We recently moved to central-ish London (Zone 1), in a generally safe business area. A few weeks ago my wife & sister were walking home and a man started spraying them with a bottle, screaming "It's raining". Luckily it appeared to be just water.
They we're annoyed that they were wet, but now I look at this statistic, and it scares me to think that my family could have been painfully maimed.
Apparently it's now popular to do weird/stupid stuff to foreigners in public places while recording their reactions then post it online for internet glory.
I wonder what percentage of these people end up recording themselves getting their asses kicked instead? Imagine you are in a foreign city and someone sprayed yourself or a loved one with an unknown substance. I'm not talking about a child with a squirt gun innocently playing around, I mean another adult behaving differently from social norms. I have to think the probability of a violent reaction is pretty high.
Agree. A violent reaction would be justified. It's like mugging someone with a fake gun. The victim has no way to tell whether the gun is fake or whether his life is at risk, and a violent reaction would be legitimate.
Just to clarify, a violent reaction (in self defence) might be justified. It's not automatic, and would have to be proportional. For example, it might be enough to simply grab the person and hold them down on the ground until the police arrive unless it quickly became obvious that it was just a harmless prank. If they sprayed you with something harmful, or decide to resist being detained then yes, it may be necessary to use increasing physical force.
I was attacked twice, with bare fists. I was surprised, terrified and did not act rationally. I also have 15+ years of offensive self-defense training (dojo training).
The muscular memory kicked in and I responded to the attack ferociously. I hit him once, twice, three times (blood was splashing around), then finished him with a kick which sent a few of his teeth out. The guy was laying on the floor and yelling as if he was being skinned.
I called the police, they came and I explained them that I was attacked and that this was the effect of my defense. They dutifully noted that I was afraid, shocked, terrified, etc. and beside a round to the police station to sign off a paper I never heard about the ceases again.
I believe that that the response should be proportionate, but to the clear advantage of the victim.
Being hit once and hitting 5 times back - OK.
Being slapped and responding by a kick to the body and then another one to the head - OK.
Someone attacks you with a knife and you shoot him back with a gun - OK.
Being attacked by a 15 yo and hitting him back as if he was an adult - OK
All these is defense against unknown and there is no reason to stop before you are safe (you do not know what that person is going to do next).
Hitting someone, he is not lying on the floor unconscious and you keep on kicking his head - not OK, there was no more risk.
Someone runs away with your bag and you shoot him in the head - not OK, you were not in direct danger.
What I want to say is that the proportionality should have a 10x factor in favour of the victim.
I'm reminded of the Mike Tyson quote: "Everyone has a plan until..." So if I saw friend or family being sprayed with an unknown substance I hope I would err on the side of caution rather than exhibiting the learned helplessness that so many of my fellow Brits seem to have succumbed to. I also expect my judgment as to exactly where that line of caution is would be impaired.
> unless it quickly became obvious that it was just a harmless prank
It's not a harmless prank if the normal reaction is to hold the prankster down. Plus, you are relaxing, taking some downtime and some know-it-all-i-am-funny-oh-you-are-not-you-are-the-downer comes and stages an agression for fun. « It's a prank, bro. »
In the UK, reacting violently to any kind of attack is very likely to result in you being prosecuted for assault.
If anyone is wondering why anti-social behaviour and minor criminality is now so common here it is not that decent people don't want to do anything about it, it is because the Police are often perceived to be on the same side of the assailants.
I've downvoted this, since without any statistics to back it up, it's merely repetition of a common, unsubstantiated right-wing meme.
A search along the lines of "arrested assault robber" shows many cases reported in the Daily Mail, Sun, Mirror etc where the opposite happened, but only a single case where the bystander was arrested -- in that case, because the robber died [1].
Anti-social behaviour and minor criminality is the result of decades of underinvestement in education, regions outside London, austerity and an unbalanced economy [2].
Anti-social behaviour and minor criminality is the result of decades of underinvestement in education, regions outside London, austerity and an unbalanced economy [2].
Ill informed leftist ideology trumps unsubstantiated right-wing meme thanks to a random Guardian link.
