3 Men die in Birmingham riots.

[Monkfish Acc.]

A bunch of people crowded together to protect their homes and neighbourhood. Those three men were amongst the crowd.

What I think happened - and this is pure speculation - is that the dude in the car saw all of these people, gathered and riled up, and thought they were looters. He floored it and plunged through them, thinking he was doing people a favour.

Basically he is a fucking idiot. Killing rioters would have been just as wrong, they're mostly fucking kids.

 

[ChaoticKraus]

Fuck, that's just going too far. I sympathize with those living in poverty and i know how working day and night to make ends meet feels, but killing people is going way too far.

 

[Roofstone]

This really has gone far enough. I am close to shout for the police to start shooting to get these people off the streets.. But, I suppose I am overreacting a bit.

This is just sad.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Does the UK have an equivalent to the US National Guard to call up when the police become overwhelmed like this?

The police were cleared to use 'aggressive tactics' (read, tear gas, water cannon, pepper guns and baton/sting rounds) yesterday.

Funnily enough, last night was pretty quiet round the country.

The police have been quite wary of getting nasty with this lot of riots. A couple of years ago two people were killed by the Police during the G20 riots. One was steaming drunk and picked a fight with the cops, he lost and fell awkwardly on his head.

The other one, unfortunately was a totally innocent man walking home, he was violently hit on the head (from behind) and thrown to the ground by riot cops (who ran up to him even though he was walking alone in the opposite direction well away from the main body of protestors). Then the police attacked people trying to help him, prevented emergency services helping him and then tried to cover the whole thing up when he died of a combination of a heart attack and blood clots on the brain.

Fortunately, the whole thing got caught on camera and the officers responsible are in deep shit, one is looking down the barrel of a manslaughter charge (equivalent of Murder in the second degree) and ten plus years in jail over that.

Now, back to the current riots- we have a lot of riots, it's like a national hobby - the police are very, very aware that all the cctv and mobile phones mean that they are being watched just as closely as the mobs. In the past officers being needlessly brutal or losing their temper was simply denied (check out our countries 70s and 80s riots and the tactic of the Police Charge, yes it's a real thing) or covered up or ignored. Now such tactics have very real consequences for officers so they are very wary of getting aggressive without clearance from higher up.

Because of all that for the last three days they haven't been terribly proactive, that may change now.

 

[SillyBear]

Does the UK have an equivalent to the US National Guard to call up when the police become overwhelmed like this? There were thousands of soldiers in LA during the Larry King Riots, yet I haven't heard anything about the UK using their military to help the police out.

The Larry King Riots? Haha. That Freudian slip made my day!

Yeah, it's called the TA. Territorial Army. I'd be considering sending them in right now, but it's a tricky dilemma because you should never send soldiers into a volatile situation without giving them the right to defend themselves. But once you do that, you open the door to shootings and deaths that probably weren't necessary - and the riots keep getting worse.