To suspect police are worried about vigilantes - Epsom attack

[ReadingCrimeFiction]

I live relatively close to Epsom and so this appalling assault is all over my news feeds and social media.

BBC News - Town left in shock by appalling rape outside church
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dl5yevjg9o

The police have asked for witnesses but no descriptions have been given. Cue lots of very disturbing posts and comments from people who very clearly think these men are not white.

I can think of half a dozen scenarios where this is not being disclosed but, based on the comments, I think it all comes down to fears that local communities will take it on themselves to "apprehend" anyone who even vaguely looks like the perpetrators? And while the comments I am seeing are mostly white people being disgusting in their assumptions about brown and black people, i can imagine police would he equally concerned if, for example, the woman was Asian or Black and her attackers were white.

Is this where we are at? Where people make horrible racist assumptions and/or where police have to worry about how they will protect the broader community if they give any details of criminals?

I know I can't argue with stupid, thats why I've stopped.

Didn't Sky News fact check Farage's claims and conclude that Afghan/Eritrean men were 'only' 3x more likely to be convicted of a sex crime than British men?

I wasn’t disagreeing with you.

If they refused to say it’s unknown isn’t it?

This is untrue. There is limited data and some ethnicities may be over represented BUT the major of those involved in "grooming gangs", or paedophile rings are white. Because the majority of residents in the country are white. The national police chiefs council have stated that the majority of group based child abusers are white. For the first quarter of 24, where the data was available, 85% were white. The point is we don't know. Certain politicians and personalities want to pretend they know, but we don't.

Anyone saying the majority of grooming gangs are "black or brown" is lying or believing liars.

by only focusing on rape by non white men we ignore the dangers hiding in plain sight

That is not what is being done though. In general the request is just that all rapists are treated the same regardless of their ethnicity, religion, etc by the police and judiciary.

There is growing evidence this is not the case.

PP provided data that referred specifically to men from Pakistan as an example.

It does stack up. You are attempting to cast doubt on the figures (and throw a cheap insult) but your argument would suggest that the figures on foreign born/origin criminals are understated. The proportion of children in that particular group is higher then the average British population and underreporting of ethnicity will also understate the overall figures so PPs 2.6% will be a lot lower meaning that the per head number of offences will be higher.

The national police chiefs council have stated that the majority of group based child abusers are white.
For the first [three quarters] of 24, where the data was available, 85% were white.

These claims are problematic/misleading as well though as data is very limited;

'But the data is incomplete, as the NPCC said the information on ethnicity was available for only 34% of suspects in the whole of 2023 and for only 39% of suspects in the first nine months of 2024.'

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/elon-musk-keir-starmer-nigel-farage-pakistani-jess-phillips-b1204172.html

Baroness Casey commented in her report;

Presenting the data with a large percentage of unknown data skews the figures (as we show in chapter 4). For example, in the COCAD data for perpetrators of group based offending in 2023, self-defined ethnicity is 88% White when ‘unknowns’ are excluded, but 28% White when the unknowns are included. We can be confident that at least 28% of group-based offenders are White; but we cannot reach a conclusion that 88% are White overall.

What is appalling is that a young woman's life has been ruined, and yet your only concern is "racist assumptions"

I think what is appalling is these rioters are so intent on making a point, the poor girl is almost forgotten. They are actually revelling in it and they know no more facts than anyone else, including the police, plus are wasting valuable police time.

Yes, I've not seen a single mention of anything of the sort, but thought I would give benefit of doubt!

Not true, the mum held a press conference with Nigel Farage

I’ve just seen images of 4 men released but not sure how true it is

If you've seen it on Facebook or similar and it's not being reported in mainstream sources, likely not very.

That's probably the Bristol ones. Police still keeping quiet about Epsom.

I've got various European stats on rates of sexual offending by nationality, and it's not insignificant - many times higher for countries like Afghanistan. It baffles me why anyone thinks that wouldn't be the case.

Exactly, I’ll wait until it’s posted by the police page

Yes because if neither Religion nor Ethnicity is reliably recorded it is literally not possible to produce reliable crime statistics with Pakistani Muslim men as perpetrators. Hope that's cleared things up.

It does seem odd that the police have said nothing. This incident may not be straightforward.

After a bit of a Google I found that two protesters who met with police said they were satisfied with the police’s response so that really means that there hasn’t been any withholding of information on purpose.

Maybe everyone can calm down, start engaging critical thought now rather than immediately turning to mobs, and let the police do their job.

Here's the Bristol one that a previous poster was possibly alluding to. Yes it's in the mainstream news:

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/police-release-cctv-men-after-10901350

I don’t take instructions from randoms on the internet im afraid.

The fact that you repeatedly refuse to answer the simple question "Are you in the UK?" tells me that you are not in the UK.

BTW A question is not an instruction HTH

Are conviction rates the measure of who offends?

Looking at this thread reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird. Who will juries decide must not be guilty?

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/news/rape-crisis-ceo-comments-on-the-latest-crown-court-data/

You seem to be placing a lot of unfounded and very negative assumptions on the motivations and feelings of the local people.

An extremely serious and rare crime has happened in the heart of an otherwise fairly peaceful community.
The police are behaving in an unusual way in relation to this crime.
There is an information vacuum as a result and people are rightly concerned that there are four gang rapists wandering around town and no one has any idea who they are.
The police have form for concealing or delaying (or just plain lying) relevant information about serious criminals of certain ethnicities. Accurate descriptions of suspects are key to detecting crime.
The authorities also have form for treating people of certain ethnicities differently that have directly resulted in actual murders. Then the public get blamed for being concerned with the ethnicity of criminals.

Given the very real and concerning information that exists, it adds to the problem if you criticise and make up your own version of their motivations which appears to be driven by prejudice against a certain type of British person?

The solution to this is for the authorities to be more honest about this. To stop letting people off because they aren’t an ethnic minority (as happened in the cases of Axel Rudakubana and Valdo Calocane (and as this is policy across many organisations, there will be many more, just not public knowledge yet). Report the crime numbers clearly. If we are all barking up the wrong tree and migrant men do not have higher crime rates, they should tell us and show us the figures. That would be a huge relief to many.

The media need to hold the police and government to account on this. How many of you have heard about the gang rape of a woman in Bristol at the beginning of April? Not many I bet - I didn’t. They have arrested 3 men not of British origin. All very quietly done.

We have a problem in the UK. People need to stop treating the people protesting about it as the problem.

You seem to be placing a lot of unfounded and very negative assumptions on the motivations and feelings of the local people.

You're doing the same with the police.

The police are behaving in an unusual way in relation to this crime

They're really not. They're behaving by the book in fact and not drip feeding speculation. They're waiting until they have solid evidence before providing updates.

The solution to this is for the authorities to be more honest about this.

They have been honest - they have no more information to give.

To stop letting people off because they aren’t an ethnic minority (as happened in the cases of Axel Rudakubana and Valdo Calocane (and as this is policy across many organisations, there will be many more, just not public knowledge yet).

Ethnic minorities aren't "let off" by virtue of being ethnic minorities. It is not policy.

How many of you have heard about the gang rape of a woman in Bristol at the beginning of April? Not many I bet - I didn’t. They have arrested 3 men not of British origin. All very quietly done.

The fact you don't pay attention and didn't see it in the news doesn't mean it was hushed up. I saw it weeks ago. That being said, there are (sadly) multiple rapes daily which never ever make the news. It doesn't mean there's a cover up.