h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>"Points taken Potholer, but what's the alternative? Just let them kill each other off?"

How about *proper* targetting - informants, surveillance, rewards for information, etc, backed up by properly-run raids.
If raids were on actual criminals, even if they didn't always find guns, they'd often find something, and might look rather less like they were purely racial-profiling led. With any luck, the odd person will start waving a gun around and end up getting deservedly shot.

>>"The poverty argument won't wash. That line is trotted out time after time. It's just appeasement. "Give me something or I'll just take it"."

I'm not putting forward a poverty argument.

No you weren't putting forward the poverty argument. That was aimed at earlier posts.

How do you target a 15 year old kid with no convictions and no previous?
You can't believe the intelligence if you're relying on other kids. How many would think it's a bit of a giggle to give a false tip-off cos Johnny gave the a Chinese burn in PE? That leads to armed raids and that leads to people getting shot.

Swamp the area with Police. Search every likely suspect that moves. Sooner or later the responsible adults are going to get sick of it and start taking the guns off their kids and giving them to the police, just so they can get back to a bit of peace & quiet.

Swamping the area with Police will also lead to a downturn in other crimes. Utilise the Zero Tolerance policy that worked in New York.

Saying that deprevation is a cause of crime is not an insult to hardworking people who despite being poor avoided criminalty it is a compliment when you think about it.

Try it go on think about it.

It says that in your circumstances some people were let down by their moral fibre bout yours held strong.

That is a compliment and only an idiot or someone too lazy to think about it before they opened their stupid gob would think it otherwise.

"There are *no* excuses on earth that can even begin to justify 15yr old kids being shot in their bedrooms by other kids"

People have been mentioning cases of gun crime that come to bare more on some people than others. This is not an attempt to justify anything. No one I have heard has attempted to JUSTIFY any killings. There are though mitigating circumstances which lessent the nrmal affects that laws and social norms have on people. Dont insult by saying anyone is justifying these killings call you can call me names if you want but dont lie about what I and others have actually said, because ive checked and no one is trying to justify gun crime of the nature we are discussing.

(is throwing baseless and distracting insults into threads a concious tactic of yours?)


The poverty argunent is not about "give me" it is about let me. there are some people who wheter you like to admit it or not face a tough struggle to get on with their lives because they encounter barriers you are lucky not to encounter. Helping people to get involved is a way of ensuring more people are involved in the legal and moral aspects of life is a worthwhile effort.

"If they want to act like scum, let them be treated like scum."

Well here you are putting the cart before the horse again. I was treated like scum long before I ever acted like scum. Now to you Im still scum, and all you will ever see me as is scum. Remarkably some people had the forethought to help me out of that life. Luckily I had some decent kind people around me and they werent all subject to the ignorant hateful thoughts people like you express.

one love

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No it's not. You shouldn't need to compliment people on acting like civilised human beings. Compliments should be reserved for people acting out of their normal character in a positive way. Are you suggesting that not breaking the law is acting out of character for poor people?

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Gibberish again, but I reckon you think I was accusing someone of justifying murder. Who did I accuse exactly?

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If you create a level playing field, with equal opportunity for *all* and *no* discrimination you empower the individual to make the most of their own life. Racism, sexism and homophobia are all illegal. What more do you want?

And please, enough of the self-pitying "poor me" whining. It's demeaning.

>>The poverty argunent is not about "give me" it is about let me<>If you create a level playing field, with equal opportunity for *all* and *no* discrimination you empower the individual to make the most of their own life. Racism, sexism and homophobia are all illegal. What more do you want?<<SWL

blicky's point is exactly the one Dicken's makes in his novels, but for some reason SWL you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was saying poverty is the cause. That would be far too simplistic, but for some reason that is what assumed I was driving at.

And if you really believe you can suddenly, overnight, create a level playing field with law changes SWL, you're amazing. Changes in society take time. People's minds need to change in their attitudes. Law changes are part of it. Equal opportunities are part of it and yes, sometimes 'positive action'.

Things in society are complex. That's why governments when they actually get power find the realities hard to deal with.

Is it me or are all the threads in the forum suddenly becomming a bit samey?

I don't see swamping an area to irritate the innocent into somehow grabbing guns off the gang members is guaranteed to work - unless you're going to search house-to-house, I'd have thought people will just leave guns safely hidden until the police move somewhere else, so the police are unlikely to find anything in their street searches, apart from maybe the dimmest of criminals.
If every young male is going to be stopped N times per day, that means every innocent young male will be stopped N times per day. Even the guilty will likely not be found carrying anything, and so will seem innocent. That can only happen for a very limited amount of time before serious hostility is built up.

Where would the police come from for more than a day or two's worth of operation? I already pointed out that various killings *less* typically associated with non-white Britons could be stopped given resources which the police just don't have, and/or by heavily invasive action.

Because you've certainly never ever played the victim have you SWL?

I don't suppose anything is guaranteed to work and the flaws you point out are valid.

What's the alternatives if heavy policing is unacceptable?

No use throwing money at the area as it's been shown that improving the environment has had zero effect.
I expect the area is flooded with Social Workers but they've been there for decades and this is still going on.
Encourage absent fathers to return? Perhaps this will help, (stop penalising couples and reintroduce married couple's allowance?). But that's a long term project and answers are needed now to cut the flow of body bags.

Maybe I needed someone to tell me to shut the duck up Bouncy

>>"What's the alternatives if heavy policing is unacceptable?"

If people know who the culprits are, encourage them to pass the information on?

Try different things in different places, see what works, then do that?

"At some times, the definition of 'likely suspect' seems to have been 'black, male and under 70'. Don't even try to pretend that in the 70s the police were just trying to protect the black community from itself."

In the U.S., they call that kind of stop a "DWB" -- driving while black.

In the UK we'd call it driving whilst black.

Oh nopt the level playing feild argument. What a tired old crock of cr@p that is.

"OK the well of kids won last week. Look its all fair we have a level playing feild so people cant claim theres an unfair advantage. We have even given them new boots just the same as the the rich kids have"

Out onto the level pitch run eleven rich kids. Behind them hobble eleven poor kids who have ricketts and have trained for a quarter of the time because they cant afford to pay for the training.

But hey its a lelve playing feild.



If you think that the effects of whats been happening for years are gone just because peolpe say they are then your an idiot.

If a someone got raped on Tuesday would you expect them to be fine Wednesday? In a week, a mont a year?

There are well documented long lasting effects of the psychological damage done to people by abuse they get be it verbal or phtsical and even when that abuse is merely witnessed it leaves a deep psychological imprint on people.

I work with people who beleive they can never shake the perception other people have of them so see no point in trying. Some people call this whigeing. I call it stating the facts.

Treating the innocent like criminals will give them the impression that there is no point in them behaving well because they get the same blanket treatment regardless of their conduct.

Yes I am saying we need to reward those who make a decent fist of behaving themselves and make special rewards for theos who go the extra mile because there are pretty obvious and immediate rewards to be had for doing the wrong thing.

one love

Patronising piffle that just feeds the victim mentality.

Its just a mentality is it?

When you're going about your own business and two police men beat you up for giving "clever" answers.

When police without giving a reason search a bunch of brown boys only pausing to pose for photos with pee'd up women on a hen night in the middle of a busy city centre.

That's all to do with a victim mentality making the police do that. thanks for the information for years I never knew it was the "victims" own fault due to their terrible mentality.