London Burning

reading the odd report that there may be a riot here in my home town. was in town center earlier today and wasn't really all that much going on. police were advising some stores to close. so hoping those rumours just remain those. rumours.
 
Our police force are sending coppers down today to help... it was nice of the BBC news to tell us, now we're defenceless.
 
Apparently Kay Burley on Sky News is on tv telling viewers which parts of London are being left unguarded. thats a real smart move Burley.
 
Nick Clegg "warns" of riots if Tories are elected (11Apr10)
 
Rupert Murdoch is getting his revenge, I guess.
 
Pictures from this morning showing the burnt out buildings and cars and rubble and glass all over the streets, a sad sight.

It's quite staggering to think that the majority of these rioters are just chavs wanting an excuse to break stuff. One of the shops that was on fire last night was a fancy dress store, don't tell me that was targeted for it's expensive steal-able stock.
In a twisted irony this situation has now tainted that area and will make it more deprived and poor than it was to begin with, which apparently was a cause for the un-rest. I feel sorry for the decent people living there now that businesses will start pulling out of the area and there will be nobody investing in the area any more.

I am all for the use of rubber bullets and water cannons in this situation. It does have the risk of causing injury but I think the vast amount of rioters will simply give up and go home when they have some real competition.
These people are mostly made of low level thiefs and idiots wanting any excuse to wreck shit with no consequence, once the un-armed masses go home the few people with handguns and other ranged weapons will likely try and avoid most contact with the police anyway. When you don't have a huge crowd to hide in it's a lot easer to see who is shooting at you and take them down...

Hopefully this situation won't spread further, although to be frank part of me wants it to cross the border just so the many "Scotland are better than England because we aren't rioting" FB pages that have sprung up will look idiotic...
 
Dr_Grip said:
As I said, killing more people won't help. Rubber bullets (as well as water cannons) can be lethal and thus have to be used with caution - in Stuttgart, a man was blinded by a water cannon a few months ago.
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Well, why was he standing so close? Or was there no warning label?

Seriously though, if you're part of the riot and helping it get worse I think it shouldn't matter if they get hurt or whatever. I may sound cruel but the bottom line is, you're being an idiot, you're destroying a town for what reason again? Was it worth it?

What's going to happen when the Olympics come next year?
 
So why not use live ammo?
 
I don't really have time to read through eight pages of discussion, unfortunately. So I leave this here: The sad truth behind London riot by NBC News. I happen to agree - peaceful protests are simply not an effective form of protest unless there are several hundred thousand people on the street. So while I can't condone the destruction of innocent people's property and certainly not hurting innocents, I can actually understand the first one.
 
The last major riot in the US lasted four hours. Four hours! Why? Because law enforcement took action right away and brought in the correct materials to stop it.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/ohio-o17.shtml

At about 11:35 a.m., according to the Blade, protesters began throwing rocks at the neo-Nazis and the police, and police made their first arrest.
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Several minutes later, the neo-Nazis marched to nearby Woodrow Wilson Park. Just before noon, Toledo police began firing the first of many canisters of teargas at local residents gathering to protest the march. The crowd, numbering now in the hundreds, began throwing bricks and rocks at buildings and passing vehicles, according to the Blade.
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Police fired on the crowds with pepper spray, mace and wooden ?knee-knocker? pellets. At about 2:15 p.m.
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By 4 p.m. the crowd had largely dispersed.
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Unfortunate stuff, hopefully security and safety will come swiftly and maybe even more importantly hopefully the Western economies can turn things around. This does not bode well for the young have-not's on the horizon.

93Flareside said:
The last major riot in the US lasted four hours. Four hours! Why? Because law enforcement took action right away and brought in the correct materials to stop it.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/ohio-o17.shtml
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Those measures helped but its also because Toledo isn't a densely populated metro area like the UK is. Also Blackberry's and the social networking used to coordinate some of these riots weren't around or as popular back then. And the overall state of the Western world has unfortunately been on the decline and unemployment rate is probably significantly worse in the affected UK areas than it was for 2005 Toledo.
 
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captain_70s said:
Pictures from this morning showing the burnt out buildings and cars and rubble and glass all over the streets, a sad sight.

It's quite staggering to think that the majority of these rioters are just chavs wanting an excuse to break stuff. One of the shops that was on fire last night was a fancy dress store, don't tell me that was targeted for it's expensive steal-able stock.
In a twisted irony this situation has now tainted that area and will make it more deprived and poor than it was to begin with, which apparently was a cause for the un-rest. I feel sorry for the decent people living there now that businesses will start pulling out of the area and there will be nobody investing in the area any more.

I am all for the use of rubber bullets and water cannons in this situation. It does have the risk of causing injury but I think the vast amount of rioters will simply give up and go home when they have some real competition.
These people are mostly made of low level thiefs and idiots wanting any excuse to wreck shit with no consequence, once the un-armed masses go home the few people with handguns and other ranged weapons will likely try and avoid most contact with the police anyway. When you don't have a huge crowd to hide in it's a lot easer to see who is shooting at you and take them down...

Hopefully this situation won't spread further, although to be frank part of me wants it to cross the border just so the many "Scotland are better than England because we aren't rioting" FB pages that have sprung up will look idiotic...
Click to expand...
Rangers Celtic games.

One interesting thing - perhaps the country will be less 'attractive'.
 
BBC News

Two girls who took part in Monday night's riots in Croydon have boasted that they were showing police and "the rich" that "we can do what we want". The pair who were drinking wine looted from a local shop at 09:30 BST on Tuesday morning, spoke to the BBC's Leana Hosea. Croydon was one of several areas plagued by unrest on Monday night, on a third night of riots in the capital.
There were also violent scenes in several other English cities.
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I'll try and find a international copy of the video

EDIT: only one i can find so far.
 
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Since I'm a little late to the news, what was the actual inciting event, or were these preplanned arson events arranged thru internet social networking groups?
 
edkwon said:
Since I'm a little late to the news, what was the actual inciting event, or were these preplanned arson events arranged thru internet social networking groups?
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Police shot a father of three who may or not may be an arms dealer with ties to organized crime and may or may not have opened fire upon the arresting officers. Nothing of that is sure right now.

What is sure is that after that, there was peaceful prostest in front of the precinct, the police did not handle the situation too well, a riot broke out and then it spread.
 
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