I love how "austerity" is the catch all cause of all social problems, despite social welfare spending as a share of GDP massively increasing in the UK over the last 50 years.
They are. It's easier to get a good person to be honest about what they did and why than a criminal. Police are also just as criminal, the thin blue line needs to end.
1) Police records, which is what this article is talking about. In general these are not seen as statistically robust because they rely on people reporting a crime to the police, and the police recording it. Police forces have improved their recording in recent years.
So far it seems pretty peculiar to London (at least within the UK). Of course, London is a huge part of the UK: something like 10% of our population live here.
This is a Pakistani Muslim problem. So avoid bigger cities. I lived for 10 months in Birmingham, I had to leave because even though I'm a grown man I could not tolerate the terror of people throwing rocks at your window at night. Besides the area around the main Concert Hall there is no particular "British" culture left in that city and acid attacks are definitely not done by local Brits. Nobody says anything because they are scared to be labeled as racists. It's a shame.
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That is bullshit there are plenty of areas in Birmingham that have equally scummy white people in them. Also if people are throwing rocks at you, you are def in the wrong area, it's a city there are some places you can't go, it's a bit like walking through inner city LA and being surprised you got robbed.
This is the first time I've heard this kind of argument here on HN. It sounds an awfully lot like victim blaming and I'm unsure why you think it acceptable that certain people not be allowed into certain parts of a city.
Also, as a South LA resident, LA doesn't really have an inner city, or at least it hasn't been the area traditionally known for high crime.
I'm aware of the origin of the phrase, and how it relates to white flight, urban deindustrialization, housing policy, specifically public housing policy, and housing discrimination, particularly as it affected the urban core of major cities. It absolutely does have it's origin in geography, which itself can often be weaponized as a tool for segregation. LA has it's own set of problems regarding these issues, but I've never heard then described as "inner city" problems, that's all I was trying to point out.
On the other hand, if the poster I was replying to meant to imply that you can't be around poor black folks without being robbed, I'd prefer they come out directly and say that, rather than hide behind coded euphemisms.
I agree there are "scummy white people" too. But they only get aggressive on alcohol after sport events. They are definitely not the ones throwing acid at people. This is just a different level violence.
I lived in Selly Oak. I don't know if this area is particular bad. At least the rent was high enough.
Selly Oak was once quite a nice place, not so much now. And I dunno if this is a new level of violence, it's just changed because you can't carry a knife anymore. But the premise that only Pakistanis carry out acid attacks is wrong. There are racial divides in Birmingham but violence and crime is pretty universal.
This is a sham comment and you are a liar. The idea that there is no British culture in Birmingham is bald-faced misrepresentation and you should be ashamed of it.
Meh. Birmingham is big I probably couldn't see more than 5% of it. And I agree there are "islands" of British culture left. But you have to specifically look for them. And I'm the kind of guy who visited a concert in the Symphony Hall almost every other week (even though I was probably the youngest person in the audience).
Wikipedia says Selly Oak "had a below-average percentage of ethnic minorities with only 15.9% of the population consisting of ethnic minorities compared with 29.6% for Birmingham in general."
What British culture did you expect to find, beyond the concert hall? I assume there are pubs, sports teams, museums and so on.
In any case, the south Asian culture in Britain is also British culture. Example: Balti.
Odd/interesting that they don't mention motives. They give one example of using acid to commit a mugging. Yet[1] seems to state that acid attacks are mostly male-on-female violence for relationships/shame issues.
So it is a real threat to tourists? It's like when you hear about high crime in some area, but it's mostly gang members killing each other -- it's a somewhat irrelevant statistic for tourists. London should release demographics on who is doing this to whom.
At this point it's mostly gang on gang, and probably driven by anti-knife enforcement. Scooter riders snatching phones are a bigger threat to tourists. The two have been combined recently though, using scooter + acid to hijack and steal other scooters and bikes. This in turn is driven by police not chasing two wheeled vehicles due to danger to riders, and pretty much ignoring motorcycle theft. Scooter crime is up 600% since 2015 and motorcycle theft was up 44% in 2016 over 2015.
