I have no answers about the death of Tyler Cassidy, only questions:
- Why are there gangs of boys for whom the most meaningful thing in their lives is the chant “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi! oi! oi!”?
- What can/should police do when confronted with a knife-wielding person threatening to kill them? Remember Ron Levi?
- What could make a 15 year old boy abscond from home, obtain a knife, and start screaming at police?
- Will we get the usual chorus from the usual wingnut suspects about “personal responsibility” for this death? Or does personal responsibility only apply to Aboriginal boys stealing bicycles in Redfern?
A boy is dead. We mourn. We ask why. I have no answers.
Here’s a pertinent question: why do Vic cops use lethal force at twice the rate of any other state police?
Mercurius,
I agree we should mourn, but we should also wait to see how the investigation is conducted and what the facts of the matter are. It is tragic.
As for the bit about “personal responsibility” – my comment is that it cuts both ways. He is responsible for his actions and the police for theirs.
There’s a detailed account of what happened here.
Well, as a member of an emergency services organisation, I can recall countless times when (Victroia) Police have had to attend, and there was no use of the so-called ‘unneccsary force’. I firmly believe the police do the best they can in these situations, and take steps to not only protect themselves, but also members of the public as required on a case-by-case basis.
People seem to loose sight of one thing, at the end of the day this was a person armed with weapons stating he was going to kill others, in this case the officers on-scene, age does not determine whether one can or cannot kill another, there have been many cases of recent times where teenagers have killed others. So the age argument in my mind is irrelevant, he was an armed offender and thats it.
I think also, that teenage or young offenders (wrongly) believe that due to their age police will let them run rampant, and not act in the same manner as they might if the offender was an adult of say 25 years for arguments sake.
I feel for the family at their loss, don’t get me wrong here. Although I also believe that for a teenager to wanting to be arming themselves with knives, wanting to kill police officers, then there is something amiss with the said teenagers morals. Honestly how many teenagers do you know who want to arm themselves with knives (or any other weapon) and kill a police officer?
I don’t know any. Why would a teenager have such a hatred for police? Could this possibly be due in part to upbringing?
I rest my case your honour…
Tyler was a member of a neo-nazi group called the Southern Cross Soldiers. His Myspace page features a youtube video celebrating the Cronulla riots, as well as iconizing Tooheys beer. He also had a passion for Bundaberg rum.
Can you validate this?
How about providing a link to this ‘so-called’ MySpace page. I’ve not heard any mention of a MySpace page till now, not saying it doesn’t exist, but the proof is in the pudding my friend, cough up with the goods now will you.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=425089341
Class act eh.
It amazes me how these people call themselves Australian? And how they think they have the right to determine who is and isn’t Australian….
Obviously something very wrong with the family unit in this case I think. Maybe a good boot up the arse now and then woulda done him good and adverted all this?
Oh, dear Christ, they’re using the Eureka flag. Please stop dessecrating that spectacular statement of democracy and internationalism, kids.
Quick, someone post on their ShitSpace that it’s a communist banner!
Shit!
Tooheys New and Bundy Rum are racist!?
Bundy Bear seems awfully proud to be white, i’ll give you that.
Looks to me it was a case of suicide by police persons.
The deceased was a fugitive from a robbery. The police were doing mo more than their duty in attempting to apprehend this person. He was required to surrender. He refused. He was capsicum sprayed twice. He was determined to continue is rampage. The police have the right to use lethal violence. It must be determined in a properly constituted forum whether the police resorted prematurely to lethal violence.
Was the deceased acting out some manifestation of his political opinions? Now we may never know. Perhaps he believed that he had some sort of entitlement to break the law because he was white, male, young and stupid. Again, we may never know.
What are the deceased’s political confreres going to make of this? Perhaps some dark grumbling about how the deceased was a martyr to some obscure and atavistic cause. It’s a free country and they’re allowed to believe nonsense.
But let these political associates act out their sense of white, male, young and stupid entitlement and test whether the police will be slower next time to exercise their ultimate, fatal prerogative.
I was at a youth conference years ago where a NSW Police Officer took one of the seminars. He was questioned about people with knives being shot so he gave us a simple and effective demonstration. He picked out an audience member who he gave a replica pistol and a holster, not too dissimilar to his own, then stood at the other end of the hall we were in. He charged the guy with the holstered gun, who was instructed to unholster it and draw it up to chest level. The cop covered the distance before the pistol was in a usable position with surprising ease.
