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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that the riots in Tottenham are not in respect of

134 replies

M0naLisa · 07/08/2011 23:51

the bloke shot?

They are acting if not worse than the reason this guy was killed in the first place.

The police must have had their reasoning for shooting him dead. He was known to the police, they had been following him. And on his body there was a fire arm on him. Hmm so the rioters saying 'were doing this out of respect'

No your not your doing it to complete and utter arseholes. If he wouldnt have been shot by police he could have gone on to shoot someone else.

Think the police need to step down now and let the army take over, hose them down!! Like they do in Ireland.

OP posts:
Morloth · 08/08/2011 08:45

I think given the current situation in the UK Edith the possibility should not be discounted entirely. The money appears to be gone, people are going to get increasingly desperate for whatever resources they can get their hands on.

What is that saying? 'That any civilisation is only three meals from anachy'. There are people on MN who are regularly skipping meals because they can't afford to feed both themselves and their kids. It is pretty rare right now but seems to be becoming more common. Scary times.

I feel quite blessed to be well away from Europe TBH, this sort of thing was one of the reasons we wanted out when we did.

Hopefully this is overly pessimistic!

Tenacity · 08/08/2011 08:55

"The police must have had their reasoning for shooting him dead"

haha are you that naive?

PaigeTurner · 08/08/2011 08:55

I think this situation goes a lot deeper than 'smashing a few windows and having a pop at the police'. I have no idea how it feels to live in poverty in the worst areas of London, and to feel victimised by the authorities who are supposed to protect you. But I can imagine it's more than frustrating. Why have respect for the police when they have been seen to get away with criminal activity themselves? Where there are oppressed communities there will be an eventual uprising, doesn't matter what kicks it off.

As I understand it, mark duggan was a 'respected peacemaker' on the estate, a community leader if you like. I'm not surprised after reading blinkered views on this thread that people are angry.

FreudianSlipper · 08/08/2011 09:03

what PaigeTurner said

no one is saying its ok to riot but there are deep frustrations within cerrain communities and not enough is being done to help these communities, years of frustration of beign bottom of the pile of society of having low expectations placed on you is it surprising that it leads to riots

of course some will go along with it because they get caught up but i feel many are truly frustrated and sadly it is not until something like this happens do we sit up and take notice, unfortunately many will just not bother to see beyond the rioting not be interested in what is really going on and this is what needs to be dealt with

MmeLindor. · 08/08/2011 09:04

Paige
There seems to be a discrepancy between him being described as a 'peacemaker and community leader' and a 'petty criminal and gang member'.

PaigeTurner · 08/08/2011 09:09

Can you not be both?

ProfessionallyOffendedGoblin · 08/08/2011 09:10
CogitoErgoSometimes · 08/08/2011 09:18

"Where there are oppressed communities there will be an eventual uprising, doesn't matter what kicks it off"

The people throwing rocks at police whilst on their mobile phones at the same time were not oppressed, they were enjoying themselves. It was a bit of a lark. Those taking shopping trolleys into smashed shops were not oppressed, they were oppportunists.

The people I feel really sorry for are the ones that have very little and have now been terrorised & burnt out of their homes.

MacGuffin · 08/08/2011 09:21

As a white middle aged woman living in the shires i don't expect to fully understand what it's like to live in those areas.

Can anyone explain to me all this talk of black young men being 'disenfranchised by and of society' etc. - i really don't understand what it means and smacks of an excuse. Surely everyone is 'society' Apols for naive question....

CogitoErgoSometimes · 08/08/2011 09:26

They use the 'disenfranchised' excuse to mean that they aren't listened to and have no recourse against authority. That may have been true 30 years ago when the police treated young black men as animals and Toxteth and Broadwater Farm etc., went bang, but there has been a lot of effort to rectify community relations since. I think we'll find this episode has zero to do with being disenfranchised and it was more a case of....'there's a demo going down on the High Street, bring the lads and we'll have a bit of a bundle'

CupcakesandTwunting · 08/08/2011 09:27

"So ryoko you think the police randomly go around shooting innocent people for fun? Really?"

Yes. Do you remember what happened to Jean Charles De Menezes? If you can read the case report on that, with the subsequent knowledge of what really happened, and not be angry then you're a better person than I.

Ian Tomlinson? The newspaper seller who walked through an area of protest and got killed by a police baton for his bother.

There are factions of the police who need little more excuse than someone blinking in the wrong way to get their batons/guns out, unfortunately. Even more unfortunately, it does harm like this, what we're seeing now.
I agree with everything Ryoko said, too.

VelveteenRabbit · 08/08/2011 09:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CupcakesandTwunting · 08/08/2011 09:32

I think it begins with one legitimate protest, then the usual band of troublemakers jump on the bandwagon and undermine the original protest. It does people like Mark Duggan's family no favours whatsoever.

However, I do take issue with people who assume that the police only ever kill for the right reasons. They're police, not gods. They're as open to corruption/over-zealousness as any other group of people. They don't come with a built-in decency chip just because they are police officers.

bubblesincoffee · 08/08/2011 09:33

How can any decent person justify the riots by saying people have a reason to distrust the police? It's ridiculous.