If you're not riding a bike and you don't have your phone in your hand, you're not at significant risk.
I've had 5 scooters stolen from me in the past 8 years though.
The link you're quoting is describing the situation internationally, and as of six months ago. This is no doubt still a terrible problem which must be attacked politically, but the acid attacks in London during the last few months have largely been muggings.
The Independent cites some figures from the Metropolitan Police. Most of the victims and suspects are male. Most are between 15 and 29 years of age and at least some of it is gang related.
It is a real threat.
This kind of mugging crimes increased alarmingly especially in east London.
Just reading the local newspapers you will find 5-6 such attacks each week.
Do you have any source for your hypothesis?
Most are in response to petty crime, such as stolen bikes, bumping into someone. The parties involved are rarely 'innocent' themselves having committed a petty crime against the aggrieved idiot with a bottle of acid.
Does this represent a sui generis rise of violence or is this the result of substitution of weapons to commit crimes (like mugging, say) that were already happening?
The latter. After a "scourge" of knife crime that reached the level of almost one death a week (mostly gang-related) the city cracked down on knife crimes and arrests for possession of same. This is the substitution that carries with it a slight bit of anti-immigrant dog whistle given some previous high-profile cases of acid attacks being used in "honour" crimes against women.
Carrying a knife in a public area is generally illegal, whereas a bottle of something that looks like water in a casual inspection isn't sufficient grounds for concern. Also, the use of police stop and search powers have fallen dramatically in the past year because of a concern over ethic bias in the statistics.
An offensive weapon is any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him or by some other person.
Never heard of 'acid attacks' in my life (kid of the 80s, teen of the 90s) before reading about the beautiful culture of Pakistan (2001 and after). It seems London cloned its own mini-version. Horrific.
Acid attacks are mostly related to business disputes, sex, marriage, robbery and honor disputes. The stats and location's where the acid attacks take place:
I think I expressed myself poorly. They aren't using banned things because they are banned. Instead, they go the easier route of killing people with non-banned things.
I read a statistic stating that somewhere around 80% of the violent crime in America takes place in about 5% of the counties.
In other words, there are certain niche demographics in America that are pulling up those gun murder stats, and it's generally not a problem for most people who enjoy 2nd Amendment protections.
shows a wide variation among US states. Curiously, some of the states with the lowest stats have essentially no gun control. So its more complicated that it might seem.
So seems like it's easy in Brazil to illegally own a firearm. I suspect the UK avoided a similar outcome by not only making it illegal, but also policing in such a way as to make it difficult to illegally own a firearm.
You are being very very selective with the data. Assuming good faith please refer to the rather larger dataset with gun ownership and gun crime data for many countries provided in another post.
> "Bystanders who come to the aid of the victim of an attack can have an important role in minimising further injury," [..]
> They urged bystanders to remove victims from exposure as soon as possible and apply "copious" amounts of water on the affected area, "to minimize the long-term effects of scarring and need for surgical reconstruction."
The "'copious' amounts of water on the affected area" part can't be stressed enough and also that the victim is likely too shocked to do this themselves. Also, try to not get any acid in your mouth and avoid to swallow it under any circumstances.
I attended a talk by Katie Piper[1] last year
and someone asked her what her first reaction was after the attack happened. She said that she looked down her body and saw her clothes dissolving and her first worry was that people could see her naked.
She also said the the attack took place in a busy street [2] but it took a long time until anyone helped her.
Anyone know if it would be possible to neutralize an acid attack in a sprayable fashion with baking soda?/stabilizer?, like the opposite of pepper spray that bystanders can use since water isn't always accessible?
This is extremely likely to cause severe burns from the heat of reaction. Neutralizing strong acids is a violent high temperature reaction (in chemistry labs the biggest danger is you flash boil the solution / generate a bunch of gas and it explodes onto you).
It's really common in chem labs for some grad student to immediately think "neutralize!" And it's always wrong: neutralizing releases a lot of heat, and just makes things worse.
Water, water, and water are always the correct response. This can't be stressed enough. If you think you've washed long enough, good, you're a quarter of the way there.
