5 yr old girl & 35 yr old man shot in Stockwell

[Badgers]

Let's not forget that this has a potential to escalate, local kids are already talking about revenge because of the shootings... So within the local community there's a hunt already taking place. Other kids are planning on shooting the teenagers who shot the little girl and a man.

Just checked the South London press, and there's talk of the 'Tamil Tigers' being on the hunt for them.

Nasty shit

 

[nick h.]

Can we have a bit of a reality check here?

Firstly, for a lot of kids in gangs the damage is done years before qualifications and the jobs market become relevant. They start out in a single parent family. Then the parent becomes an addict or goes to prison, and the child is effectively bringing himself up. His only family is other kids in similar situations. What kind of values does a child acquire when life is like that from the age of, say, 6? Shooting at people from your mountain bike seems pretty logical. It's Lord of the Flies meets The Wire. But in Stockwell. Some of these kids are spotted by social services and fostered. But a lot aren't. The 'lucky' ones spend their teenage years sharing a hostel with street sleepers and addicts.

Secondly, it's incredibly rare for these kids to shoot the rest of us by accident. When was the last case? The only one I can recall is a Polish woman who was sprayed by machine gun fire in New Cross several years ago.

 

[OpalFruit]

Poor, poor child. Poor adult who was shot - and all their families.

EricJarvis: Actually, I think people learn most from what they feel, not from what they see, and in my experience, from contact with young people involved in gang crime and other anti-social behaviour, I would say that it isn't in general the children of the working-stressed who grow up in this way. Those children understand what it is to value your life enough to work hard for it, even if it still results in poverty. It isn't poverty alone, either.

It is the children from families who have never allowed them to feel that their lives, their pain, their future is worth a shit. The children who wake to find Mum is still out (Dad was maybe never there, or only to be violent) and there is no breakfast in the fridge and they must make it to school alone. Again. The children whose parents knock them about, don't care if they are distressed, treat them as if they never wanted them.

Children who see parents working hard to support them KNOW that that is because their lives are valued and worked for.

There was an article in one of the colour supplements last weekend in which a convicted muderer (bottled someone who 'looked' at him) was asked if he felt any guilt or remorse. No, he didn't. His response was why should he? No-one had ever shown any remorse for anything done to him.

I agree about the need for peer 'respect', but think the problems start at a level more serious than stress and low income.

And still plenty of young people manage to grow and develop despite horrifically damaging upbringings - not fair of any of us to assume a self-fulfilling prophesy and project a prejudiced view onto any of our young people. (not saying you have done that - a general point)

 

[OpalFruit]

Cross-posted with nick.h. With whom I agree.

 

[Rushy]

Secondly, it's incredibly rare for these kids to shoot the rest of us by accident. When was the last case? The only one I can recall is a Polish woman who was sprayed by machine gun fire in New Cross several years ago.

There was the young footballer kid on his way home last year - shot by another kid on a bike aiming at someone else. The young girl in a queue going to a club shot by boys passing in a car NYE before last. Sorry - I forget both their names. Rhys? Alisha?

 

[nick h.]

Hmm. Perhaps I should have specified 'killed'. The Polish woman was killed. I hope these others weren't?

 

[Rushy]

Hmm. Perhaps I should have specified 'killed'. The Polish woman was killed. I hope these others weren't?

Both killed, sadly.

 

[Blagsta]

Can we have a bit of a reality check here?

Firstly, for a lot of kids in gangs the damage is done years before qualifications and the jobs market become relevant. They start out in a single parent family. Then the parent becomes an addict or goes to prison, and the child is effectively bringing himself up. His only family is other kids in similar situations. What kind of values does a child acquire when life is like that from the age of, say, 6? Shooting at people from your mountain bike seems pretty logical. It's Lord of the Flies meets The Wire. But in Stockwell. Some of these kids are spotted by social services and fostered. But a lot aren't. The 'lucky' ones spend their teenage years sharing a hostel with street sleepers and addicts.

Secondly, it's incredibly rare for these kids to shoot the rest of us by accident. When was the last case? The only one I can recall is a Polish woman who was sprayed by machine gun fire in New Cross several years ago.

Agreed

 

[silverfish]

You know nothing, neither do I live anywhere near Stockwell or do I have any tenuous personal involvement. I merely have a brain and a heart and I use them in conjunction with one another. My emotions relating to this incident are universal human emotions; anger, disgust, sadness and contempt. I will cease to converse with you. A wise man once said, 'don't argue with idiots, they will bring you down to their level and beat you at their own game'

And as for the parody comment, a sense of humour is often required to deal with people as ignorant as you.

 

[Summerbaby]

nah, fuck him, he's proffesed eugeniscist ideals in the past and all that 'these people' stuff is dogwhistle.

And we can smell them a mile off!

 

[Ms T]

There was the young footballer kid on his way home last year - shot by another kid on a bike aiming at someone else. The young girl in a queue going to a club shot by boys passing in a car NYE before last. Sorry - I forget both their names. Rhys? Alisha?

And Mrs M's neighbour was shot dead in cross-fire, as she says upthread.

 

[Giles]

And let's not forget this poor girl shot dead while waiting for a take-away by some maniac shooting randomly through the window:

16 year old shot in food take-away

Giles..

 

[Summerbaby]

My guess is that you are an army boy or some other type of institutionalised twat who has had the emotion and empathy trained right out of him.

 

[ILOVELAMP]

A very troubling incident indeed.

I have joined this forum as I have read a lot of very well thought out and measured contributions to this topic and the root causes of crimes like these. If only our mainstream media would ask the questions and look at the things that some of the posters here have.

