Huntingdon was a lone wolf attack

[WeCouldBeNiceToEachOther]

Confirmed by police about half an hour ago that the 35 year old arrested has been released without charge.

This , I was 15 when inwww caught up in the chaos of the 7/7 bombings whilst travelling. I was not hurt or trapped but even witnessing the panic descending around me and seeing the bus sent me spiralling for a long time in anxiety about going out. So I can’t imagine the feeling of being trapped in the actual train and witnessing it not knowing if you were next.

But the police have said it’s not terror related.

did you believe them when they said this about the Liverpool attack?

I think your agenda here is fairly obvious.

Terrorists who commit multiple stabbings are therefore by definition mad and should be in psychiatric prisons rather than general prisons?

No I’m talking about train CCTV. it’s an LNER train, which according to network rail beams live into stations along the route. So staff and police in stations along the route can view the cctv as the train is still moving.

I don't deny engrained racism more generally, but isn't it possible that the 35 yo fit a similar description to the actual attacker and so was wrongly arrested in the middle of a chaotic situation when the police had to act fast? Presumably they would err towards arresting too many rather than too few people in a situation like this.

And maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but I thought the reason the police so explicitly stated the race and nationalities of the two men arrested was to prevent the public leaping to assumptions about asylum seekers, if eyewitness accounts started referring to the men's ethnicities. i.e., the point was to explicitly state their Britishness.

Universal condemnation isn’t useful. Some MH service are outstanding, some are not.It really isn’t helpful or accurate to reduce it to shit in general. Although realistically I acknowledge this is how many experience mental health services

Mental health services are over stretched and under resourced
There are multiple vacant hard to fill posts, it’s a stressful role

Ethnic minorities are over represented on mental health services, over medicated, in PICU and forensics in particular. There are multiple studies into potential reasons, it’s problematic

Omg. Are you on drugs? this the most batshit thing I've ever read.

The supposed threat of (sexual and other) violence is the number one topic atm in the gutter press, on social media - everywhere.

Two 1000-post threads filled up in.a matter of hours this morning, talking about almost nothing else, based on what now looks like a false premise.

Seriously, what planet are you on.

There’s probably a reasonable argument for that. If by “terrorist” you mean fundamentalists of whatever flavour, they have effectively been brainwashed. I imagine the chances of undoing that damage are far greater with expert medical input and therapy than they are with 23 hours locked up alone in the local scrubs then released out into the anonymity of the streets when the sentence is over.
Won’t be a popular view but I expect outcomes for society would be better.

You wouldn't think it needed spelling out would you! But clearly it does to some people.

And maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but I thought the reason the police so explicitly stated the race and nationalities of the two men arrested was to prevent the public leaping to assumptions about asylum seekers, if eyewitness accounts started referring to the men's ethnicities. i.e., the point was to explicitly state their Britishness.

I’d assumed the same as you about that

Anyway I’m sure if the wrongly arrested person makes a complaint it will be looked at. If the arrest was justified they will say sorry but one of those things. If it’s decided there wasn’t grounds for reasonable suspicion then it will be an unlawful arrest and he will get a lot of money. The police have to have grounds for reasonable suspicion. If people were pointing at an individual and saying that’s him that’s grounds.

I have no agenda. Perfectly reasonable to assume that a mass attack is terror related these days now that the plane angle has been shut down by better security. ISIS have said that lone wolf attacks is the preferred way to spread terror as its more unpredictable.

If its terror related, in the 90s it would be the IRA and now it's Islamists/ISIS. Humans have an instinct for self preservation and will naturally quickly assume that the most likely type of attacker is who is attacking them at the time. That's why women are apparently more interested in serial killer documentaries in order to subconsciously learn about who may harm them.

We will have to wait and see what this guys motives are. Good they caught him alive.

Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean any failings of mental health services shouldn’t be looked at. Because ultimately if such failings play a part it’s the victims of this attack who have been failed by those mental health services, not just the attacker.

Terrorists think they are at war and are killing for an objective. I think for that reason it’s viewed less as a mental illness that can be treated.

Similar to how there’s a difference between someone who kills for a defined reason - money, jealousy, revenge etc and someone who kills because they are schizophrenic and are in the middle of an episode where voices are telling them to kill.

Can we please stop blaming mental illness until we actually know? It's very stigmatising. The vast majority of people who are mentally ill are only a risk to themselves. Depression does not make you go on a stabbing spree. Psychotic illnesses can cause people to be violent, but people with diagnoses like Schizophrenia are far more likely to be at risk of self-neglect, self-harm, or exploitation, than they are of being violent.

Some people commit crimes and acts of terror. Yes, something has probably gone wrong in your psyche somewhere if you're committing a massive stabbing, but it doesn't mean you have a diagnosis of severe mental illness like Schizophrenia, which is an illness a lot of people associate violence with. Not everyone who commits a crime is mentally ill.

Also a major difference is a terrorist mostly knows what they are doing, have full capacity, and can take criminal responsibility. Someone in the midst of a psychotic episode cannot. That is why one belongs in a hospital and one in a jail.

What an articulate and well reasoned response.

I suspect that the people who were busy condemning the arrested man as being a terrorist earlier are now the ones protesting that they are too busy sympathising the victims (as well they deserve) to also view him as a victim or spare any sympathy of empathy for him.

I think the terrorists run a lot of prisons if the reports coming out of Frankland for example are to be believed. So yes I agree general prison is probably not the best place anyway to get any sort of change in mindset.

@Passthebiscuit12 did you read the rest of my sentence, about PTSD? I’m trying to make the point that everyone involved will have suffered. And the main victims are the ones in hospital, not the one who had a night in a police cell. They’re all victims of course, and I would never have chosen to grade their suffering, which is why this whole thread baffles me. You, OP, and many others are trying to make out that this one man is the truest victim of them all, because of the colour of his skin. Bizarre.

I would happily argue that anyone who gets on a train and stabs multiple random innocent people minding their own business is mentally ill. What else could they possibly be? It’s not ‘sane’ behaviour is it?

Generally I stay off these threads and wait to see the truth emerge. But I think some of the so called "supportive" posters are just throwing fuel on the flames. There were quite a few black people on the train, you can see them in the news reports. One black man was arrested, many were not. So suggesting he was arrested because of his skin colour is just wrong.

There was CCTV on the train. The images may not have been clear enough to be fully confident it was one attacker and not two, especially if dressed in similar clothing. They arrested him and then released him fairly rapidly, probably when they'd had a good look at - and maybe enhanced - the CCTV images.

Multiple other black men were not arrested, he was released rapidly. Not everything is about skin colour.

Definitely!!