Further to the (correct) comment about the heat released by the neutralisation reaction not all attacks are with acid. Some are using strong alkalis e.g. drain cleaners.
> I think she said High Street in her talk but Wikipedia disagrees
"High street" can be a general term for the road with lots of shops on at the centre of a community, it's doesn't have to be called "High Street". Golders Green Road qualifies.
(In business, it's also a term for all consumer retail businesses, for example "High street sales fell 10% compared to last year".)
For what it's worth, "high street" means the main commercial thoroughfare of an area. A high street would have lots of shops, banks, and restaurants--and thus a lot of foot traffic too, as opposed to a side street or residential area.
Many high streets are in fact called "High Street", but the term can be used regardless of the actual name as a description.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadThey we're annoyed that they were wet, but now I look at this statistic, and it scares me to think that my family could have been painfully maimed.
The muscular memory kicked in and I responded to the attack ferociously. I hit him once, twice, three times (blood was splashing around), then finished him with a kick which sent a few of his teeth out. The guy was laying on the floor and yelling as if he was being skinned.
I called the police, they came and I explained them that I was attacked and that this was the effect of my defense. They dutifully noted that I was afraid, shocked, terrified, etc. and beside a round to the police station to sign off a paper I never heard about the ceases again.
I believe that that the response should be proportionate, but to the clear advantage of the victim.
Being hit once and hitting 5 times back - OK. Being slapped and responding by a kick to the body and then another one to the head - OK. Someone attacks you with a knife and you shoot him back with a gun - OK. Being attacked by a 15 yo and hitting him back as if he was an adult - OK
All these is defense against unknown and there is no reason to stop before you are safe (you do not know what that person is going to do next).
Hitting someone, he is not lying on the floor unconscious and you keep on kicking his head - not OK, there was no more risk. Someone runs away with your bag and you shoot him in the head - not OK, you were not in direct danger.
What I want to say is that the proportionality should have a 10x factor in favour of the victim.
Hitting someone, he is lying (without the not)
It's not a harmless prank if the normal reaction is to hold the prankster down. Plus, you are relaxing, taking some downtime and some know-it-all-i-am-funny-oh-you-are-not-you-are-the-downer comes and stages an agression for fun. « It's a prank, bro. »
A search along the lines of "arrested assault robber" shows many cases reported in the Daily Mail, Sun, Mirror etc where the opposite happened, but only a single case where the bystander was arrested -- in that case, because the robber died [1].
Anti-social behaviour and minor criminality is the result of decades of underinvestement in education, regions outside London, austerity and an unbalanced economy [2].
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/16/have-a-go-hero-ar...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society :-)
Ill informed leftist ideology trumps unsubstantiated right-wing meme thanks to a random Guardian link.
It seems these figures were "obtained by BBC" through FoI request, not part of normal Met Police data sets.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39328233
Here's an older FoI request, but it might not be the one the BBC are talking about: https://beta.met.police.uk/globalassets/foi-media/disclosure...
UK crime statistics come in two forms.
1) Police records, which is what this article is talking about. In general these are not seen as statistically robust because they rely on people reporting a crime to the police, and the police recording it. Police forces have improved their recording in recent years.
Here's a link to the Met Police stats: https://beta.met.police.uk/stats-and-data/
Here's a link to press release: http://news.met.police.uk/news/crime-statistics-for-2016-to-...
2) Office for National Statistics. These use a crime survey, and are seen as reliable.
Why, maybe to drive you out of the area?
Also, as a South LA resident, LA doesn't really have an inner city, or at least it hasn't been the area traditionally known for high crime.
The phrase "inner city" is not geographical; it's a code phrase for a predominantly black neighborhood, or in some cases, a lower-income neighborhood.
In Britain, we might say "local authority", "council housing", "council estate", but I can't think of a euphemism.
On the other hand, if the poster I was replying to meant to imply that you can't be around poor black folks without being robbed, I'd prefer they come out directly and say that, rather than hide behind coded euphemisms.
I lived in Selly Oak. I don't know if this area is particular bad. At least the rent was high enough.
