pool: I figured your posting was in response to me. Certainly, let’s agree to disagree on the humor to be found in the situation.
Kyle Rayner1: Perhaps this will help you in debating: Perception is not citation. Now perhaps you could tell me what should be done when the girl mistakenly believes her victim was the guy who raped her and he’s in fact innocent of that crime?
BTW, why, exactly, would you want someone to make the job of the police harder when you apparently believe the police are having enough difficulty with actually doing the job in the first place?
Okay, Monty, I’ll reply to your questions like this:
If the girl kills the wrong guy than she should be arrested and tried but I’m against killing (I’m pro-choice and I agree with pulling the plug on people like Terri Schiavo though) so I wouldn’t agree with her decision in the first place.
I think making the cops’ jobs harder by having a vigilante running around doing a better job will piss them off so the good cops will push themsevles away from Dunkin Donuts and get to work and the bad cops will get what they deserve when they’re embarrassed as hell when they see non-killing vigilantes taking charge.
Your perception of the police is juvenile and increibly ill-informed, not to mention extremely prejudiced.
Dratted misspellings!
“Increibly” should be “incredibly.”
How so? Ask the poor residents of inner cities and see if they don’t agree,
Do they agree with you that you don’t have any proof of your accusations or do they agree with you based on their perceptions, their prejudices?
After all, that is all you’ve been doing regarding the police: parotting prejudicial comments such as “pulling themselves away from Dunkin Donuts.”
Another question for you: How is unlawful murder a better job than what the police do?
I said I don’t agree with this vigilante. I’m against killing another human being but I wouldn’t care if a vigilante captured a felon.
Believe me, they would agree this drug war is hurting minorities (I think the drug war is a joke by the way and people should be allowed to take whatever drugs they want) I lived in a poor section of city my family wasn’t poor, though, we were middle class I’m not going to lie to make myself sound cool but I was around the poorer elements a lot and saw the suffering around me due to street violence and burglarly but the cops just semmed interested in stopping speeders and people who smoked pot.
Now tell me vigilantes wouldn’t have helped because they damned well would have.
“Believe me” isn’t a citation either. Put up or shut up.
Vigilantes wouldn’t have helped. For one thing, what they do is a crime itself; therefore, their actions contribute to crime.
Police corruption doesn’t lead to more crime? I don’t have cites handy but you know how inner cities are I’m sure.
Where did you pull that from. I did not say nor imply that. Honest people do not pull such stunts as that.
I know you don’t have cites handy. You’re making stuff up. Again, honest people don’t pull such stunts as that.
BTW, Kyle Rayner1, feel free to step this way.
The idea of having a criminal justice system has many facets, but one main one, is to allow law abiding citizens to feel that society is taking effective measures to protects them, and thus give confidence.
What I see every day in prison are multiple offenders who have absolutely no fear of prison at all.
It is not unusual, in fact its routine to see offenders who have gone through the non-custodial system of fines and probationary orders, and then on to young offender institutes and go on with steadily escalating crimes, usually stopping at street robbery of lower levels of violence, but never stopping with the property crime.
The normal sentencing policy in the UK is to dictate a maximum for a particualr type of crime, but, this is rarely taken to the limit, and anyway, losing four or six years to a judge is a risk they are prepared to take and readily accept.
I get to see those in their late 20’s and early 30’s who have around 20 or so convictions, which would tend to mean perhaps five or six custodials.
Now, the reason vigilantism is not all that rare around my locality is, most of us have an awareness of who the criminals are, as do the police of course.
Most of us know to what terms the criminals are detained upon sentencing, and since we know that the jail term awareded often does not seem to take into great enough account of personal suffering and fear, its no surprise at all to me that one hears of local burglars and junkies and car thieves being ‘taken for a car journey’ accompanied by individuals with large ehavy implements.
I do not approve of this at all, it is simply replacing one form of criminality with another, and possibly more dangerous type.
