What if they put out bread and committed battery on bread thieves?
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I think you mean “buttery”?
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Only if they used the bats on people’s butts.
Do they even ride bicycles?
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I’m not stereotyping at all, I hadn’t even considered the idea until the unusually high rate of bike thefts prompted our local police to report on the issue. They stated that bikes are being traded instead of cash for crystal meth.
I should add; I don’t condone vigilantism, which is why I said it’s “going a bit far”, however, I understand their frustration.
I have a disability that prevents me from driving a car, so for me, my bike is my primary vehicle. When I had my sixth(!) bike stolen, it made me very mad at the world, especially knowing it would likely be used as a currency for someones life-ruining addiction, instead of to get me to work. I also don’t have a lot of money, so something like that, I feel is worth a lot more to me than to the asshole who took it. So, yeah, beating with a bat is a bit far, but clearly, whatever punishment is being offered isn’t deterring anyone.
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If true then it would seem that your neighborhood doesn’t need “violent vigilante justice” so much as “more support systems for helping people escape addiction.”
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It ain’t thievery if it ain’t nailed down.
And if I can pry it up, it ain’t nailed down.
It ain’t bike theft if it isn’t locked. Or it it’s only locked with a “symbolic” lock. And any lock that can be picked is symbolic.
You guys make me sick, honestly.
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Where did anyone say anything even remotely resembling that strawman?
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See posts by B. Spore, G. Foyle, et al above. They explicitly describe the concept of leaving a bike unlocked in the front lawn as baiting.
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We do have support systems, including free, no-questions-asked methadone clinics. I’ve never supported vigilante justice, of any kind, including public shaming cough. I think that because bikes are relatively easy to steal when they are used for practical reasons there needs to be more effective (legal) responses when they are stolen.
What is and is not bait is usually contextual and driven by intent - a worm is bait when you put it on a hook with the intent to catch a fish, a bucket of blood is bait when you pour it in the water to lure a shark. Looking at the totality of the situation, it’s pretty obvious the bike was left as bait by the people who left it there, and thus it is baiting. I don’t think it’s fair to leap from someone thinking this is baiting to someone thinking that all bikes invite theft.
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That’s not always the case, but here it’s explicitly being used with the goal of getting someone to take it. Baiting sounds like a perfect description. But the point of baiting is to catch someone thieving; there is no tension in describing it as bait and in describing the thievery/thief as a thief.
Explain to me how this isn’t the Klan’s logic ?
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I hear ginger ale is good for that - maybe a nice bro-mo seltzer.
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So you didn’t read the article?
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shrugs
No one says “You know what would be a laf-a-minute? Let’s get some baseball bats and put a bike in the front yard and beat the crap out of whoever steals it.”
That’s what someone who has tried to do it the right way but gets blocked and keeps getting victimized starts thinking. And yep, in the article: they had their car broken into the first day they moved in, and again a few days later. And it sounds like no one did anything about it.
No. I don’t think they were right. But this is a whole pile of fail all the way down. And this is a human reaction to that fail. This is a human reaction to reclaiming their violated space and their need to feel secure.
And it seems that they did make the neighborhood a better place; which seems to be something the cops couldn’t do. Score one for the bonkers insane neighborhood bat-man.
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Given the widespread support for punching Nazis who have not committed crimes, it sorta warms my heart to see the outrage about punching over actual crimes.
Ah - they moved.
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Some people do say that, and more people than we’d like. People who just want to hurt other people and who are looking for a way to justify doing so are in our communities, workplaces and families.
I think many of us could not bring ourselves to hit another person with a baseball bat let alone to see blood on the bat and keep swinging. It’s fucked up.
I understand when the justice system fails people turn to vigilantism. We can see that as a sort of natural response of a community, but that doesn’t mean the people who actually go out to beat up criminals aren’t dangerous people.
I don’t think that video of Spencer being punched would be nearly as widely shared or celebrated if the person had wound up and bashed Spencer’s head with a baseball bat. I don’t mean to say that punching someone in the head is safe, kind or mild. But a real person hitting another real person with a bat is not something I’m going to watch a video of.
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