Friday Rant

itsbruce

DonDaddyD wrote:

At this point I'm going to agree to disagree with you all.

And LiT hasn't even posted, yet...

rjsterry

So the argument seems to be 'just because they don't look 'right', doesn't mean they nicked it'. Well obviously, but certainly worth investigating further with a few pertinent questions.

A man walks out of a house leaving the front door open, carrying a large flat screen TV, and sets off down the road. He might be taking it to a friend to watch the footie, but then he wouldn't leave the door open. The one unusual occurrence (like riding in the 'wrong' clothes) isn't enough on its own, but taken cumulatively with the other things that don't fit, it's a lot more suspicious.

Also if we take the can't jump to conclusions thing to its extreme, the police would only be able to deal with crimes they actually saw occur.

DonDaddyD

Basically people are advocating prejudice and ultimately discrimination.

If a person hasn't been seen committing the crime and if they aren't actually acting suspiciously i.e. indicating that they have or are about to commit a crime, then on what basis what right have you got to assume they are thieves? Why should only those people be questioned?

It's prejudice at best and discrimination at worst. You don't like the look of them, so they must be up to no good.

Jermaine Defoe sued the police because he kept getting pulled over in his very nice car that he couldn't possibly own given he looks the way he does.

rjsterry

My point is that if it was just that they were wearing the 'wrong' clothes, then as you rightly say, that would be jumping to conclusions. However, I'm fairly sure mrc1 was suggesting that they were acting suspiciously as well (pulling wheelies on a road bike, I think). It's the acting suspiciously that is the key observation in his post.

I'm really not advocating judging people on their appearance (this is very unreliable anyway although we all do it to a greater or lesser extent). I've not had any direct experience of it myself, but I'm well aware that Jermaine Defoe is far from unusual in being the victim of bad policing.

Interestingly I was reading an article (in the Guardian) about the film Minority Report, and how a lot of the futuristic technologies in it weren't actually that far off, in particular the prediction of crime. Apparently, some researchers have noticed that thieves in car parks act noticeably differently from other people: they wander around rather than walking straight to or from a particular car. Someone has developed this into a marketable system to analyse cctv footage, and is currently in negotiations with a local authority somewhere in the UK (I forget where). Not sure how I feel about this on the basis of the limited information, but something that looks at actions rather than dress/appearance seems like an improvement.

Agent57

This reminds me of something that happened to me, years ago. Back in 1987 I had a Peugeot road bike (Carbolite 103, tubing of, umm... well, not champions). Anyway, the summer before I went back to college, I decided to respray it. Stripped it down and gave it a once-over with some Holts spray paint from Halfords (Ford Sunset Yellow '77, since you asked).

I took it back to college, and one day I'd ridden into the city centre and locked it up. When I got back to the bike, as I was unlocking it I was approached by a copper. He said he had reason to believe the bike was stolen. I asked what reason he had to think that, and he called a woman over; she said it looked like her boyfriend's stolen bike, but resprayed. Hmm, bit of a stretch, I think, as most road bikes in those days looked very similar to each other.

I got really p*ssed off at being accused of having stolen my own bike, and started swearing at them both. I tried to ride off, but the copper stopped me and said I should come down to the station to sort it out. Before that happened I turned the bike over to show him my home postcode stamped into the bottom bracket (home being Lancaster, college being Worcester). That seemed to satisfy them both, since the woman's boyfriend was a local to Worcester.

The point being that I was seething with righteous indignation and some anger for a while after that, and no, I don't think I would look kindly upon a random stop just because I looked like I didn't belong with the bike.

rjsterry

I'm not sure I'd like it either, but I still think I'd prefer it to police ignoring things unless they actually saw the crime being committed. Depends a great deal on how the enquiries are handled I think.

DonDaddyD

My post wasn't specifically aimed at you...

rjsterry wrote:

My point is that if it was just that they were wearing the 'wrong' clothes, then as you rightly say, that would be jumping to conclusions. However, I'm fairly sure mrc1 was suggesting that they were acting suspiciously as well (pulling wheelies on a road bike, I think). It's the acting suspiciously that is the key observation in his post.