“That’s why we sometimes have to shoot.”
I don’t think that anyone likes to hear about Police shootings, but we ask these people to do a difficult and sometimes dangerous job and need to acknowledge that violence will occur on some occasions. All we can ask is that the incident will be investigated properly.
As to the young man, it is a pity that his life reached the end that it did, but I really don’t know how we as a society can effectively reach out to such hate filled people.
The ‘deceased’ was a fifteen year old kid? No? The mysspace site is that of a 37 year old yob. So would that be his illustrious father? If so, its no wonder the dead kid had emotional problems.
We tranquilize lions and kill humans. The weapons issued to police have to change.
Charles: “non-lethal” weapons have their own problems; the police union’s been out advocating for tasers again.
For a start, there were non-lethal weapons used on this boy; he was hit with the capsicum spray, twice, and it didn’t stop him. Dunno how, but it didn’t.
Tasers are claimed in that article to be “100% effective” but that’s probably an considerable exaggeration too. Furthermore, they’re certainly not 100% non-lethal, either.
Finally, the capsicum spray, and now the taser, is being introduced as an alternative to the use of firearms. The capsicum spray is now being used in far wider circumstances than that; see here. In the USA, there have been a disturbing number of cases where police have used tasers as a compliance tool.
I agree that it’s worth thinking about the issue again, but just because the police union says something is a good idea doesn’t necessarily make it so.
Here’s one of his charming friends.
Also, I don’t know, but the description of the incident to me screams “methamphetamine”.
The real question is why did 3 coppers each need to shoot the guy in the chest? Answer that all you apologists for police killings. One copper could have shot the guy in the leg and it would have been all over bar the court case. All those apologists for “lethal force” (extra-judicial killing) should be forced to take a bullet in the leg. It’s all over after that. This was simply an execution.
Huggy
Indeed, Helen. When I heard that two squirts of pepper spray had failed to subdue him, I thought, “Hmm. PCP.”
I’m inclined to agree with you HB, but then I am not an operational police-person.
Huggybunny: there are two problems. One, it’s a lot more difficult than it sounds to hit a moving target in the leg. Two: it doesn’t necessarily disable them immediately.
Mercurius, I’m a bit confused about the title, too. I’m using this post to link to in one of my own and I’m kinda worried people might interpret it as saying “Aussie White kid / member of racist group = one of our own”, and I feel it’s the kind of language they’d be using.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s just a language thing.
This is a sad sory but saddest of all is the statement from his parents. They have a right to be angry about a tragic death but their statements seem to give no inkling that they had noticed their son was a changed person a violent white supremacist expelled from school for a violent act. The cutesy pic of Tyler first shown to the media is nothing like the Tyler who presented to the police the other night.
The racist brain dead threats on his myspace page are typical of the faux pariotism that passes off in this flag waving country. All encouraged by politcians and foaming right wing radio hosts who wrap themselves in the flag and don’t realise the implications of what they are doing. I urge anyone who is interested to get footage of the cronulla riots (youtube) look at the faces and listen to the words.
The Big Day Out in Sydney no longer runs on Australia day because of the white bread thugs who arrived wrapped in the flag forcing anyone they thought was a little suss to kiss it or risk a beating.
Drunk yobbos oi oi oi Howard’s children.
Aaargh, that was clumsy. I meant that in the sense of “I don’t think Mercurius would have meant that, so there’s something I’m not getting here.”
Just a few nights ago, Richard Rodriguez presented an essay on The Jim Lehrer News Hour(SBS) about The Lost Boys. He began with the Mumbai massacre, and the young shooter at the railway station dressed in “regular campus attire”, then Rodriguez traced the same behaviour pattern through the various news reports, including the Somali pirates drawn from the same age group, his thesis being that this has now become an international problem. It was a thoughtful discussion offering no ready solutions as to why do these youngsters from so many diverse cultures feel so alienated.
Agreed about the drugs. And at 15 he also had a prior, “only minor”, for assault.
Robert @21, exactly. The cops weren’t in a position to say to this kid ‘Just hang on for a minute while we have a bit of a talk and decide what to do.’ What did you expect them to do, Huggybunny, read each others’ minds? Have you ever been cornered with a deranged, illiterate teenage male racist coming at you with two big knives, screaming that he was going to kill you? No, thought not.