I’m not surprised it happens, when criminals are apprehended, their victims must feel that the legal system is in the business of protecting them, and when lots of sympathy or personal circumstances of the criminal are taken into account in order to obtain a reduced prison term, it sticks in the craw of those who have to live in the same town.
Our prison population in the UK is expanding rapidly, from around 48k in 1996 to around 78k right now, with a projected growth(and no end in sight) to around 91k at the low end of estimates to around 110k at the higher end.
The thing is, the criminals are still largely the same ones, simply getting longer jail terms for escalating offences, so instead of maybe six months for a car theft, they have swapped and are getting 6 years or more for repeat burglary.
What is missing about all this though is the following, the actual terms awarded by the courts have increased, but the term served in prison is not increasing at the same rate, because these folk are being released earlier in their jail term, through the use of parole or electronic tagging.
Whenever you read or see some story about a terrible crime, especially if it involved junkies, or sex offenders, its very common to find that the criminal had plenty of previous crime history, that local law agencies, social security and welfare agencies were familiar with the person, that plenty of warnings were given, and yet still the offender was given just a few years in jail, got released early due to godd behavior in jail, and then went out and did it again, only worse.
Against that background, vigilantism will always be present, and it will increase.
Those with the means and the ability to ‘set things straight’ will do so if it seems obvious to them that societies mechanism does not protect them or other much more vulnerable groups.
You might think that there would be a bandwagon for the polticians to jump on here, but what usually happens is that the soft woolly liberal reformer humanist types will engage the media to portray such a politician as a stone-age thinker and a reactionary.
As it happens, I have no problem in regarding myself as a socialist, but, that also means the protection of society from the unlawful and heinous elements of society.
Its all very well to say we need to change society so that it produces fewer criminals, meanwhile, can we afford to wait until the dawn of that Utopian age ?
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but
That’s a moral judgement, not a fact. In my moral beliefs, there are some people who just need killing. I do not practice vigilantism in part because of the legal ramifications, and in part because I’m a lazy bastard, but saying it’s wrong holds as much weight in a debate as a bible quote. Now on the other hand, many of the practical arguments, (ie repealing Megan’s laws, Innocents harmed by mistake, etc) are quite convincing this guy needs to be shut down.
BTW, is anyone else kinda creeped by the fact that the two “victims” lived together? I wonder what they talked about.
Okay, parthenokinesis: Let’s say the law has vigilantism as wrong.
meh. The law has cannibis consumption as wrong. I’ve yet to visit a prostitute, but I think it’s my og given right to to so, and I can’t imagine how many of my state’s sodomy laws I may have broken. Again, possible legal rammifications are a check to the practice of vigilantism, but if some other bloke is willing to go the risk, more power to him, right?
I re-iterate, I come down on your side, this dude needs to be stopped. But this line of reasoning, kind of gets my dander up. YMMV
More power to him? Nope. The man is dangerous. If the simple fact that he’s killed doesn’t prove to you the concept of vigilantism is morally, along with legally, wrong, then you need to seriously review your moral system.
A more clear comment than my last posting is that all vigilantes are dangerous. That some vigilantes kill should prove to you the concept of vigilantism is morally, as well as legally, wrong.
See, now you’re goin’ and gettin’ my dander up. This morally superior arguement just doesn’t wash. Killing isn’t morally wrong, when it’s the right thing to do, it’s morally right to kill. At appropiate times it’s deemed necessary, and sometimes seen as noble, depends on the prevalent moral code of the society at large. The same could be applied to vilalantism
Let me throw a couple definations at ya, from my Websters New World Dictionary, 4th edition. I got it a Wal-mart for $3.94.
Vigil a) a watchfull staying awake b)a kept watch
Vigilant - staying watchful and alert to danger or trouble
Vigilante - one who acts outside the law to punish or avenge a crime
Gee, and I woulda thought a Vigilante was one who was vigilant. How did that word get so polluted from it’s source. I can only blame the smear campaign of the moral absolutists.
The dude in Seattle, what he did was cultuarally inappropriate, but it wasn’t wrong.
= vigilantism.
Hmm, that was a bit Freudian.