How do you define acting suspiciously? We don't all act the same.

The assumption that someone is acting suspiciously leads to generalisations and therein lies the problem. Look at the first post, the OP identifies the teenagers as CHAVs. [sarcasm]"Surely CHAVs aren't allowed marginally average priced bikes, found in large abundance in the secondhand market...." "Thieves the lot of them!"[/sarcasm]

All the "CHAVs" were guilty of were riding the wrong type of bike, enjoying themselves and the bikes in the wrong way and leaving them outside a shop. Acting suspiciously right? Must be thieves. :roll:

I'd rather police police ASLs, driving of fences and investigate crimes reported by witnesses who saw an actual crime...

rolf_f

rjsterry wrote:

I'm not sure I'd like it either, but I still think I'd prefer it to police ignoring things unless they actually saw the crime being committed. Depends a great deal on how the enquiries are handled I think.

Go on a car forum and people keep complaining about gatsos and the lack of proper police presence. Here we don't seem to want them around! I'd like to think if my bike got nicked and the plods saw a dodgy scrote on a carbon road bike they might go and investigate. And I don't care what specific 'discrimination' upsets that might cause. Fact is that, for example, young males are far more likely to nick stuff than older people so it seems fair enough, with limited resources, to treat them with more suspicion.

DonDaddyD wrote:

I'd rather police police ASLs, driving of fences and investigate crimes reported by witnesses who saw an actual crime...

Ahhh, I remember the great fence drives of the 1850s. Heards of majestic feather edge fence panels being driven over the Olkahoma plains by the fence pokes to the coast in time for the DIY season!

tailwindhome

Rolf F wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

I'd rather police police ASLs, driving of fences and investigate crimes reported by witnesses who saw an actual crime...

Ahhh, I remember the great fence drives of the 1850s. Heards of majestic feather edge fence panels being driven over the Olkahoma plains by the fence pokes to the coast in time for the DIY season!

There really is no need to be a smartarse!!

It's clearly a typo!

Driving off fences is a scourge on British society

You wouldn't think it was funny if some scrote drove off your fence. Would you?

Agent57

Rolf F wrote:

Fact is that, for example, young males are far more likely to nick stuff than older people so it seems fair enough, with limited resources, to treat them with more suspicion.

Doubly so if they're black, amirite? Something tells me we've been there before...

rolf_f

TailWindHome wrote:

There really is no need to be a smartarse!!

It's clearly a typo!

Driving off fences is a scourge on British society

You wouldn't think it was funny if some scrote drove off your fence. Would you?

Lol - That's true - though riding off fences is different!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o

(cheap excuse to watch the best cycling Youtube ever again!)

rjsterry

DonDaddyD wrote:

How do you define acting suspiciously? We don't all act the same.

It's certainly a tricky one, and I'm not sure the things we might assume are suspicious are actually indicative of someone being up to no good. However, the article I mentioned does suggest that in some circumstances, there is such a thing as acting suspiciously - wandering around a car park, rather than walking straight to a particular car. I'm not sure how far research has got in this area, so who knows whether this is something that you could develop into, say, training for the police.

DonDadyD wrote:

All the "CHAVs" were guilty of were riding the wrong type of bike, enjoying themselves and the bikes in the wrong way and leaving them outside a shop. Acting suspiciously right? Must be thieves. :roll:

I don't think they must be thieves. As you say, they might be perfectly legitimate, and should be assumed to be such unless there is evidence to the contrary. I'm only suggesting that if the police thought 'hmm, that's unusual' and, say, the group were hanging around by a news agent, the police could wander past, with maybe a 'morning lads' just to see if they noticed anything else unusual.

I think the police spending more time on foot (and less sat in cars), building up some kind of rapport with the local community (of all ages) is one way to try and get over the animosity that a lot of people have towards them. I also think it will have a positive effect on the police themselves. I can imagine that if you spend your working life dealing with people who have broken the law, it's easy to develop quite a negative view of the general public.

DonDaddyD wrote:

I'd rather police police ASLs, driving of fences and investigate crimes reported by witnesses who saw an actual crime...

I think they cold do both better[/quote]