August 14, 2011

Die Welt: "Most defendants confirm all stereotypes"

While the NY Times puzzled until its puzzler was sore over the occasional man bites dog looters (the lady social worker, etc.), commenter Theo M notes that the German newspaper Die Welt reports that the main story was ... dog bites man.
Riots in the UK
Most defendants confirm all stereotypes 
Dispensation of justice on the assembly line in a 24-hour court: Despite a few exceptions most defendants confirm all stereotypes: foreigners, criminal, unemployed. Half of the accused are minor. 
In recent days many British media reported on defendants that did not confirm typical prejudices against rioters at all. There was the aspiring social worker who stole a flat screen TV, the student who swiped two T-shirts, or the elementary school teacher who broke into a music store. 
A night at Westminster Magistrates' Court, however, conveys a different picture: Almost all suspects have a migrant background, no job, but a sizable criminal record. About half of the defendants are minor, yet parents hardly felt the need to appear in court. 

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep.

Good essay by Hitchens:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025695/UK-riots-Police-water-cannon-plastic-bullets-After-50-years-lavish-welfare-state-earth-What-abject-failure-says-Peter-Hitchens.html

This is also illustrative of urban America today, suburban America tomorrow (well, it's already in our suburban public schools in many states).

Thanks, libs or "progressives" or whatever it is you'd like to be called. Your crazy ideas about human nature really have done a number on society.

Anonymous said...

hilarious live interview: white guy tells reporter all the people who looted his shop were black, she asks him if he isn't being "stereotypical" [sic] he does not back down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oyzbZrUdfEg

Harry Baldwin said...

Puzzled until its puzzler was sore.. ."

Like the Grinch reference. For a moment I thought it might be a Bertie Wooster-ism.

Henry Canaday said...

Here’s a theory: Looting is just community-binge shoplifting. If true, that means there should be a correlation between the shoplifting each store experiences in normal times and the likelihood and scale of its looting when something upsetting, like the inconveniencing of a local hero, happens.

Merchants know the shoplifting rates of their stores. Shouldn’t the police know too, in order to move quickly when the big one goes down?

Anonymous said...

That's interesting. From the english news coverage I had assumed that the brit police were arresting people on the edge of the riot, ie women and children who could not easily run from police and would not pose a threat of violence to them. Its nice to see that the police may have got some of the real rioters after all.

Anonymous said...

To what extent his this PC and what extent is it fear?

In 6th grade, a substitute teacher had to deal with students going wild--fights, screaming, etc. It began with black kids, who caused most of the mayhem, and the teacher didn't know what to do. She left the blacks alone but sent two minor participants--Vietnamese kid and a Mexican kid--to the principal's office though they were, at best, jackals to the wolves in the melee. She needed to assert her authority and take out her frustration on someone, but she didn't have the guts to handle blacks.

I think libs are really messed up psychologically. They feel condescending nanny-state compasinfor blacks due to PC education and Hollywood movies--and addiction to black music--, but they are also animated by fear. Both fear of blacks and fear of the fellow PC community which will not tolerate heresy.

DCThrowback said...

I just finished up a Grand Jury term in rapidly gentrifying Washington, DC (25 days). Our jury was half black (11) and half white (11) w/ one south Asian. 18 women, 5 men.

We heard around 60 cases.

The defendants in ~45 of them were black. In just about every case (guns, drugs, child abuse, rape, assault), each case involved some moron who did something w/o thinking or under the influence. I can fully verify what Tom Wolfe was writing about in Bonfire.

About 8-10 were Hispanic defendants.

The remaining 2 or 3 defendants were White. One spousal abuse (dude's wife was a cop - bad move), one assault by a police officer who tried to play bouncer in a bar and...well, that was about it. The white people involved as witnesses were involved in another high profile ambien case involving a well placed Hill staffer (who was black) and a white couple from near Chevy Chase who had their car stolen by a dude (he reached into their house and lifted the keys off of a table!). The (black) dude was later found drunk in the car after he crashed into a fence pole in SE DC. Unreal.

