Clip round the ear

During the August riots we were fed by media about the widespread looting and how youngsters had lost all common sense. Cameron called the rioters for scum and by that managed to dehumanise the youngsters. He made a big number of trying to make us believe that the rioters were criminals rather than angry young people resisting his politics if austerity.
Cameron also wanted swift handling of the rioters and called for water guns and harsh punishments.

In the heat of the riot it can be hard to see what is actually going on and the dust from the battle is still hovering around the court houses where draconian punishments has been handed out. The sentencing frenzy has left the prison services unable to cope with the sudden and drastic increase of prisoners within such a short period of time.

I thought that punishment in UK was based on the particular circumstances of each crime and that all of us are equal before the law. But clearly not, there has been some pre-judgement going on in the media and the emotional fury in Cameron’s statements.

When the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans we also got these media report of looting, violence and rape committed by young black men. But actually these reports were far from the truth. In reality, it was the police that went berserk and killed African Americans at sight. (See link below)

I have a feeling that in some years from now the real truth about what went on during the August riots will come out and it will change the public opinion of the rioters, when the dust have settled, just as it done in New Orleans.

In the aftermath of the riots there has been suggestions to use the practice of ‘clip round the ear’ as a way for the police to deal with the young poor people in UK, or the ‘pockets of our society that are broken’ as Cameron calls it.

Is it not better to mend what’s broken rather than release a racist police force to clamp down on so called thugs with a clip round the ear? Surely that is not the solution?

Clearly we can’t trust the Metropolitan Police Force to deal with the public in a just and fair manner. What we do see instead is blatant racism and a police force that kill black men on our streets. Men like Mark Duggan, Demetre Fraser and others.

Clip round the ear is not a solution because violence breeds violence.

What we need is a society where all have a fair chance to take part in society on equal terms - a society that includes all.

Katrina verdicts, full article