BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time

Subject: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 05:49 AM

Just who do these demonstrating idiots think they are wasting police time? They clearly have no respect after the senseless murder of a Croydon custody officer by criminal scum.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: peteglasgow
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 05:58 AM

i think you will find that these are 2 entirely unrelated issues

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Senoufou
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 06:01 AM

I totally agree Bonzo. Complete lack of common sense and respect for society as well as for the Police.
Lockdown is tedious, we all know that, but would these idiots rather catch the virus/give it to the vulnerable members of their families which could be their deaths? Or obey the rules, which are there to safeguard us all?
I feel very puzzled by the horrendous death of the Croydon custody officer. How ever did the arresting Police overlook the fact he had a pistol? They couldn't have searched him properly. And apparently, he was hand-cufffed behind. So sorry for the dead policeman's family.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 06:31 AM

Yes it's very strange, so I think it's "watch this space" until they get to the bottom of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 09:00 AM

I don't agree with the sentiment of the protesters but I defend to the hilt their right to protest. People who do disagreeable yet legal things (such as turning out of clubs pissed at two in the morning) or who collect in large numbers in public places (sports fixtures, etc) are presumably, by the same token, also "wasting police time." Any suggestion that they should be forbidden from doing these things is the thin end of the wedge, proto-fascistic even. And the conflation of these two unrelated issues is frankly puzzling.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 09:26 AM

Just so long that it's not a conflatulation !!!

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 12:02 PM

A lot of this anti mask/lock-down/policing protest in the UK
is being organised by the same lot of sociopathic dim thug criminal agitators
who support tommy robinson and extreme nationalism...

By now they know they have growing power of numbers,
probably not just hundreds of thousands, but more like a few million deluded malcontents...???

Any Liberal lefty anti lockdown nutters joining in with them
are total pillocks...

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 12:02 PM

Police have now shut down the demo, as it did not comply with social distancing rules - surprise surprise!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 12:29 PM

One of their more farcical statements of intent is..

"The pandemic is a fake news lie.
Publicly demonstrate against wearing masks,
but wear a mask anyway, so the police can't identify you for not wearing a mask...!!!?????"

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 12:33 PM

Talk about weasel cowardly edging their bets,
just in case covid is a real threat to their own lives...

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 12:45 PM

Unfortunately, the fake-news-lie conspiracy theory is fairly popular in these parts. Either there is no virus or it was man-made and released deliberately. When you ask these deluded folk why anyone would make up thousands of deaths, or set a deadly virus loose all over the planet, they talk evasive bollocks. But you are allowed to believe this stuff if you like, just as you're entitled to believe in an even more improbable God. As long as your beliefs are not expressed as hate speech or in a threatening manner, it's all power to your elbow and good luck to ye. If there is underlying criminality behind the demos, that's a different matter. .

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 12:52 PM

...Pressed send before I'd finished. I meant to add that I regard encouraging anyone to deliberately breach social distancing, or to gather in illegally-large groups, or to refuse to wear masks where they are mandatory, as criminal activity. I don't like the way these laws have been summarily imposed without the usual scrutiny, but laws they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 04:18 PM

I call it attempted murder.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 04:39 PM

Call what attempted murder??

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 04:52 PM

I've just seen photos from Trafalgar Square this afternoon. The demonstrators who were crowded together and refusing to wear masks were totally out of order in m'humble.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Sep 20 - 05:35 PM

I've said before, we need more news reports on high profile covidiots
losing their lives to the pandemic
they deny is real...

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 05:21 AM

And as for the scousy pousy idiots in Liverpool!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 06:11 AM

bonzo do you mind if i make a suggestion, start writing to the daily telregraph rather than mudcat and sign yourself disgusted tunbridge wells somewhere near croydon, dogmatic dog with three legs

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 08:06 AM

Yes very good!!

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 10:02 AM

The curfews we are having here are not curfews. It’s just police asking people nicely to go home at 10 pm. In Argentina during curfews one got shot at if seen after 9 pm.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 11:07 AM

That wasn't a lockdown demo, I was a demo against restrictions. If behaviour like that does result in a full lockdown, I do not feel inclined to accept that just because of those idiots' behaviour. Put them in lockdown by all means, but it shouldn't be imposed on the rest of London if they cause it.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 27 Sep 20 - 11:21 AM

Steve, I have nothing against demos and protests as long as they are carried out within the law and with due care to the protestors' and public safety.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 07:39 AM

Some of the actions by the Suffragettes just over 100 years ago were outside the law but without them women may not have got the vote so soon. As it happens I agree that the protesters last weekend were in the main idiots but being outside the law is not always a bad thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 07:57 AM

In view of the government's latest idiotic request, I suggest a t shirt printed with "I have covid-19 and I'm not self isolating" !!!