We had a strong focus on sexual assaults on our particular jury. We probably heard and indicted about 10-15 cases. All except one was committed by black dudes (one was a French muslim). A solid 5-7 were child abuse. In a number of them, women testified against abusive baby fathers (marriage rarely found). The women were may have been beaten, but they were rarely unbowed - in perhaps 5-6 of the cases we had heard, each woman had at least 2-3 kids and were rarely > 30 years old.

If you get an opportunity to go on a Grand Jury, I highly recommend it. You get to question witnesses and interact quite liberally with the prosecutors (in DC, they are AUSAs). Highly competent was my takeaway from the DC AUSA staff.

Anonymous said...

DCTHrowback, of your grand jury's 60 cases, how many no true bills did you issue?

Anonymous said...


Here’s a theory: Looting is just community-binge shoplifting.


I've got it. The UK needs a community organizer.

We've got one here that is no use to us. Let's re-gift him to the Brits!

Anonymous said...

It's funny that we have to get that information from a German paper.
Neither the BBC or any English paper have even dropped the widest hint about this.

Anonymous said...

Defendants conform stereotypes? Hmmm.....

Brian B. said...

Aw, what'd ya have to go and interrupt the carefully constructed lie for? Don't you know how hard we had to sift through all of those irrelevant minority offenders to find the diamond in the rough Great White Defendants?

Actually, in a way, I do feel sorry for journalists. Really, the only way they can get ahead is to perpetuate the lie. Think about it from their point of view. How many would keep their jobs or advance in their careers if they were to say the politically incorrect facts?

DCThrowback said...

@anon -

None. Out of the 60 cases, we didn't get to indict on all, we probably had to vote on 20 or so. We indicted every case in front of us - the evidence was relatively overwhelming in every case.

There was one exception: a 3rd deg sexual assault on a 20 year old guy for trying (and failing) to have sex w/ his girlfriend. (They then got into a little bit of a scrape and she put his cell phone in the trash compactor.) We wondered why that case was being brought as it was pretty clear the state had little business being involved in that type of domestic dispute.

But, it illustrated the conundrum of the "po-lice" and the legal system with the black community; since there is little authority around to provide guidance, when things get out of control (and you request their presence), the state will provide that guidance. But once the state is involved you lose YOUR control over the situation - the state will do what IT thinks is right. In that particular case, even though the g/f and the guy got back together and the g/f didn't want the charges going forward, the state still brought her in to testify and **possibly** still bring charges against him. That was the only case where I thought the state may overreached (and the state may have backed off - we never heard anything about the case again after that).

Anonymous said...

"AUSA" = ???

Thanks in advance.

Paavo said...

Did you notice from the pictures that David Starkey apparently used to be a bobby during Die Brixton Riots 1961

http://www.welt.de/multimedia/archive/01436/brixton_kopf_DW_Ku_1436251p.jpg

Anonymous said...

Thanks for replying, DCThrowback.

So, on the other 40 cases... the state presented evidence, but then didn't ask for an indictment? Why did they do that? Seems like a waste of time.

DCThrowback said...

AUSA = Assistant US Atty

Think of the grand juries as just empaneled witnesses that happened to be there as these cases progress.

Sometimes we'd just here transcripts of witness testimony and then vote to indict on that because the time ran out on on the previous jury.

In some cases were heard all the witnesses and voted within our 25 (business) day window.

Finally, in most cases, we'd here partial parts of cases, but it took time to get all the witnesses located and testified. Future grand juries will read our transcripts and then vote on the cases. So, even though we had 60 open cases, we probably only saw 20 or so from beginning to end.

Anonymous said...

Most Brits are almost uniquely sanctimonious, snobbish, perfidious, and antireality. Taking one day with another, the average German is more straightforward and trustworthy.

yawn said...

I'm kinda surprised the necocon outfit "Die Welt" would ever dare say anything truthful about race. I guess as long as it does not touch Israeli insterests with a barge pole it's ok to throw in a bone for the suckers. Then next time round they'll gobble up your agitprop without thinking.