Maybe the police do make mistakes occasionally, but they are human beings making split second descisions under huge amounts of pressure and often when they have good reason to be in fear for their own safety. I don't believe anyone would be able to make the right descisions 100% of the time when their lives are being threatened.

Even if this guy didn't shoot, it's clear he's a criminal, it's clear he owns a gun, he took a risk just by being that sort of a person.

When we see police start to shoot old ladies who are just finishing a days voluntry work in a charity shop, or paramedics at the scene of an accident, or a Mum with a pram just coming out of Tescos, then this irrational fear and mistrust of the police might be justified. While they are shooting known criminals who own guns, I thank them and applaud them for being there to do a job that I would be petrified to do.

It's funny how it only seems to be criminals who don't trust the police. I don't know anyone who has this bad attitude against the police, but then I don't know anyone who sells drugs, or carries a knife, or owns a gun, or mugs people, or steals.

People that don't break the law and comply with police who are just doing their job have nothing to fear.

Whatmeworry · 08/08/2011 09:36

In Arab countries, social media was used to liberate countries, in the UK it is used to "liberate" other peoples' televisions. Who is the more civilised?

(Thinking that an erroneously shot man does not justify a widespread orgy of looting)

CupcakesandTwunting · 08/08/2011 09:37

"When we see police start to shoot old ladies who are just finishing a days voluntry work in a charity shop, or paramedics at the scene of an accident, or a Mum with a pram just coming out of Tescos, then this irrational fear and mistrust of the police might be justified."

Or newspaper sellers walking home after a day's graft... Or electricians trying to get the Tube to their job...

Ormirian · 08/08/2011 09:38

Protest? I can beleive that was a genuine cry of outrage.
Riots are just some greedy feckers taking advantage.

perplexedpirate · 08/08/2011 09:39

Riots aren't the answer, that's for sure, much less all the looting, but these people are furious.

Another person has been killed by police in suspicious circumstances (police issue bullet in the radio etc), there appears to have been a pre-existing atmosphere of distrust. It keeps happening, and it's terrifying.

What's also terrifying is the amount of people waiting to see what he'd done and if he "deserved" to die. Really? I mean, really?!
I don't condone the rioting, but I can understand it.

bubblesincoffee · 08/08/2011 09:44

It's not exactly a common occurance though is it Cupcakes? A couple of isolated incidents here and there from individuals is hardly a good reason to mistrust an entire proffession.

If you went to one GP about a health concern and got an incorrect diagnosis would you live in fear of every single doctor in the country?

As I said, mistakes happen in high pressure situations. There is never going to be a profession or a whole area of society that gets it right 100% of the time. Every job is open to abuse by individuals. The police are not perfect, but the vast majority of them are good people who put themselves at risk to protect the rest of us.

PonceyMcPonce · 08/08/2011 09:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CupcakesandTwunting · 08/08/2011 09:50

There are more examples of underhand policing than the two I just gave. They are just the most high profile. The extent of lying and cover-ups in both of these cases, just so that the officers responsible weren't culpable was phenomenal. Lying about De Menezes ignoring instructions to stop, lying about Tomlinson being involved with the protesting... The family of Mark Duggan insist he had no gun. If that turns out to be true, what reason did the police have for shooting him dead, rather than arresting him? And I strongly disagree with whoever said that essnetially it's his own fault that he's dead because of the person that he was.

I'm not even slating the police as a whole. I can just very easily see how a situation like this arises.

CupcakesandTwunting · 08/08/2011 09:51

And I do think that the water cannons need to be brought out to deal with the idiots setting fire to stuff and being general PITAs.

PaigeTurner · 08/08/2011 10:00

Cogito, you think this is a race issue? I think it's more of a poverty/wealth issue. I don't think you need to be an ethnic minority to be disenfranchised. Young people growing up facing long term unemployment/no prospects are taking the 'easy' way out of going into criminal gangs, which lead to senseless deaths etc. Why is this happening? What is the answer? I don't condone rioting, looting or hurting innocent people, but how else can they get their point across?

ProfessionallyOffendedGoblin · 08/08/2011 10:07

DD is currently involved in a FB argument with a fellow student who is advocating removing funding and police from operation Trident and 'Letting them kill each other off'
Likewise with knife crime unless it involves someone outside the black/immigrant communities.
He is highly educated, white and so very wrong. I'm pleased DD is giving him a good fight over his opinions.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 08/08/2011 10:13

PaigeTurner I didn't say it was a race issue. My point was that in the 80's it was a race issue. Exacerbated by poverty, certainly. What happened on Saturday still has a race element.... one youth worker talked about the 'collective memory' from the eighties and stories of police oppression of black men being handed down to the new generation. I don't happen to think that's helpful in the circumstances. Smacks of keeping people trapped in the past rather than moving forward.

Being disenfranchised solely because of poverty? No. Joining gangs and engaging in criminal activities remain a matter for personal conscience and it would be insulting to the poor to say that there was any sort of inevitable link.

How else can they get their point across? Same as the rest of us. Voting at the ballot box, making peaceful process, respecting law and order, engaging constructively in their society. Not by burning people out of their homes and businesses