Whatcha gonna do.
Lovely euphemism for running him down, though at least he’s alive, which he would not be in the US.
They pranged that BMW pursuit car, I bet.
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The bottom line is: everything you tolerate authorities doing to criminals will eventually be done by them to people who aren’t.
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Exactly. When people talk slippery slopes, this is the steepest. If any group is vulnerable, then all groups can become vulnerable, full stop.
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Like the guy running his moto on the sidewalk? I suppose it could have been someone else.
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Well of course they have, they’re simply using the tools available, what they need is guns!
(/s for the sarcasm impaired)
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The same is true of our wars of colonialism and resource acquisition. The way we treat the sufferers of our imperialism will eventually be visited upon the lower classes back in the homeland.
That is true, in the case of “scooter crime” there was an urgent (or knee-jerk) response to demands by the public, fuelled by numerous media commentary, to a sudden increase in crimes (often violent) committed by people whose common factor was that they were riding scooters. This led to pressure from politicians to which the police responded with the fact that stopping criminals riding scooters was often not possible under current guidelines (until then they faced prosecution for deliberately endangering members of the public, there was a general no-pursuit policy).
So the tolerance (and demand) comes from the people who will be potentially at risk and even with the existing checks there will be mistakes. However given the widespread intolerance for riders of any form of powered two wheeler, the public will shrug off a few innocent injuries and even deaths, as long as they see a decrease in mobile phone theft.
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What approach should the police use to arrest violent criminals who steal mopeds and fail to stop?
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I suspect that it substantially depends on what standard of evidence you are trying to hit.
Dyes are cheap and robust options if you just need a blunt instrument(hence their reasonably successful use in anti-theft devices designed to ruin bulk cash and certain retail goods if tampered with; and the popularity of adding a taggant to what the water cannon is spraying); while a GUID-in-a-can isore what you would turn to if you’ll need to convince the court that the defendant is the perp you sprayed, not just one of the people sprayed by a police officer in the past week or two.
If you either don’t need much proof to round someone up, or simply want everyone to know that attending a demonstration can leave them ‘undesireable purple’ for the next week, have fun if your life requires conforming to a dress code or dealing with bosses/parents/landlords/etc. DNA is both wildly overpriced and arguably too subtle; but if you need a plausibly unique tag it works quite well.
I’d also imagine that the Chinese have it, or similar, as do most police forces with some sort of budget; but it’s not an obviously ideal riot agent.
Didn’t see that in the article. They were engaged in crime while riding motorcycles (which may have been stolen.) In this case drug dealing but there’s also purse and phone snatching. Both of these happen in areas which are relatively easy to identify. Stealing them can be done anywhere and is much less easy to predict or prevent.
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Has he been convicted?
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It wasn’t in the article, my comment refers to a recent situation I faced in one of my earlier posts. Not only were this group trying to steal my bike one was also threatening me with a knife if I came out of the house.
In the past I have confronted a pair of inept bike thieves trying to steal a bike, I just told them to clear off and that was all there was to it, nobody was hurt; the recent occasion was distinctly at another level.
How about cops on high-performance scooters. Practically, if you’re on a scooter or moped in an urban environement, you’ll be slowing, stopping and starting a lot. So I think there would be opportunities for safe interceptions and arrests, especially if there are two cops on each scoot.
Motorcycle pursuits happen and involve a lot of patience on the motorcycle cop’s end. Sometimes–oftentimes–it’s better to let particularly crazy or desperate suspects go. From the police’s perspective, you don’t have to get everyone, you just have to add sufficient costs and risks to criminal activity to make it less attractive to criminals.
Even I must admit a Police Ruckus would be cool.
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What do you know, they’re in the middle of trialing a scooter fleet.
Apparently they have a load of those weird three wheeler Piaggio ones too.
“Just ram them with your cars until we figure out how to use these bikes properly” is a good example of the Hot Fuzz end of British policing.
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I’ve always wondered why people are so quick to think that the best cost/benefit option is to panic a criminal into driving a vehicle desperately down streets filled with bystanders.
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I actually agree with that line of reasoning to a degree - but there is a paradox there because the natural conclusion is to just get rid of police because any authority they have to keep order can be potentially abused. So even if the interaction was non confrontational and they just arrested the guy - then the reasoning is that they could do that to anyone for anything.
I think there has to be a balance. There are bad people doing bad things like getting into fights, abusing their spouses, stealing cars, etc. The world has always had people who will just take things and hurt people with impunity. Vigilantism or upholding the law yourself is one way to do it, but if we have problems with “professional” trained police going too far, I don’t think Joe Q Public would do much better.
The biggest problem I have is when police do abuse their authority and do use too much force, they aren’t held accountable. But I guess I am not an all or nothing person in most cases - there are times when police have to use force, and there are times when they are abusing their authority using force unnecessarily. There needs to be a paradigm shift where the latter is unacceptable. It is a lot better than it used to be, but we have a long way to go.
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It goes beyond bag snatching, there have been a spate of attacks by moped/scooter riders spraying acid or caustic liquid into people’s faces, they also carry out group attacks on shops using sledgehammers then ride off separately to make it difficult to follow them.
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