Belfast Mayhem

Biffa Bacon

So, you'd have no problem about those reporters who got caught up in a riot, and beaten to crap in Genoa by police who were defending themselves from the onrushing crowd?

If, as I suspect, they were beaten to crap because the police were just taking their frustrations out on them, then I would have a problem with it yes. If the reporters weren’t actually rioting themselves, then I can’t see any reason why it was necessary to beat them.

If you have a rushing mass of people, there is no way you can simply open fire indiscriminately with any form of potentially lethal weaponry, unless you simply dont care about innocent deaths.

Then don’t fire indiscriminately. The police are trained in the use of firearms you know. Obviously the decision to use live ammunition would only be taken if someone’s life was in danger and would be a judgement call for the commander on the ground.

Never seen riots at soccer stadia then? No? Ah - must be my imagination. Funny - I can remember the riot police tearing off in their van from 50 yards from my house a few years when there was a riot in LAnsdowne Road during an Irish international. Must get that checked out - my mind is playing tricks on me.

”Riots happen at soccer matches” does not mean “a soccer match is a riot”, my point being that I am not calling for heavy policing of all public gatherings.

You'll not ban sporting events where you can have rioting by hundreds to thousands. You will not surround "a crowd" until it becomes "a riot". And yet all that is necessary is to surround this violent mass after the violence starts, and make them all sit down (or shoot them) and that no-one would slip the noose because this is your solution to such a failing in policing?

I accept that it is highly unlikely you will get every single rioter. The important thing is that the objective of riot control is to arrest as many rioters as possible, rather than to contain them or cause them to disperse.

Dunno which reality you're thinking of, but its not the one that I know.

I don’t understand your objection. Are you saying that the particular strategy I suggested won’t be applicable to every situation, (as I’m sure it wouldn’t, for example where the rioting was spread over a large area), or are you saying that it is simply impossible for the police to suppress riots by arresting a large number of the perpetrators? If it’s the latter, then I reject that. I believe that the reason police forces generally don’t try to forcibly suppress riots is for political reasons, not logistical or strategic ones.

Examples of enforced control leading to rioting?

Have you looked at the news in the past few years about a lot of Asian nations? Student riots protesting about the lack of freedom in terms of rights to disseminate information, gather, and even protest.

Were these riots caused by police tactics employed in previous riots and were these tactics comparable in nature to the ones I’m proposing? Or were they caused by suppression of peaceful protests along with police brutality?

If you allow the marches and protests which are currently forming the breeding grounds for many riots, and you perpetuate the situation.

You do not perpetuate the situation as riots would be less likely to occur if the participants realised there were likely to be consequences arising from their actions.

Ergo, you cannot stop a riot from beginning in this way.

You stop riots from beginning by convincing potential rioters that they will be in a lot of trouble if they do.

As to looking at the logistics of charging and sentencing rioters. Lets take a conservative estimate and say that if you captured every rioter (because you're method isnt a failing of policing, so you will catch every one of them) you would have at least several thousand from various localities before people would possibly even considering learning your lesson. You cant be sure that all of these are guilty, and as you yourself said, they should get a fair trial.

Several thousands is a conservative estimate? It’s mostly the same knackers rioting every time anyway so you’d have most of them put away after suppressing three of four riots.

Thats several thousand people over and above the numbers currently processed by the courts. Given that courts are tyically sized to meet the normal day-to-day needs, this would mean you either have a backlog of several thousand cases to clear whenever you can find a spare slot, or you need massive expansion of your court facilities, available lawyers (prosecution and defence) and so on. This would take years to put in place, and assuming your idea would work, would be scrapped within a very short period of time. The odds of getting that many extra staff for such a short period of time are ridiculous - we can safely assume it wont happen.

You wouldn’t need an individual trial for each person, you could try groups of people charged with the same offence together.

Ergo, the only solution would be to process the people through the existing court system, possibly allowing for a small increase in size. That will take time. A fair trial, incidentally will require proof that the person was indeed involved in the *rioting* as opposed to being an innocent who was caught up in the *riot*. Which means each one of these several thousand cases will require evidence to be obtained. THat would require police force resources, amongst other things (posibly military resources). Guess what - they dont have the available resources either.

All you’d need would be the testimony of the arresting officer to convict, which I think is fair. After all, these people have been caught in the act. Given this, I think cases could be processed fairly rapidly.

Need I continue? I just keeps going on and on. Unless you want to mobe to a police state, with massive over-policing maintained at a steady high level even when things are peaceful, you basically cannot hope to process these cases in a reasonable length of time.

I don’t know why you seem intent on describing it as a “police state” when it’s clearly not.

Does no one else here believe in justice? Does no one else believe that people who attempt to murder police officers and civilians, who seriously maim and injure, who destroy property, who try to ethnically cleanse neighbourhoods through intimidation, that these people should be removed from society? Surely this should be everyone’s aim?

PyjamaMan

are any of you really from the north, if your not u dotn know what its like. i live in mid uslter and i have a summer job with me da doign renovations in the heart of loyalist north belfast, across the road from the holy cross primary school, 2 streets up the road from where that fella was shot. nothing that i know of can be done about it, its fecking mayhem!

bonkey

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon
I accept that it is highly unlikely you will get every single rioter.

Thats all I wanted to hear.

You started with :

What should happen is that every single person rioting should be arrested. ... But the fact of the matter is that every time a rioter escapes arrest it signifies a policing failure.

.

The italics were your empahsis by the way.

Now you admit that this approach wont get every single person who is rioting - which is what I took issue with in the first place - your claim to have a solution which (by implication at least) wouldnt have these policing failures.

All we are doing after that is putting a figure on the number of people who get away.

I would maintain that short of indiscriminate actions aginst a crowd and maintaing a high, constant police presence near any large gatherings, there is no way of achieving anything near what you think is possible in terms of numbers detained.

You seem to differ - but then again, you support the use of lethal force against rioters. You support the right of the commander on the ground to make the call of the level of force required. You claim that a "fair trial" could be given by trying groups of people collectively and convicting them on no more than the arresting officer's word (which only proves their presence at a gathering, not any rioting).

In other words, you leave open as a solution a system where a commanding officer can indicsriminately gun down a crowd, arrest the survivors, and then claim that the lethal force was required (as was his call to make) and that every single survivor was a dangerous rioter and is therefore guilty.

I couldnt agree to any of these things, so I guess we're just gonna have to agree to differ on this one.

Personally, I think the absolute best your approach would do is turn the "hardcore rioters" into underground hardcore terrorists taking action against the oppressive police force.

jc

CHRISTYG

On a slightly different (but still SLIGHTLY related) topic, there was a special meeting this afternoon of Belfast City Council, at which a motion was passed stating Belfast City Council's opposition to the sectarianism, and calling a rally at Belfast City Hall next week to protest. My point isn't that this won't do much good (although it won't) but-who do you think voted against? Paisley's mob in the "Democratic" Unionist Party!!


Point to discuss- Does this prove that elements in the DUP- not Rev Paisley himself (who I know personally) but some of the underlings are secretly in support of the violence?