Calls to ban hoodie-busting sonic weapon

Noise pollution

If somebody puts one of these where I can hear it from my door can I do them for noise pollution please?

@Dan

Yes, we have gangbangers here. Gangbangers tend to shoot / stab / etc other gangbangers. Gangbangers do not tend to loiter in malls, because they are gangbangers and have better things to do.

They're dangerous thugs who will do bad things to you if they feel it suits them, but they act with some purpose - their own monetary enrichment.

The 'chavs' I hear described act nothing like that - from what I'm hearing they're all over the place, in major malls with lots of traffic during the day, in great gobs choking every store entrance and street corner.

I've spent plenty of time in nice, medium, and not nice areas all over the US, and have *NEVER* seen a group of random kids hanging about harassing people. Not once. Not even in the dodgy sections of Brooklyn.

There's places I won't go at 3am, sure - but that's because I fear actual *crime*, not some bunch of loudmouthed assholes who go after me just for the hell of it.

The people we're talking about are totally different. Your Chavs are lazy assholes who inhabit normal, middle-class malls in large packs and go after people just for existing.

Our criminals are determined assholes who inhabit bad sections of town on the street and go after people for interfering in gang business or in order to relieve them of their cash.

The most disturbing thing I have seen at any shopping center or mall from Boston to Los Angeles is that 12-year-old girls wear pants with 'JUICY' written across the ass.

The US has crime; of course we do. We do not have chavs. Why does the UK? Maybe if you answered that question instead of assuming everyone under 30 is a criminal you'd come closer to solving the problem.

There is nothing like this in the USA

because some young gangster would boast about taking it down with one shot.

Pfft

Anyone comparing this to the Holocaust deserves a swift kick in the plums. I live in a village where no-one dares go out after 4pm, it's a no-go area for the police too. Plenty of youth programmes and activities, but a lot of them would rather loiter and cause trouble. The problem is that some of them are from families with 3 generations of idle layabouts who've never worked. These brats think this world owes them a living.

I remember this a year(ish) ago....

There was a news article about this, they even had an mp3 of the noise. The comments section was littered with people over the age of 25 who could hear it. I was one of those that could.

There was a follow up article a couple of weeks later stating that school kids were using it as a ringtone, as the teacher couldn't hear it in class.

@Theresa Jayne Forster

AFAIK only commercial premises have to display the sign, I think you'll find your local police are just big nancies.

Hearing difficulties?

I actually wait to see how many people sue because of hearing difficulties caused by these very loud, high-pitched devices. If you listen to any noise at sufficient volume then it can damage your hearing, so a very high-pitched noise is no different. Several people on here have already said after listening to the tone they could hear it still even once it was off, I'd be interested to know for how long?

As others have said though, this just tackles the symptom without touching on the cause. In society, a healthy fear of the repercussions of doing wrong is quite...well healthy. There also need to be changes made so it is much less "easy" to scrounge from the government and live on benefits (excluding those who [b]genuinely[/b] need them). Finally, they need to tackle the whole "respect" issue, and teach these people what it is like to lose something that they value.

As for anyone who says "yeah but how many kids like this have you really met?", the answer is plenty....every weekend when the 15 year olds manage to buy or nick vodka from their local shops or parents drink cabinets. People have DIED because of these little shits and frankly something needs to be done. Look at Gary Newlove, he died because the police did (or were powerless to do - not sure which) fuck all about the yobs in their area. The laws need to be changed so that the fuckers who actually do cause trouble (and I appreciate it's a minority) are dealt with before it gets out of hand.

Age Discrimination

I thought it was now against the law to discriminate on the grounds of age. By this only working on under 25s, I am feeling deprived of the mosquito noise. Who should I sue?

Punishing anyone for being under 25 indiscriminately is WRONG. I hate the yobs who make life a misery as much as anyone, but this is not the solution.

Works Both Ways

I am a police officer who spends much of his time responding to “nuisance youths” calls. Whilst there are a regular few nasty pieces of work, most of these “nuisance youths” are just kids being kids. But the problem is that due to the reputation of the genuinely bad ones coupled with hysterical tabloid reporting, it’s a fact of life that many adults, especially the elderly, are now conditioned to feel afraid of any congregation of more than two teenagers, especially if they are wearing hoodies. Yes, you can argue till the cows come home that this is stereotyping, but that’s human nature – be it right or wrong. So it comes down to explaining to kids who are congregating outside shops, innocently in most cases, that people do find them intimidating. Some of them will just see this as “well that’s their problem”, to others it’s a genuine eye-opener, but such is the pack influence that once one member of the gang sees the reality, the whole gang tends to be happy to move to loiter somewhere more discreet. And as for the “well we’ve got nothing else to do”, I just tend to ask them why if that’s the case, in a town of a hundred or so youths of the same age group, how come the other 95% have found something to do?

On the other hand, it’s sometimes a matter of just calling on the informant who’s complained about “noisy yobs playing football on the park” and asking him whether he ever used to play football on the park when he was young.

The bottom line is both “sides” have got rights, but sometimes there’s a conflict between the two. In those cases, it’s a matter of coming to a compromise – doggedly refusing to do so just sees the situation worsen over time.

By a happy coincidence..

Readers of this thread may find todays posting here of some interest:

http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/

Cor

It's gone all Daily Mail on the Reg comment board.

What's the effect of these Mosquito devices on house prices, that's what I want to know.

And are they doubly effective on foreign teenagers ?

Surely illegal ?

In my town we have an old clock tower, when I say old, it's a century or two old. Guess what, like many old clock towers it chimes, audibly, which was once a service to the townsfolk who didn't have a clock of their own.

Of course, people that live in the town are used to it, even like it.

But a few years ago, some <insert expletive> woman moved into the town and AFTER moving in decided that she didn't like the noise of the clock. So the clock was silenced under threat of criminal proceedings for statutory nuisance.

So if nuisance laws allow a stupid woman to have a chiming clock silenced that most of us in the town agreed she should not have moved within earshot of, surely these devices are also causing statutory nuisance and can be shut down (forcibly if needed) by the local council. Certainly, if I come across one then I'll be onto the councils environmental control department straight away.

And for the record, I'm 100% behind those enlightened posters above who are able to see that these devices do not even attempt to treat the underlying problems and will, in the long term, simply make them worse. And yes, I can tell you that I have suffered from various forms of attack and bullying over the years - but I do NOT support such stupid measures as these.

But I can understand why some people should feel they are forced into it by inaction by those who COULD deal with the problems.

Completely coincidentally I was in a special needs school today doing some IT work - the school deals with problem youngsters who have probably been excluded from normal schools. They had a poster on the wall in the office, which (having done a quick search) I now find to be an abridged version of "Children Learn What They Live" by Dorothy Law Nolte - I suggest a few of you look it up and read it, because (IMHO) it's quite true.

The first stanza (of the approved abridged version goes :

If children live with criticism,

They learn to condemn.

If children live with hostility,

They learn to fight.

If children live with ridicule,

They learn to be shy.

If children live with shame,

They learn to feel guilty.

Many of the attitudes expressed above fit all four of those negatives - so if you hurl criticism, hostility, ridicule and shame on some section of the community (in this case all "teenagers"), how on earth can you reasonably expect anything other than the outcome above ?

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way trying to claim there is no problem, just point out that the approach advocated will do nothing but make them worse.