and endless, alternate paths - which our benevolent government would like to streamline for us.

"What happens if the internet itself goes off-line?"

That is something like the Y2K scenario; we were told that water and electricity would shutdown if computers went down.  We don't know exactly because it didn't happen then.  If all internet went down, the world we now know would stop for a moment and people would be forced to get up and walk out their front door to talk with other people.   :wink:
---
Excellent points by Tony.  The next generation raised with social media seem highly capable of staying organized. I'm still not clear on how you can broadcast all the right information to the right people without also informing the wrong people.

Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on September 01, 2011, 11:57:43 AM
Being of a prior generation, this point about cell phones and social media is one that for me is easy to forget , , , During the Rodney King riots here in LA in the early 90s this was not a factor, but the next time the excrement hits the fan this will be a new variable the significance of which I cannot predict.


It will make the predators much more dangerous.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: G M on September 01, 2011, 12:00:28 PM
The other possibility is of a breakdown in order that is triggered precisely by the breakdown of these things (worst case scenario due to EMP as a result of nuke detonation, or perhaps mere terrorism taking out a system or Chinese hacking or , , ,)

What happens if the internet itself goes off-line?


For the 'net to go down, you'd really have to have a "TEOTWAWKI" scenario.
Title: Re: Dealing with Social Breakdown (The UK riots)
Post by: Tony Torre on September 01, 2011, 01:21:39 PM
DougMacG,

With cb or walkie talkie type communications using coded messages.  An even simpler method is raising an alarm with a bell or whistle or some other audible signal.  Some time ago the women of my community where being harassed by a pervert.  I armed them with pepper gas canisters and whistles.  The goal being spray and whistle to get each others attention.  They actually took it one step further and when the whistle was finally blown they came running with clubs and beat him quite unmercifully.

Tony Torre
Miami Arnis Group
www.miamiarnisgroup.com