The fundamental problem is that the police are not free to use the force necessary to put down the riot. If rioters knew they would be shot on sight, they would stop rioting.
As it is, police are afraid to crack down for fear that they'll be brought up on charges of "police brutality".
Ultimately it will only end when the military is called in and can brandish actual firearms.
EDIT: Amazed that someone downvoted this. Just proves the point that those who would actually use force to restore order will be called out as "committing police brutality."
Don't bet on it. The group dynamic (deindividuation[1]) behind rioting is exactly the same as the group dynamic used to build armies that are willing to risk their lives on orders. Introducing military on the streets like was done in Northern Ireland[2] is a recipe for decades of pain and division. The military are not police; you don't want that.
Whatever dude. Just ask anyone who grew up in anything resembling a ghetto. There's lots of us who begin to think that shooting rioters on sight is not a bad idea. Where do you think Boondock Saints came from? Honestly, at some point, you just get sick of the shit and you want it to stop, and solutions like the military become appealing.
And therein lies the problem. We know it's inhumane. We know it degrades us further to succumb to that shoot-the-fuckers mentality. It is understood then, that for riots like this to happen at all, we've already lost. That there are scarcely any viable solutions merely brings to surface the existing societal decay.
The point then, is not that you are right and he is wrong or vice versa. The point is that ultimately, the military is brought in for riots of LA-scale intensity because the people want them to be brought in, because in a lose-lose situation, you'd prefer the choice that affords peace.
p.s. It is interesting then, that folks like Jefferson were against standing armies because they were only necessary for oppressing the populace.
p.p.s. Looks like people can't handle the notion that society can slide into nihilism. =P
I was pointing out why people think the way they do. No need to get condescending or shoot the messenger here. More than that, you are merely being pedantic.
It makes little difference that Hollywood made it when it was people who made a cult out of it.
This is the path to totalitarianism. The scary thing is that the people actually want it; it doesn't take much to push them into its arms. And that's why it's so important to fight against it, at all costs.
In one incident, a man suffered life-threatening injuries when he was attacked by rioters after he tried to extinguish a fire they had started in a bin.
Other residents told how they barricaded themselves into their block of flats as more than 200 masked rioters bent on burgling houses tried to smash down the doors.
Classical composer and musician Leni White told how she escaped her blazing flat in Ealing with nothing but her violin after it was torched by thugs.
Shopkeepers were also robbed and one was left with stitches after looters beat him up and demanded his money.
The military quelled the LA Riots, which is the direct comparable. Northern Ireland was a decades long political/military issue, not about lads looting TVs. Not a good comparison.
Ultimately it will only end when the military is called in and can brandish actual firearms.
My ex was career military. I don't know about the UK, but he always said "You really don't want to bring in the military (for stuff like this). Police are trained to wound and bring them in alive. We are trained to shoot to kill."
This reminds me of the 1998 movie The Siege. Terrorists are bombing New York and the politicians are discussing bringing in the army to hunt them down. Bruce Willis is a hard ass general and this is what he has to say on the subject:
"Make no mistake, Senator. We will hunt down the enemy, we will find the enemy, and we will kill the enemy. And no card-carrying member of the ACLU is more dead set against it than I am. Which is why I urge you - I implore you. Do not consider this as an option."
"There is historically nothing more corrosive to the morale of a population than policing its own citizens."
Another line that is spot on, IMO, from Battlestar Galactica:
> "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
Yep, and we've been there before, quite recently actually. See Bloody Sunday on wikipedia. Paratroopers killed 13 people at peaceful demo when they mistakenly thought they had come under fire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
Though I wouldn't call the 1970's "quite recently", similarly, the US had four deaths of protesters in 1970, known as The Kent State Shootings or Kent State Massacre:
I suppose I meant 'quite recently' in that I would never have imagined that something like Bloody Sunday could happen in a modern 1st world democracy, until we studied it in Modern History at school. To put it in context, the next most recent military action against UK civilians was the Peterloo massacre in 1819. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
I'm 46. I was just shy of my fifth birthday when the Kent State Shootings occurred. Age surveys suggest that people on HN are predominantly in their 20's and 30's. Attitudes about time aren't necessarily age dependent. I find that people from older cultures tend to have a longer view of time than your typical American. I do happen to be American. "Mate" implies you are not.
