to ask your thoughts on this? Fatal shooting during burglary

[itsjustataste]

Happened near me very recently and our community seems very torn with lots of people slinging insults at both sides. Lots of people shouting about playing stupid games, win stupid prizes etc... whilst others calling the shooter a murderer.

I find it very sad that someone so young has ultimately lost their life and has got mixed up in this sort of thing.

BUT that being said, I don't have any ill feeling toward the farmer either and cannot say that I wouldn't do the same if faced with 3 people breaking into my home, especially if I had my children in the house.

The other 2 suspects arrested for aggravated burglary meaning a weapon was involved and there had been a break in at the same home the night previously too.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-68942085.amp

A poll would have been interesting on this.

Team Farmer here. If you don’t want to be a dead burglar, don’t burgle.

Against three people some of them armed. I'm not a legal person but can't see how this is murder.

Self defence is mitigation for a crime. Unless killing another person has been decriminalised when I wasn’t looking.

I’m sorry that the third one got away. All my sympathy is with the farmer and his family.

No. I know that. I’m just wondering if there was an element of that. That it woke society up to the grooming? No idea. Systemic racism isn’t always obvious to me as I’m white. Good to ask the questions though I think. But a debate for another thread. I’ve already annoyed someone with derailing.

Sorry. I meant Tony Martin shot his burglar in the back. Not this farmer. We don’t know enough about this case yet to decide the farmer was justified. Presumably the police know more.

Yeah. A three way poll.

I’ve decided, based on very scant evidence, that the farmer is guilty of murder

I’ve decided, based on very scant evidence, that the farmer is innocent

I’ve not decided because we barely know any facts about this case

Fuck around and find out, I say.

I grew up in the country. It was expected that the local farmers had shotguns. You didn't stray on their land too much (you could use public rights of way of course) or you might get a threat from them. Rural crime is very much under-reported. There's not enough police in the countryside. Farm equipment costs so much to buy and maintain, and livestock is an investment too, yet light fingered herberts think they can just help themselves to it. Once you get stolen from, your insurance premiuns go up.

So I'm team Farmer.

Play stupid games . . .

I'm a 💯 percent with the farmer on this one.

We are too soft on crime here, all those people making excuses for the CRIMINALS, who invaded someone's home, should be ashamed of yourselves.

STOP. MAKING. EXCUSES. FOR. CRIMINALS.

Agree - I posted the earlier case of Richard Osborn-Brooks, an elderly man who stabbed an armed, drugged-up burglar who was on his way downstairs from where his disabled wife was in bed, after warning him he had a knife and to get out.

The burglar’s mother was quoted as saying, in court - “Why couldn’t that gentleman have just stepped back like a normal person would have?”

🤷🏼‍♀️

It's polarised locally too. Literally on the roads the teens are from. The pub that made the statement quoted by the BBC had to delete it due to the differing views and the opposing rhetoric.

Because they don't present like ‘gangsters’ and criminals. Just your average, popular young lads, its hard for people to group them in that way. A face on the news means nothing compared to people in the community that knew and likes them.

I find the increase in open drug dealing and violent crime in this country abhorrent.
If anything good does come out of this, it should be a stark warning to young people who see drug dealing/theft as easy money, all around them, very few people being caught, as a dangerous lifestyle choice.

We're in North Wales, a lot of County line men got put away recently, they put up pictures, white local males.

Team Farmer here too. I live fairly rurally and police response times here are a joke.

Thefts from farms are incredibly common (quad bikes and red diesel are two of the things I've known be stolen in the recent past; you'd think diesel would be safe but no). Arson is also pretty frequent (there was a huge fire locally a few years back when some little scrotes thought it would a laugh to chuck a match on a massive stack of straw). It makes insuring some things prohibitively expensive (the straw that burned had been baled and brought to the site for a specific purpose, so it was far from free).

Farmers are twitchy: I turned up in a farmyard in a car the farmer didn't recognise. I didn't see the farmer as I arrived but he appeared double-quick apparently out of nowhere to see who the hell it was.

It's appalling that theft has become so normalised.

I see the classist bit. The racist bit seems less clear - there have been white gangs in the UK for as long as there’s been organized crime. I think the idea that gangs means black inner city kids is a media concoction rather than one that’s a reflection of policing (not that there hasn’t been plenty of racism in policing - but white gangs have always been on their radar).

Exactly.

toRy CuTs
rAcIsT
cLasSisT

Christ. Criminals like this are scum

I know someone who was chased through her house by a gang of thieves and ended up barricading herself in the bathroom. The police took 45 minutes to get there (not a rural area)

By which time the gang had gone

Police offered her a crime number and didn’t even take the weapon one of the gang had left behind, let alone fingerprints or any forensics

Glad to see all the support for the farmer on this thread. I nearly made a post when I saw on the news tributes being made to the burglar who died, he doesn't deserve a tribute after terrorising someone in their own home. I will be donating to the fundraiser for the farmer

Tory cuts has nothing to do with this. We have been too soft on criminals for decades

If we are voting I am Team Farmer

We have seen many times what happens when armed ppl break into your house.

What did the robbers expect?

"Drug gang 'second in command' jailed for 10 years - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54121615

Women too.

No sympathy for the burglars, it’s fucking shit to be burgled. I was, 24 years ago and I still don’t like thinking about it. Luckily we were out but they took some very precious jewellery and I was not in a good way afterwards. Your home should be your sanctuary, not to be defiled by criminals.

I am with the farmer on this.

This young man would not be dead if he had not broken into somebody else's property.

Also you can never know what the intention of someone breaking in could be. It could be stealing but it could also be violence and even murder.

I will never blame anyone for protecting themselves, their family and their property.

You don't want to risk getting shot out? then don't go around doing burglaries.

End of story as far as I am concerned.

The law is way too soft on many criminals these days. I reserve my sympathy for the victims who just wanted to get on with their usual life.

It's not being too soft on criminals. It's lack of police to respond to and investigate crime. Therefore criminals are not caught.

Once they are caught they are treated pretty harshly.

Also lack of early intervention to prevent crime in the first place which is very much down to Tory cuts.

Long sentences do not act as a deterrent

How can you know they just intend to rob? And, why should you simply hand over stuff you have worked hard to buy? Also, burglars return to a previous robbery after a time to steal the stuff that has been bought to replace it. They are relentless

I also live near here. Farmers and isolated houses have been targets for armed robberies a lot in recent months 😭

I'm not surprised this has happened and I am sad that a young life is over but I can imagine how awful it is to not only experience an armed robbery but to spend your life worrying and expecting one to happen.