Monday, August 08, 2011

And London continues to burn

and be looted. And get this:
04.12 An account here from the Hackney Citizen blog of how members of the Turkish community, which owns dozens of shops and restaurants in Stoke Newington and Dalston Junction defended their area from masked gangs without police help.
I can't get this blog to come up, I think their lines are kind of busy right now. Two things:
From what I've heard, getting into a fight with a bunch of Turks protecting their property generally isn't the brightest thing to do;
Second, I wonder if the police and Crown Prosecutors will screw with them the way they do with most other subjects of the Crown who take action like this?

We'll see. As Insty says, a bunch of shopkeepers with rifles, shotguns and pistols would probably have done wonders to stop some of this, but the Brits have decided the peasants not only can't be trusted with arms, but can't be trusted to defend themselves, at least not effectively; over the last few years there've been a lot of stories of citizens on the street and in their homes using 'too much force' to defend themselves and family, and the Crown putting them in jail for it.

2 comments:

Windy Wilson said...

"Too much force!" AGNTSA!
Too much force is only relevant in a fight between two drunks in a barfight. Factor in disparity in size between the aggressor and the victim, the purpose for which each entered the street before the "encounter", the element of surprise, particularly if the encounter takes place in single digit hours of the night in ones home after the resident was woken up by the party of the first part, and it is hard, absent some ideological desire to see martyrs among other people, to condemn any force multiplier used by the defender.
Waaaaaaay back in 1978, in a classic case of victim misidentification, a mugger in NYFC sued his erstwhile victim for "excessive use of force" for hurting him while resisting his freelance efforts at wealth redistribution. That action hit the LA Times, but nothing after that (of course).

Keith said...

Just listening to the BBC (7:30 am, August 10th), 350 to 400 white shirted civillians on the streets of Enfield (area of London) to keep looters away.

The cops are furious at that development.

There are some reports of riot cops forcing defenders to disperse.

In Birmingham, 3 moslems defending a gas station were deliberately run over and killed by a car (big concrete blocks or skips/1000litre drums of water needed for protection!)