I heard this somewhere (quite probably on HN actually)
"In America 100 years is a long time, in Europe 100 miles a long distance"
Your perceptions are shaped by your culture, and particularly in the US people rarely look at history before the revolutionary era (if they even know about that) so 100 years would be almost half of history. Whereas an older empire might trace some of it's roots as far back as the dark ages.
The inquiry into the killings only fininished last year - and, as you would expect, there was a lot of coverage in the UK of Bloody Sunday so isn't something that has been forgotten about (and given the nature of the killings it really shouldn't be):
Military is also supposed to protect a country from outside (military) attackers, police are supposed to protect from domestic (criminal) threats. When you make the military the police you make citizens the enemy the state of their own country.
The military has more functions than that and is very effectively mobilized to assist in disasters, such as fires and floods. My ex participated in such things. Still, the point you make (about it making your own citizens "enemies of the state") is a chilling one and I can't really rebut it per se.
I agree with everything you're saying about helping out in disasters, but when you mix military and police, it's just unhealthy. They have different goals/functions and can't/shouldn't be used interchangeably. Military and criminal threats should not be responded to in the same way. Rioters are criminals, let the police handle it. And if the police incapable of doing so, that is a separate problem in and of itself.
It's a good thing that in the real world, we have people in charge with some restraint. Which is why most riots in the West end without bloodshed, shots fired or the military being abused to fight it's own citizens.
Order is rarely restored through some short-sighted power-fantasy that disregards the value of human lives. But lots of dictatorships started that way though. And often with the best of intentions.
Ok. So youths are burning a building across the street from your apartment. And it's a dictatorship if you want men with guns to stop them from doing this:
And take a look at what the rioters are doing on Youtube. Some would submit that the people with the "power fantasy" are the rioters who are burning buildings, beating random passerby bloody, and looting businesses.
We also have different premises on what is the more plausible immediate threat: fascist dictatorship or arson and anarchy. It's doubtful that we'll resolve those differences in this comment box, so let's just agree to disagree.
May I respectfully inquire as to how old you are? At the risk of sounding like an arrogant old fart, you act like you've never seen riots before.
These things have happened many times in the past, they usually burn themselves out after a few days and very, very rarely cost lives. This "anarchy" is very temporary. The odds of this evolving into a permanent state or a broad revolution are about zero.
Your idea of "plausible immediate threat" does not match decades of history.
If rioters knew they would be shot on sight, they would stop rioting.
You do realise what "shot on sight" means, right? Dead. Forever. No takebacks.
If you really think that summary execution is a reasonable response to throwing a brick through a window, shouting at people in a scary way, or nicking a couple of packets of cigarettes then you are officially an Internet Crazy Person.
They're setting fire to buildings and cars and throwing bricks at people's faces. Arson has historically been considered one of the most serious of crimes because of the frequency with which fires spiral out of control, especially in a densely populated metropolis like London.
Look at the pictures. Still want to contend that the severity of what is going is equivalent to nicking a pack of cigarettes?
>> The fundamental problem is that the police are not free to use the force necessary to put down the riot.
I think the riots were triggered by a man shot by police. So you want now to shot more people, and consequently trigger more riots. If there are people rioting then there is a reason. Go and talk to them. Understand what they want. If they are badly educated, that's probably your fault (your are the government).
Because using force to restore order has worked so well for Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria? Or are you implying that London citizens are pussies and will stand down where the other countries' citizens didn't/aren't? I highly doubt escalating will solve anything, but who knows.
Ed: Wrote this too quickly without thinking enough on it. I don't think violent response is the answer, but given the nature of the situation I'll shift my position to thinking it'd probably work in this case.
In Africa and the Middle East, the riots were heavily motivated - the rioters had strong political reasons to be there. In London, it's just some socially disaffected youths and looting opportunists. So I don't think they are all that comparable.
> Or are you implying that London citizens are pussies and will stand down where the other countries' citizens didn't/aren't?
I'm not going to respond directly to this.
Rather, I'll point out that force is used because it is often effective.
There are innumerable instances of riots where the subsequent police/military crackdown actually suppressed the population.
The real question here is what makes London like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, or Syria today rather than like all those countries in the past where rebellions were quelled?
"The riots, beginning in the evening after the verdicts, peaked in intensity over the next two days, but ultimately continued for several days. A curfew and deployment of the National Guard began to control the situation; eventually U.S. Army soldiers and United States Marines were ordered to the city to quell disorder as well."