Whilst I do think that the perpetrators of this crime need to be removed from the streets at the moment in order to protect more innocents (I refuse to sympathise with people who commit such an act, whatever the age), it is important that we, as a society, look at the causes of these crimes and the contributing factors to gang mentality, which many posters have done here succinctly. Without addressing such causes, things can only get worse.

 

[Summerbaby]

My guess is that you are an army boy or some other type of institutionalised fool who has had emotion and empathy, trained, buggered or beaten out of them.

 

[OpalFruit]

ILoveLamp - that's right - understanding the cause doesn't mean sympathy for the result.
Except in the Daily Mail, perhaps.

 

[ILOVELAMP]

@opalfruit

Are you insinuating that I am a mail reader or did I misunderstand your post?

 

[RaverDrew]

Some fucking ridiculous liberal hand-wringing on this thread.

 

[Summerbaby]

Some terribly fascist ideologies too.

 

[ILOVELAMP]

Some terribly fascist ideologies too.

what, like the murdering of the innocent?

 

[Ms Ordinary]

Hmm. Perhaps I should have specified 'killed'. The Polish woman was killed. I hope these others weren't?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/25/agnes-sina-inakoju-gun-crime

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/shop-shooting-victim-was-innocent-bystander-887364.html

These are a couple that stuck in my mind

Both black teenagers, and the earliest news reports weren't always clear - but both were innocent bystanders, nothing to do with gangs, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

[Ms Ordinary]

Not that it should be any less shocking when its teenage gang members killing other teenage gang members - it's still children killing children.

 

[Blagsta]

Poor, poor child. Poor adult who was shot - and all their families.

EricJarvis: Actually, I think people learn most from what they feel, not from what they see, and in my experience, from contact with young people involved in gang crime and other anti-social behaviour, I would say that it isn't in general the children of the working-stressed who grow up in this way. Those children understand what it is to value your life enough to work hard for it, even if it still results in poverty. It isn't poverty alone, either.

It is the children from families who have never allowed them to feel that their lives, their pain, their future is worth a shit. The children who wake to find Mum is still out (Dad was maybe never there, or only to be violent) and there is no breakfast in the fridge and they must make it to school alone. Again. The children whose parents knock them about, don't care if they are distressed, treat them as if they never wanted them.

Children who see parents working hard to support them KNOW that that is because their lives are valued and worked for.

There was an article in one of the colour supplements last weekend in which a convicted muderer (bottled someone who 'looked' at him) was asked if he felt any guilt or remorse. No, he didn't. His response was why should he? No-one had ever shown any remorse for anything done to him.

I agree about the need for peer 'respect', but think the problems start at a level more serious than stress and low income.

And still plenty of young people manage to grow and develop despite horrifically damaging upbringings - not fair of any of us to assume a self-fulfilling prophesy and project a prejudiced view onto any of our young people. (not saying you have done that - a general point)

Also agreed.

 

[Blagsta]

Some fucking ridiculous liberal hand-wringing on this thread.

Don't use words you don't understand.

 

[ajdown]

A £50,000 reward has been put up now.

Apparently one of the 'targets' has contacted the police.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12923615

 

[RaverDrew]

Don't use words you don't understand.

0/10

 

[agricola]

Whilst its true that some of the youths involved in this type of thing do come from what might be termed broken or dysfunctional homes, it should be born in mind that a good number of them do not - IMHO I would put it more down to peer pressure, a percieved (in some cases quite reasonable) need to defend oneself or ones friends from attack, the allure of a superficially attractive and easy lifestyle etc etc.

 

[ericjarvis]

A very troubling incident indeed.

I have joined this forum as I have read a lot of very well thought out and measured contributions to this topic and the root causes of crimes like these. If only our mainstream media would ask the questions and look at the things that some of the posters here have.

That's because we live where these things happen, whereas those in charge of the mainstream media don't. A friend of mine used to be a political reporter with the BBC. He used to live in inner city Tottenham. He got sick of his reports being drastically altered by editors who hadn't a clue about how most of us live in order to replace the facts with something more in tune with the nonsense the tabloids spew out. He's now a science journalist, where at least his editors know they haven't a clue about what he's reporting on.

To a newspaper editor this is a story about people in a place he's never going to go, and which he can potentially twist into something that will appeal to his readership by reinforcing the idea that they must be good people because there are some other people who are just simply "born evil". The media have absolutely no interest in anyone finding solutions to these problems. Nor do the majority of politicians. It suits them fine as things are now. They can use it to back up ridiculously simplistic and repressive legislation whilst not having to face the consequences themselves.

 

[ericjarvis]

Whilst its true that some of the youths involved in this type of thing do come from what might be termed broken or dysfunctional homes, it should be born in mind that a good number of them do not - IMHO I would put it more down to peer pressure, a percieved (in some cases quite reasonable) need to defend oneself or ones friends from attack, the allure of a superficially attractive and easy lifestyle etc etc.

I know of several instances on this estate of kids who had no intention of getting involved in any sort of crime being targetted by the local gang in an effort to draw them in. To stay out of it takes a great deal of inner strength as well as family support. Especially as there's little else to help. There is no funding locally for activities that involve both young people and older people, all the funding is on the basis that since the youth are the "problem" the money should be spent on activities solely for young people. Which simply ghettoises them more, and means they spend more time with their peer group and less time learning how to behave from adults.

What they need is for the rest of us to stop abdicating our responsibilities and accept that the ONLY way they are going to learn to live a good life is if they have examples to learn from. That means having the chance to take part in activities with adults as peers and not simply in a supervisory role.

 

[ILOVELAMP]

@ericjarvis great post. Very interesting to hear about your journo friend having reports altered by BBC eds.

IMO the BBC are about as impartial as Fox news. They consistently toe the gov't line with few exceptions (Dr. Kelly's suicide being the last one I can think of)