Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

JUST PLAIN ANGRY

It is reassuring to see all the ways people are helping out and just how kind neighbours can be when there is some sort of calamity but before we go all warm and fluffy about the boundless good there is to be found in human nature let us all remember that if the police had cracked down on the looting that started shortly after the original incident in Ferry Lane, then NONE of this (and none of the other damage elsewhere) would have happened at all.

When I was working in politics I was given the instruction NEVER, EVER to criticise the police.  They are ALWAYS doing a fine job.  They are ALWAYS marvellous ...etc, etc, etc.

Well I'm not in politics now and I can tell you that although there are undoubtedly a lot of really worthwhile and socially concerned people amongst their number, for whatever reasons—laziness, being ground down by the system, hamstrung by various interest groups or procedure, personal idiocy or simple timeserving boredom--the police are demonstrably NOT doing a fine job; they are NOT always marvellous and they have become so blasé about what they regard as 'petty' crime and so unwilling to put themselves into difficult situations when it is much easier to concentrate on relatively unthreatening victims instead (remember our discussion on this site about that poor chap who found himself surrounded by a squad when he left his car running), that it is hardly a surprise that they ducked out of going for the hoodies with bricks and allowed the shops along Lordship Lane to go up in flames while they concentrated on the administrative aftermath of a gunfight.

There is no such thing as 'petty' crime.  All break-ins, shoplifting, garden robberies and bicycle thefts strike at the heart of our society and our social system and any cohesion we might pretend we have. 

Neither our "the police are marvellous" politicians, nor our "just look how concerned we are, let's fill out an incident report" officers of the law seem to be aware of this and the most depressing thing is that once the fuss and bother has died down, they will all snap back to default position, leaving the good people of Haringey --and Manchester and Birmingham and wherever else-- to shift as best they can.

Lydia

Tags for Forum Posts: london troubles

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Replies to This Discussion

161y5ta9h3wbmPermalink Reply by 161y5ta9h3wbm on August 12, 2011 at 10:37

Children were telling their parents where the trouble was going to happen, but the police didn't know, apparently.

I watched the Hackney riot build up and develop. Didn't the police ?

Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on August 12, 2011 at 11:19

I watched the Hackney riot build up and develop. Didn't the police ?

Hindsight allows 20:20 vision. If you watched the Hackney riot build up, did you call the police? They can't be everywhere and sometimes depend on the public alerting them to situations. It would obviously have been better if we'd had 16,000 police available a night or two before they were; I hope that lessons will be learnt.

In the short term now, the best that can be done is for the courts to deal out sobering sentences. But if the prison capacity isn't there, they may be largely let off. There's a lot of folk out there with suspended sentences. Those could turn out to be a lot of chickens that come home to roost.

Does the Home Secretary really have plans to close prisons, as Jack Straw said in the house the other day?

161y5ta9h3wbmPermalink Reply by 161y5ta9h3wbm on August 12, 2011 at 11:45

There was a BBC helicopter filming it as it was building-up, so I presume lots of people were watching it live. I thought that maybe the police would be aware of it too, so didn't even consider it necessary to phone them. Maybe the BBC had prior intelligence that the police didn't ?

 

And, to continue the analogy, I would have thought that the rioters were themselves chickens that had just come home to roost. Do we really want to create another load of chickens that can be temporarily cooped up in prison, among a prison population already the highest in Western Europe ? Maybe we should start looking at ourselves and our society and asking why that is.

james walshPermalink Reply by james walsh on August 12, 2011 at 12:52
JohnM* i saw the BBC helicopter this lunchtime hovering over Green Lanes. Is this where our licence fee money is being spent ? i think we should be told.
161y5ta9h3wbmPermalink Reply by 161y5ta9h3wbm on August 12, 2011 at 12:59
If there's any trouble brewing, and they're showing it live, I hope the police are watching it ! The BBC truly is a public (and police) service, in that case, so perhaps they should buy a few more helicopters...
161y5ta9h3wbmPermalink Reply by 161y5ta9h3wbm on August 12, 2011 at 10:44

I never thought I would ever agree so comprehensively with a Tory Minister :

 

May identified a series of mistakes. These included failing to put enough officers on the streets of London until Tuesday night, leading to the police losing control of some areas; appearing reluctant to be "sufficiently robust" in breaking up groups; containing suspects in a "specified area", rather than arresting them, thereby allowing them to commit criminal damage and steal; and failing to do enough to harness and share intelligence gleaned from social networking services such as BlackBerry Messenger.

The Guardian

 

Maybe they can only be "sufficiently robust" when they are given prior notice of an event occurring ?

161y5ta9h3wbmPermalink Reply by 161y5ta9h3wbm on August 12, 2011 at 13:11

Surely it's better to criticise where criticism is deserved, rather than having the politicians mouthing their usual platitudes ? It's good to see the Tories not afraid to speak out for a change, something the police themselves are doing :

 

It is clear we did not have the numbers on duty to deal with that despite having mobilised the same number of officers as the total staff of West Midlands Police.

DAC Steve Kavanagh

161y5ta9h3wbmPermalink Reply by 161y5ta9h3wbm on August 12, 2011 at 13:57
As for the Social Media thing, perhaps the police could liaise with the security services (if they don't do so already), who could show them how to distinguish between the types of messages produced - or do the work for them ?
Permalink Reply by Lydia R on August 12, 2011 at 18:35
I have to re-iterate something which seems to have got lost in all the personal insult taken by people who are related to police officers.  
It is this:
The undoubted problems being experienced by police workers now is not a sudden and unexpected efflorescence of viciousness.  Over the years, the police have displayed a forbearance for the anti-social behaviour of feral young people which has prepared the ground for this mass violence.  The Tony Martin case is an extreme example of a man driven to lunacy by criminal siege.  The Ealing man who died this night was a recluse tormented by continual attack by gangs of youths.  
Harking back to my political days, I had a constant stream of pleas for help from people whose lives were made utterly miserable by local drug dealers, petty thieves and uncontrolled children but who got no protection whatsoever from the police who are supposed to keep them safe.  One woman described to me how she left the house at 6 in the morning and then roamed about until the shops opened, finding shelter where she could for the rest of the morning until she could go home later in the afternoon when her persecutors had got fed up of waiting for her.  Complaints to the police got her nowhere and when I spoke to the police, they told me she was an hysteric.  I saw the place.  She was not.
I do believe that the police show spectacular bravery when they are called upon to do so, but either by accident or design they appear to have disengaged themselves on a daily basis from the protection of ordinary citizens.  I am sure that there will be people responding to this posting who will say that this is only my perception but I do have some experience with these matters, as detailed above.  Another correspondent has already said that the police are forced to work with little help from the general public.  He used this to illustrate how our constabulary have to battle the odds but what he has to ask himself is why the general public are so reluctant to co-operate.  Is it because a sizeable proportion do not believe that the police are on their side?  I stress that I am not talking about individual officers but about the service in general.
As I said before, we do not much consider the quiet and everyday bravery of the Tottenham shopkeeper.  As much ugliness and aggression as is experienced by a police officer in the course of his or her work, I would rather be wearing that uniform than deal with the same thing, unprotected by either kevlar or establishment resources which is experienced daily by anyone who keeps a shop round here.  I think the statistics on the murder of shop keepers in the UK will bear me out that it is far more dangerous to be in trade than in the police.
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on August 25, 2011 at 23:01
Lydia this is an unfair comparison. It is well known that many of the local shopkeepers are highly trained "Turkish commandos" here to keep an eye on the Turkish diaspora.

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