I agree that you're right in your example, however I think this was only accepted and allowed to occur because it was in largely black neighborhoods where they deployed the military. They were already an 'other' of sorts so the general population saw them as a foreign threat that they didn't identify with and thus used military force against a criminal threat. It's the same as Katrina/New Orleans.
And to repeat my other comment: Military is supposed to protect a country from outside (military) attackers, police are supposed to protect from domestic (criminal) threats. When you make the military the police you make citizens the enemy the state of their own country.
I suspect the real reason it was acceptable to call in the military is because fairly high numbers of people had already died (and thousands were injured and the property damage was very high). Killing a few more to actually stop it becomes more palatable in the face of something like that.
Excerpt from the wikipedia article:
Fifty-three people died during the riots[24] with as many as 2,000 people injured. Estimates of the material losses vary between about $800 million and $1 billion. Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings, with fire calls coming once every minute at some points. Widespread looting also occurred. Stores owned by Korean and other Asian immigrants were widely targeted,[25] although stores owned by Caucasians and African Americans were targeted by rioters as well.
And it indicates Hispanics likely played a larger role than blacks:
Half of all riot arrestees and more than a third of those killed during the violence were Hispanic.
I agree but if you watch the footage from back then it's a case study in media framing bias. A lot of the stories focused on blacks rioting/looting white small businesses. Similar to how Katrina was framed.
Now imagine any other ethnic riot in another city where this would be acceptable--it doesn't exist unless they are brown in a predominantly white city. The military would never be used against a majority of whites or even asians, but if you're brown or black it's accepted-- because they're constantly other-ed all the time and scapegoated.
I do recall Katrina being framed that way by the media. But I also remember watching the LA riots and my impression was always that the military got sent in because it was so out of hand and not stopping. The military has also been sent in historically to protect blacks when schools were desegregated and for other Civil Rights incidents on behalf of blacks. Just because the media shows it's bias doesn't mean racial bias is why the military does the things it does.
Not entirely on topic, since the soldiers don't decide where they go, but while we are on the topic(s) of racism and the military: The US military tends to be more multi-racial/multi-cultural than most civilian social climes and there tends to be less racism in it. The joke in the military is that they are the "green" race -- ie the color of their uniform makes them all one "race", separate from the civilians who are typically not very welcoming of the military members stationed in their community yet still want to milk them for money. The loyalty to a cause larger than themselves and willingness to bleed and die for it seems to overcome differences that are often insurmountable in the minds of other people. That whole "I am willing to die defending you and you are willing to die defending me" paradigm is a commitment and a bond deeper than many families or lovers have. It makes things like skin color seem rather superficial and insignificant in comparison.
My ex was wonderfully non-racist and I became uncomfortably aware of just how much my mind had been poisoned from growing up in the Deep South when I finally met his best friend at a new duty station after months of hearing glowing things about the guy. The guy was black. My ex had never once mentioned that and the surprise showed on my face, which made for a very awkward meeting. It has been food for thought ever since about the topic of racism and I think I have grown as a person because of it.
I don't think the military shot anyone. There is a paradox here and it's that the military response would put the republic in danger if it indeed turned violent. But the mere presence of the military put the riots down. As others have pointed out in this thread, the rioters are largely opportunists. They won't stand up to the army, but it is regrettable to society at large that the army had to be deployed to begin with.
Because using force to restore order has worked so well for Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria?
A lot of that unrest is because of rent-a-mobs hired by military juntas. "Force" does not work because it is not supposed to.
IIRC, one of the accomplishments of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution was to intercept busloads of rent-a-mobs and pour immense amounts of free booze into them before the opposition figured out what was going on.
In Europe we prefer to find the problem and solve it, discuss and communicate with each other, instead of shooting at people and hope they'll be too scared to continue rioting.
In most countries i lived (UK not included) the army can only be used for pacific work inside the country.
It's against all countries' constitution I know of to use the army in internal affairs that include use of force.
And I doubt the riots are killing anyone. You probably lost more money for corrupt government office holders than to any riot-smashing-your-precious-things you will face in your life time. so focus your desire to raise arms more effectively, please.
As it is, police are afraid to crack down for fear that they'll be brought up on charges of "police brutality".
Ultimately it will only end when the military is called in and can brandish actual firearms.
EDIT: Amazed that someone downvoted this. Just proves the point that those who would actually use force to restore order will be called out as "committing police brutality."