Over here they'd be arrested, charged, and their DNA taken before they could say "innocent until proven guilty" -- then they'd have bogus charges outstanding for a few months.

Glad to see some countries aren't as fucked as ours.

"They've been shooting at each other for the last 30 minutes, officer! What? No, there's been no broken glass or sounds of movement"

They probably called them to get them to turn the noise down, gonna be more careful with the volume if the ARU bust through your window one night..

*Takes note as he lives directly behind a large police station*

No, really. In the US you'd be tasered twice before they got the cuffs on you, then you'd spend a week in jail before they finally got off their thumb and cut you loose, and then you'd be expected to pay for the privilege. Then you'd come home to find that your neighbors wouldn't be budged from believing that you're actually a child-molesting Al Qaeda heroin dealer, and the next morning you'd go to work only to find that you'd been fired for unscheduled absence. (And don't forget, being fired for cause disqualifies you from collecting unemployment benefits!)

Living in a midlands town, walking down the street early in the night with a mate, Stu, who had a large water pistol (dunno why) moulded in a classical sub machine gun shape and got stopped by two plainclothes coppas who were determined to examine it.

Why?

"well sir, we need to check it's not real"

I can't fault their attitude, they were impeccably polite and Stu was happy to help, but to this day I can't understand what was going on. If there was the remotest chance it was real they'd not be hopping out for a quick gander.

Not if you're a BART rider. They hold you down and put a bullet in your head.

In fairness that different. Its the whole minority thing trying to catch a the train. Look at the Brazilian that shot running to catch train. Lesson here is don't run after trains if you are dark skin. Hell in fact avoid the trail all to gather.

"Over here they'd be arrested, charged, and their DNA taken before they could say "innocent until proven guilty" -- then they'd have bogus charges outstanding for a few months."

No,. Over here they would have been shot and the police commissioner would have failed to resign

>>"No,. Over here they would have been shot and the police commissioner would have failed to resign"

I thought here that generally things less suspicious than 'videogame gunfire' are considered just cause for being shot by the police (at least, in London) - things like getting on a tube train in Brixton, carrying a table leg in Camden, or driving a yellow Mini while entirely unarmed in Kensington.

Of course, in the last two cases, the victims were obviously to blame for [allegedly] looking like they might be *thinking* of making threatening moves with the guns they didn't have.

Excluding armed siege situations, where even the Met probably has enough time to be confident that there really is at least some kind of actual threat, when was the last time a criminal was *correctly* shot in London?

Good to see we all have faith in the reliability of our respective police forces, eh?

I don't understand all this rhetoric about "lucky he was not in the UK and dark skinned" etc... I remember years back, possibly early eighties when a chap was dragged from his mini in Kengsinton High Strret by armed police and almost had a bullet put in his head. This was also a case of mistaken identity, I believe he was mistaken for an IRA member. The difference is that now the stakes are higher and back then suicide bombers were unheard of. If the possibility of suicide bombing had been around then this white presumed terrorist would have met the same fate as the more recent case. In fact given the never admitted to, shoot to kill policy, he's pretty lucky he wasn't shot anyway.

Police shoot people who are deemed to pose a threat. Argue about the level of what that threat should be but don't lower yourself to believing it is based on skin colour.

>>"I remember [...] when a chap was dragged from his mini in Kengsinton High Strret by armed police and almost had a bullet put in his head. This was also a case of mistaken identity, I believe he was mistaken for an IRA member."

Actually, I think he (Stephen something or other?) was mistaken for someone who'd non-fatally shot a police officer, with the identification seemingly being based effectively on the model and colour of car. IIRC, he was shot through the car window after [allegedly] making some 'suspicious move', obviously not having read the manual on how to act non-suspiciously in every possible circumstance, so it was clearly all the victim's fault, as usual.

Fortunately, he survived, but he very nearly didn't.

Seriously, did the neighbours honestly confuse a playstation game for a real shooting? There are three options here, so far as I can tell:

* The complainant was senile and really made an honest mistake.

* The complainant rang up to complain about the noise and the inexperience operator heard the words shooting and gun fire and jumped to a stupid conclusions.

* The complainant was fed up no response to their complaints about the nuisance noise, so made up a malicious complaint in the hope of homicide by cop. I think this is the most likely case.

We do.

We never see them.

You need money and/or influence to see any help from the police.

Where's the pics then?

I mean, this is Denmark after all . . . you know . . . home of Lego, and all that.

Can't believe Lester is now getting too laggardly to "get his kit out"

Standards of journalism at Reg going downhill again I see. Hmmmph!