Standing around with their thumbs up their asses for 12 hours sounds more like a lack of training. When you don’t know what else to do, setting up a perimeter and observing the situation gives the impression that you have the matter in hand.
Precisely. While I’m not good at finding legal cases, I’m aware of a decision I think in Baltimore in which someone sued the police department over precisely this issue (not the issue of being repeatedly raped, the issue of being victimized while police failed to respond) and lost their suit because it was held that the police are not responsible to individuals.
I really hope you withdraw that first comment. It’s disgusting.
And the second one is just wrong. Most states don’t have three-strike laws and only a dozen or so observe sentencing guidelines which allow life inprisonment for rape.
Yes. Clearly hostage situations only happen in America. Never once have British police had to handle such a situation. It must be the case that the police on the scene were completely inept, because they didn’t react in a manner commensurate with Hollywood portrayals of sieges.
Get off the Hollywood thing. I never said a word about movies or TV. Respond to what I said, not what you wish I said.
Where do you get the idea that every siege should be ended by a show of force, if not Hollywood? There’s already been reams written in this thread as to why a forced entry would be unadvisable.
Where did I say every siege? I am talking about this particular siege. If you are going to continue to address posts by some imaginary Scumpup rather than comments I have made, then I am done talking with you.
As am I. Given all we know about this particular siege is an amalgamation of information from an anonymous second hand account and hearsay, I can’t see how anybody can reasonably adopt the position that the police’s action indicates a lack of training – something which you did.
As I said, there’s very good reasons why this siege may not have been broken by force, highlighted further up thread by Stranger on a Train, amongst others, yet I note you’ve not attempted to address these in any meaningful sense. Until the matter is investigated, we don’t know what happened, and your claims that the police were lacking in training is conjecture bordering on slander.
If this sophistry is what you class as “debate”, then perhaps it really is a good thing that we’ve finished “debating”, hmm?
Good day to you, Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party.
It must be excellent to be a complete expert in hostage situations and tactical situations based solely on what one can see on their television or the internet. Maybe we should give command of British police to fanboys on internet forums in times of crisis…
Enough sarcasm. I’m in my flat right now, and I’m assuming it’s not dissimilar to the tenements in Edinburgh. There are very thick walls and storm doors and several rooms that I’d need less than ten seconds to kill someone in. My knowledge of tactical operations in buildings is only from British Infantry tactics (OBUA) where the idea is to drop everyone in the room, but I know that in the time it would take from ‘bang to bullets’ in this building, I could take out a hostage even if they were across the room from me.
It’s an absolute nightmare what happened to the poor girl, and I’m glad she walked away at all. As others have said, I’m not entirely confident that the judicial system in this country will deal with him as severely as many would hope. That said, I have confidence that if an option was there to save the girl without significant risk to her life, it would have been taken. Just because Jack Bauer could save her, and by extension several people in this thread who have watched such shows, doesn’t mean that real life is always so clean cut.
band name?
This may not be what you’re thinking of, but there was a case like that in Castle Rock, CO, that was recently decided by the Supreme Court. Link.
those fishing for a reason that the police couldn’t have done better than to allow the rapist to have his way with his victims while they stood by and watched/listened until he got tired from the performance and went to sleep. … and waited some more till the victim signaled that it was ok to come in. really.
this is not the first time, this may not be the second time. this is perhaps the third time the same monster has shown flagrant disregard for waiting police while he took his own sweet time with his victims. Og knows how many times this scenario has been repeated with other criminals.
it really doesn’t matter whether storming the place was feasible or not, what matters is that this has sent a firm message to other criminals that UK police (guilty by association) would happily wait by at your leisure so long as your hostages are at no mortal danger, whatever the bloody hell you might be doing to them.
oh, and you don’t need fancy hollywood equipment either. all you need is a knife and a wooden door.
A flat full of furniture and walls help, too. I don’t think you’d get too far by sticking a door in the ground and hiding behind it.
I invite you to produce a cite of any provenance showing that kidnapping or armed sexual assault or hostage standoffs are more common in Britain than they are in the US.
Or even that recidivism rates among British convicts are higher than in the US.
Hell, any statistic that provides any support to your position. Best of luck.
ya, doors are usually found in buildings with furnitures.
why are you asking me to cite stuff i did not claim? imaginary shijinn just doesn’t sound as good.
the police did get the guy in the end. i’ll wait for the sentence to be given before commenting on what you claim imaginary shijinn said.
edit: you know what, i’ll bite. let’s imagine that this thread is about his first venture in 1991, and we have dabated all we could stomach on whether the police’s action would encourage a repeat on this horrible scenario… you know the answer.
debate all you want. this had happened again. and the police stood by helplessly. again.
Actually about half of the states in the country have three strike laws.
Many have very high sentences for rape.
You fail to realize this guy committed at least four acts of rape, each rape could be charged as its own crime. Each of which this guy could be forced to serve consecutively. You also have the kidnapping, probably other assault charges. Probably charges on top of that, too, who knows.
When Michael Devlin kidnapped and repeatedly raped a teenage boy he was ultimately sentenced to life 73 times, and was convicted on over ten counts of forcible sodomy.
In the United States I maintain that anyone who held someone hostage and repeatedly raped them would almost certainly never see the outside of a prison again. At least not from about 1990 on, there was a time when sentencing was more lax in this country, but every indication I’ve seen shows me we as a society have been getting harsher and harsher with sentences, not more lenient. (At least when it comes to giving out life sentences, death sentences are much more rare these days than they were, say, in 1935. But society has little problem locking a lot of people up for extremely long sentences–it’s one part of the reason we’ll eventually have some serious problems with a ton of elderly inmates.)