Quote: "At first the police were not allowed to use either of these options because it would violate the rioters human rights(at least that is how it has been portrayed on the news over here). It was only once it all quieted down that police were given this as an option. Too little, too late and a tokenistic gesture at best."
I think we are much like the Americans, in that we only adhere to human rights when it suits us.
We're quite happy to ignore Europe when we need to. A case in point is the stop and search tactic, which is outlawed in the European court, but we just carry on doing it regardless, since it has successfully led to the prevention of many crimes and even terrorism.
The main reason why the cops didn't use force is at the start they were massively outnumbered. With all the cut backs, they simply would've had their heads smashed in, so they couldn't do anything. Once sufficient numbers had been organised (a few days later), they were able to disrupt the riots. I believe they made a call to disperse and stop the rioting, rather than getting heavy handed in an attempt to make maximum arrests.
The fact is, these scum hate cops. Giving them more reason to hate cops just makes the situation worse. If they arrested all of them, they'd have nowhere to put them due to prison overcrowding, so they'd get pathetic community service orders and things like that, which nobody would turn up for and nobody would enforce.
I feel sorry for cops. We really need to be paying more tax and it go SPECIFICALLY to the police and prison service.
