London's Burning: Rolling thread for the 2011 summer protests, riots and general unrest

I had no idea someone involved in any way with journalism or the media could be ignorant of permutations of the term 'vox populi' #shame

seems like some people weren't on the porn/leather thread this summer.

Way to go guys, keep the tepid lolz rolling on this thread about an unarmed black man being gunned down by police.

i think, with this, there's so much to say and yet it feels so disappointing and depressing that saying anything feels futile. i could talk about some of the idiot opinions I've heard in the last 24 hours; about how he deserved it, or how if you 'choose' to be in a gang then you know what the consequences are, or if you have a gun you deserve to be shot, or that the media are inciting people to riot, but what's the fucking point? Boris'll get his watercannon, the police'll get off scot-free, the 2011 riots will be remembered as an embarrassment and it'll just happen again and again and the more it happens the more police and governmental oppression will win-out. happy fucking 2014.

the cafc messageboard is my general bellwether for how yr average person thinks about a big news story; there's essentially almost full support for the verdict there, with the justification that duggan was carrying a gun and was a nasty gangsta sort who chose the way of violence and got what was coming

i perhaps don't have the heart to go on and say that all of the above, while also being vindictive and spiteful, is completely irrelevant to the fact of systemic flaw & delegation that resulted in the act of a trigger being pulled on a man who was at that moment unarmed, and the process of obfuscation which followed

obviously this case is not one-fiftieth as horrifying as the de menezes one, but it is horrifying nonetheless

ladies and gentlemen, richard littlejohn

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bdm5rArCIAAeXY8.jpg

what a cunt

Since this irredeemably racist shitbag lives in Florida, does he have someone sending him AVIs of Benefits Street or did a sub just put that reference in there?

I can't even believe... I know it's Littlejohn but crikey...

so much utter repulsiveness compacted into four short sentences - you've gotta say he's an amazingly efficient writer

this is one troll who def shdn't have his hackery dignified with responses

this, this, this

DNFTT hasn't really worked so well w/r/t his career in general, has it?

i'm not trying to be sanctimonious, if people address his "points" without giving him attention that's a good thing

ignoring him has no effect on his career because he is also speaking to/for his constituency of poisonous tiny minds, the jeers of actual human beings are just an ego massage for him, that's the thrill we shd try to deny him

Yeah, this is Louise Mensch syndrome - you can know and dismiss that a certain person is nothing but a purely attention-seeking troll, but the moment that you see their attitudes being taken up and parroted by others, it is rather important to address those *attitudes*, without feeding the source troll.

OTM. It's not like he's the only person talking like this.

Carole Duggan also punched/shoved a Daily Mail reporter (GWAN) on Wednesday because of the way that paper dealt with her nephew's funeral, so this is Dacre's revenge.

surprised Dacre cares that much about the grunts tbh

Littlejohn lives in a gated community near Orlando, where there are TONS of cheesy Brits with similar views, and you can buy the Mail in convenience stores all over the state, wherever there are tourists and second-homers.

the justification that duggan was carrying a gun and was a nasty gangsta sort

If I see that phrase "Live by the swrod, die by the sword" again I'll punch a Daily Mail reporter

More like "live within racism, die by racism" unfortunately.

The CPS has declined to prosecute an armed office in another case (in Manchester) because they apparently didn't think a jury would convict:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/16/greater-manchester-police-health-safety-unarmed-anthony-grainger

The background to that shooting is unsurprisingly murky as fuck http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315777/The-memory-stick-killing-When-police-lost-data-card-names-1-000-informants-questioned-father--cleared-Two-months-later-shot-dead.html

Ha, saw that earlier & thought of this thread. police being basically collectively prosecuted for killing someone under health&safety was so nakedly absurd w/ the jean charles de menezes case I am amazed they're doing it again

I think the difficulty in both cases was trying to find someone with enough individual responsibility to prosecute. That's not easy to do when you have a string of incompetent or dodgy decisions by a large number of people.

That's not easy to do not allowed when you have a string of incompetent or dodgy decisions by a large number of people police officers.

There's an element of that too, of course, but it's not much easier going after a rail company for corporate manslaughter after an avoidable crash, etc. Health and Safety regs are often used there too.