What British culture did you expect to find, beyond the concert hall? I assume there are pubs, sports teams, museums and so on.
In any case, the south Asian culture in Britain is also British culture. Example: Balti.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_throwing#Epidemiology
So it is a real threat to tourists? It's like when you hear about high crime in some area, but it's mostly gang members killing each other -- it's a somewhat irrelevant statistic for tourists. London should release demographics on who is doing this to whom.
At this point it's mostly gang on gang, and probably driven by anti-knife enforcement. Scooter riders snatching phones are a bigger threat to tourists. The two have been combined recently though, using scooter + acid to hijack and steal other scooters and bikes. This in turn is driven by police not chasing two wheeled vehicles due to danger to riders, and pretty much ignoring motorcycle theft. Scooter crime is up 600% since 2015 and motorcycle theft was up 44% in 2016 over 2015.
If you're not riding a bike and you don't have your phone in your hand, you're not at significant risk.
I've had 5 scooters stolen from me in the past 8 years though.
Two disc locks, chain, alarm, GPS tracker - none of it is enough.
https://goo.gl/sPgr7x
We need to remember that these are Met Police numbers, and they cover a region of over 8 million people.
Source: https://youtu.be/oHFfzVVRCm4
An offensive weapon is any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him or by some other person.
1) If these are people who have commited a crime before 2) Were raised in certain cultures/locations 3) Are gangs
sounds like xenophobia to me, mate.
(do keep the good qualities but deport the criminals)
https://www.statista.com/chart/10289/acid-attacks-in-london/
and
https://www.met.police.uk/globalassets/foi-media/disclosure_...
What scares me is that over 1/3 of incidents were marked as "Investigation complete; no suspect identified".
And only 18% of attacks (156/833) resulted in a "Charged/Summoned" outcome.
London has fallen. Glad I left three years ago.
Knives were banned because of an surge in knife crime. Guns have obviously been banned for an age. I suspect you have an ulterior motive.
These people will use the next best thing and the bans only really affect law abiding citizens.
I dunno, that feels like it's working.
In other words, there are certain niche demographics in America that are pulling up those gun murder stats, and it's generally not a problem for most people who enjoy 2nd Amendment protections.
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/researchbriefs/2016/brief079.pdf
shows that 5 counties in the state of Washington account for almost all the state's violent crime.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm.htm
shows a wide variation among US states. Curiously, some of the states with the lowest stats have essentially no gun control. So its more complicated that it might seem.
E.g.: here in Brazil it is almost impossible to legally own a firearm but we had 212 firearm-murders per million people in 2014 (Source: http://brasileiros.com.br/2016/08/o-brasil-e-o-pais-que-mais... ).
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-ho...
> They urged bystanders to remove victims from exposure as soon as possible and apply "copious" amounts of water on the affected area, "to minimize the long-term effects of scarring and need for surgical reconstruction."
The "'copious' amounts of water on the affected area" part can't be stressed enough and also that the victim is likely too shocked to do this themselves. Also, try to not get any acid in your mouth and avoid to swallow it under any circumstances.
I attended a talk by Katie Piper[1] last year and someone asked her what her first reaction was after the attack happened. She said that she looked down her body and saw her clothes dissolving and her first worry was that people could see her naked. She also said the the attack took place in a busy street [2] but it took a long time until anyone helped her.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Piper
[2] I think she said High Street in her talk but Wikipedia disagrees.
Water - a lot of water - is the best answer.
It's really common in chem labs for some grad student to immediately think "neutralize!" And it's always wrong: neutralizing releases a lot of heat, and just makes things worse.
Water, water, and water are always the correct response. This can't be stressed enough. If you think you've washed long enough, good, you're a quarter of the way there.
Water is safest.
"High street" can be a general term for the road with lots of shops on at the centre of a community, it's doesn't have to be called "High Street". Golders Green Road qualifies.
(In business, it's also a term for all consumer retail businesses, for example "High street sales fell 10% compared to last year".)
Many high streets are in fact called "High Street", but the term can be used regardless of the actual name as a description.