Inside Britains Moped Crime Gangs

[Rovinghawk]

Average seven years each- this should be better publicised to hopefully get a message across to some of the scrotes.

[Gargamel]

pilotpaul said:

3 more scumbags sent down ...

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/moped-thieve...

Plenty more where they came from.

Well they aren't coming out in 8 months are they....

I make that 6 - 7 years each

Not exactly criminal masterminds this lot.

[pilotpaul]

Better report here.

http://news.met.police.uk/news/three-moped-enabled...

I would like to think the 'system' is dealing with these fools in a more appropriate manner than before.

[Rovinghawk]

TVR Moneypit said:

The 12.5, (serve 6 yr's 3 months).

You presume good behaviour- not a foregone conclusion.

[Rovinghawk]

TVR Moneypit said:

In a nutshell, it's highly likely, very highly likely, that these three poor little misunderstood darlings will be released on their conditional release date,

A pity. I hope they have an interesting sex life inside.

[dandarez]

Thieves (on mopeds) get more than they bargained for.
Good. Well done that man!

Great story, especially like the bit where one scum says 'I know where you live now'.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/they-did-pic...

[Escapegoat]

Rovinghawk said:

TVR Moneypit said:

In a nutshell, it's highly likely, very highly likely, that these three poor little misunderstood darlings will be released on their conditional release date,

A pity. I hope they have an interesting sex life inside.

You've not really thought your sex fantasy through, have you?

[Rovinghawk]

Escapegoat said:

You've not really thought your sex fantasy through, have you?

In fairness I didn't choose to dwell on it much.

[Jez m]

Another one.. broad daylight. Been 2 times previous to try and steal the same bike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtWiGEM0J4

[hyphen]

Jez m said:

Another one.. broad daylight. Been 2 times previous to try and steal the same bike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtWiGEM0J4

Was featured in Daily Mail, article said location is Carshalton, close to Croydon/Sutton.

[skwdenyer]

hyphen said:

Jez m said:

Another one.. broad daylight. Been 2 times previous to try and steal the same bike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtWiGEM0J4

Was featured in Daily Mail, article said location is Carshalton, close to Croydon/Sutton.

I think that might - along with the BBC camera heist and a few other incidents - might just be a tipping point.

What those acts say is that lawlessness is alive and well in the UK; that thieves on scooters can act with impunity; that there is no police protection for life or for property.

Recall the scene from Die Hard 4.0 (yes, I know, not very highbrow) that culminates in the Capitol building supposedly exploding. "What if you're hurt and alone and you dial 911 and no one answers? What if help will never come?"

That was clearly intended to strike fear in to the hearts of citizenry.

It seems we are there now. "Help" might come eventually, but it cannot help. And yet there are limited options to defend your own property, your own life - run and hide. How many really think that that is acceptable?

These gangs know that. Help will never arrive soon enough. At London Bridge last year, it took 10 minutes from initial reports to the terrorists being taken down. Assuming there was no intelligence there (a different conversation), everybody knows now what the realistic response time of an armed police unit is. And we don't send armed police to scooter gangs.

Those guys on Putney Bridge stopped traffic to steal cameras: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk1PX1R33iw for instance.

If the London Bridge terrorists had had mopeds then what further havoc would they have caused?

This is a tipping point. And it is one that has defied whatever attempts have been made to police it. It won't go away with an administrative stroke of the pen - they don't have guns, you can't ban mopeds or helmets, and so on. Like terrorists, they will have small "cells" but unlike terrorists there is unlikely to be any particular "command and control" in place. So there's little or nothing that can be done with intelligence.

Stiffer sentences - will that help? I can't see how. If the stakes are higher, the crimes will simply get larger to compensate - bigger targets, more likely to use guns, and so on. Because they *must* succeed in the face of raised stakes.

We can't just banish these people to prison either, because what will they do next? Get a job? Hardly. Everyone asks for disclosure of data these days. The time periods for the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act were cut recently (to just a year if punished with a fine, say), but even so. No job. No credit. No prospects. What then?

We have to share a country with those we call "scrotes" etc. We can't send them to Australia. We can't remove their chances of doing something useful (because otherwise they'll just revert to crime) and so on.

So we must do something else.

And if, as a society, we do nothing then I can see very little to prevent this wave becoming tidal. And then we really may have some problems, because "right-thinking people" will feel they have no choice but to defend their lives, their property. Vigilante groups roaming the streets. Who will be arrested, turning the people against the police for picking the "easy targets."

I don't agree that poverty is the problem, however - that's too simplistic. But what has been removed has been hope.

How we go about restoring that hope is what is critical. Austerity measures have compounded that effect - instilling in some the sense of "we have to look after ourselves."

Drugs policy is also to blame. When you criminalise so many people (some estimates put regular drug-users at well over 15% of the 16-24 age group, if not much higher) then those people start to accept that being a criminal is just a part of who they are. If that's the case, they've already crossed an emotional rubicon. Why should they care about other rules?

There are other factors. Fraud is rife in many parts of the country - dodgy blue badges, benefits fraud, cash-in-hand working, VAT evasion, duty evasion (under the counter cigarettes), etc. Even the middle classes are in on it now - illegal Air BnBs, for instance. This "low level" lawlessness is just a fact of life for a great many people.

These people are outside of society. They live their normal lives in a place where the rules are ignored. They feel no allegiance to the community at large. And on average there's little or no penalty. So what is to stop that lawlessness spreading, extending?

The right wingers will do what they always do - be reactionary, advocate stiffer sentences, and so on. But to what end?

We must find a way to revive hope. We must find a way for society and its laws to mesh with the realities of life. We must stamp out routes to avoiding things that should not be readily avoidable (I'd ban cash, for instance, right now - there's no need for it any longer). And we must have grown up conversations about things like drugs.

I think we also need to look again at credit. Those from poor backgrounds tend to be denied access to many forms of credit, resulting in a disconnect - a different start in life and you can have a nice iPhone, a nice laptop, a nice car, or whatever. If you come from a house of a "problem family" you just aren't going to get those things. So the - apparent - difference between "have" and "have not" is large, even if there is little or no difference in underlying affordability.

This isn't a simple problem, nor one blessed with a simple solution. I'm pretty convinced after (ah-hem) quite a few decades on this planet that being more right-wing is unlikely going to solve anything at all.

But I'm pretty concerned that we may be on the cusp of something really rather nasty.

[Tryke3]

These guys dont give a fk, theres no one to stop them doing this stuff
When you earn few hundred a day and peers respect you for not giving a fk, probably even get some posh bh with daddy issue and mansion in Carshalton.... lifes pretty good for a 18 year old

Crime pays in many ways

Edited by Tryke3 on Wednesday 4th April 01:21

[skwdenyer]

Tryke3 said:

These guys dont give a fk, theres no one to stop them doing this stuff
When you earn few hundred a day and peers respect you for not giving a fk, probably even get some posh bh with daddy issue and mansion in Carshalton.... lifes pretty good for a 18 year old

Crime pays in many ways

Edited by Tryke3 on Wednesday 4th April 01:21

That (bold above) is the issue. Not just the police, but the public. I don't mean "have-a-go heroes" but rather their neighbours, family, and so on.

I do think that a solution is in sight however; just ban cash outright. There's no need for it any longer. Which means that every financial transaction will leave a fingerprint somewhere.

It isn't a sinecure, but it would start to make it harder to hide "unexpected and unexplained" income.

[skwdenyer]

Not strictly moped-related, but germane to the question of citizens defending themselves:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-436391...

We will have to see whether the well-publicised "right to defend yourself" (see for instance http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316353/No...) has any bearing on how this one pans out.