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 06:23 PM

I agree with both SPB and Dave. The only thing about the demos against the restrictions is that there is a chance that, by defying the restrictions in the demos, even if you're being non-violent, you might just be risking people's well-being (lives, even) beyond the actual demo itself. Tricky...

The restrictions, imposed by fiat from Number Ten, are worrying in terms of the erosion of democracy that they represent, in m'humble. In March, there was an emergency caused by something we didn't understand, and swift action was necessary (not swift enough, as it happens). We are not in that position now. New measures should go through Parliament. They can be passed into law via the traditional parliamentary route very quickly, but, instead, we are being subjected to edicts at very short notice coming from a man who has manifestly shown little understanding of the issues in question. If he can do that now, who knows what he might try to do in future exigencies. It all has sinister echos of the latest Trump talk as the US election approaches...

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Jos
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 11:05 AM

There are reports that covid 19 can affect a sufferer's mental functions.
Could it be that we are being governed by people who have had the virus and whose brain function has been affected, perhaps through a temporary reduction of oxygen in the blood supply to the brain?

Subject: RE: BS: Lockdown demos wasting police time
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 11:44 AM

I totally agree Bonzo. Complete lack of common sense and respect for society as well as for the Police.
Lockdown is tedious, we all know that, but would these idiots rather catch the virus/give it to the vulnerable members of their families which could be their deaths? Or obey the rules, which are there to safeguard us all?

Here in the US there was a point in time when people were still quarantining and when things were relatively quiet - so when the murder of George Floyd happened and a resolute 17-year-old girl captured the entire thing and posted the unedited footage the world took notice. And FINALLY the majority of the watchers saw and understood how unfair the whole situation was. It was essentially the death penalty offered up by one police officer for the alleged passing of a counterfeit bill (has no one else gotten one in change and had it taken later? It was treated so harshly because the suspect was a black man.) A bigotted officer inflicting the indignity of a knee on the neck of a much larger man, just to show who was in charge. This was the spark that caught the US world on fire and this was the point when the militarized police, who have too many individual officers who have an agenda that doesn't just "help and serve." I find it possible to feel sorry for the "good ones," but I agree, way too much power and resources have been invested in these growing municipal armies of officers who are given too many things that they simply can't handle.

Years ago I participated in a conference here in my city about Youth At Risk, and it was the beginning of a one or two-year program that targeted dollars to late night activities at neighborhood recreation centers, allowing teens and young 20s to particpate in basketball and other sports. The crime rate went down. But not too much longer the police department wanted those dollars back to buy more patrol cars or some other such equipment.

Far more attention needs to go to mental health, to Youth at Risk, the good childcare and responsible facilities to serve the homeless than is being funded right now. It's time to let a few of these police walk the beat, not just cruise through in their armored patrol cars. Give them a tablet if they need a computer, not everyone needs the fancy computers in cars.

Defund the police is something that needs to happen - take away a hefty percentage that is not used in a way that benefits those who really need help and attention.

"Wasting police time." They've largely responded inappropriately to the peaceful demonstrations here, and when violence and vandalism happens it is usually quickly identified as the work of undercover cops and right wing militia types who want it to look like the protestors are out of control. Once they are identified, that stuff goes away, but the police still have "flash bangs" and rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray, and apply them in a manner that implies punishment because they don't think the protestors will be held accountable later. They are practicing an in-house police judge and jury with their devices and chemicals and are too many and out of control.

Yes it's horrible that all of this is happening in the time of COVID-19. It's the reason there aren't MORE people out there protesting, because the density of people and the exposure would make SARS-CoV-2 worse, but these issues simply couldn't wait.

The attitudes of Donald Trump toward all of this has made it much worse, it has emboldened the military-style armed gangs (calling themselves "militias") and the racists and the bigots and that genie won't be easily put back in the bottle once Trump is out of office and serving prison time.

Don't worry about "wasting police time." Worry about wasting public money to create these municipal armies that are accountable to few and who take the law into their own hands above and beyond their assignment. The doctrine of "qualified immunity" means they were working in a situation that suspended habeas corpus, allowing them to disregard the usual rules about your civil rights unless their behavior is so egregious that even other officers think it was wrong. Huge loophole that most officers slip through when faced with lawsuits or possible criminal charges for their actions. The whole concept of "qualified immunity" needs to be addressed and the amount of training, the psychological evaluations of police candidates, and the continued training and community support of parallel community services needs to come out of that money.   

Wear a mask if you're out protesting. Keep as social distance. Take photos of vandals and violence because chances are there are groups trying to incite violence to give YOUR cause a black eye.

And if you're in the US, for gawd sake vote Trump out of office so we can start trying to fix some of this.