One of my inner circle of significant persons in life is a cop and he has explained this business to me in great detail. (He has also been tasered and capsicum sprayed as part of training — they all have to go through this so they know exactly what they’re doing to the other person when they use these things.) Cops do what they have been trained to do, and one of the things in their training is that someone behaving this way, whether it’s drugs or psychosis or whatever, is in a heightened physical state and if you shoot him he will simply, if temporarily, keep on coming. As it was, apparently the most experienced cop in the group broke training in firing a warning shot, in a last-ditch attempt to stop the kid.
I don’t read Mercurius’s post as an argument for or against, just a sad report.
I guess if the boy had run off and slit some strangers throat the outrage would be why the police didn’t stop this person who was obviously a danger to life.
Obviously the kid has charge the police and they have fired simultaneously or thereabouts. Also surprisingly easy to miss legs as anyone who has had practice with a revolver will tell you. It isnt like the movies.
So lets wait and see what actually happen. I wouldn’t up front calling the police executioners, all three of them at the same time. Maybe asking the families of the police officers involved might remind some that these are also people.
The outrage here should be against the parents, but I guess it is easier to bash police.
Well, unless someone is prepared to assert that people are twice as mad and dangerous in Victoria than elsewhere, the stats lead me to conclude that Victorian police are poorly trained to deal with these situations, compared with their interstate counterparts.
I don’t consider that ‘police-bashing’ incidentally, – its about resourcing them appropriately.
Not one of the defenders of the execution of this kid has explained why it was necessary for three, repeat three coppers to shoot him in the chest. “fired simultaneously” ! Reads like an execution to me.
And Yes Robert a shot in the leg will stop any-one and any Copper who cannot hit a guy in the leg with an automatic weapon should be sent off to remedial kid shooting class.
The question the defenders of this execution should answer is would they still be defending it if the victim had been a pretty Aboriginal girl ?
No; you would be loud in your condemnation.
Huggy
Fighting what? Why? I’m disturbed that it takes an incident like this to make me pay attention to Fight Dem Back again.
I’m with Helen on the meth front:
“Police say that when he acted aggressively they sprayed him with capsicum foam, but he ran to a nearby skate park. He was again sprayed, but it had no effect.”
Though that could just be a truckload of rum and redbull.
Carrying a knives with intent?
Told to put the knives down?
Told again to put the knives down?
Make a knife charge at people who carrying firearms?
Liberal dose of capsicum spray does not stop you?
You continue the knife charge?
The people you are charging shoot you dead. What did you expect?
He was shot for violently charging police, the social opinions held by him being immaterial at the time.
Nothing in the dear departed’s behaviour is specifically “white”. Similiar performances are regularly bunged on by (for example) Lebananese and Aboriginal, and plenty of whites.
It ssems the kad was either high on that drug that puts you into a rage. It seems the only explanation as to why the capsicum spray didn’t disable him. Or he was seriously mentally ill. Or both. If you have some-one, for whatever reason, decides to commit suicide by cop, there’s not much the cop can do. Perhaps we should ask ourselves what would we do if we were cops and we saw somebody rushing at us with 2 meat-cleavers.
And I usually don’t hold much of a brief for the police. But it seems to have been the only thing they could do in this case.
As to why Aussie kids get involved in white sopremicist groups. Well, unpalatable as it is, we’ve nearly always had such groups in this country. Maybe Howard and Hansen gave them a fillip, but they’ve always been there.
If I remember rightly, from about the late 70s on they were the only political groups that had the dubious distinction of being banned nation-wide on uni campuses, after some particularly disturbing racist incidents at ANU.
Pavlov’s Cat asks” “Have you ever been cornered with a deranged, illiterate teenage male racist coming at you with two big knives, screaming that he was going to kill you? No, thought not.”
Er yes I have actually and I was unarmed at the time and I am here to tell the tale.
Firstly; the Coppers were not “cornered” the kid was “cornered”.
Secondly; Coppers are trained to kill where there is a reasonable excuse for doing so.
There were no widows and orphans in immediate danger of a knife attack just an out of his mind kid who was cornered by four armed police-persons.
BTW, the fact that the teenager was “illiterate” surely should be irrelevant. Do illiterate teenagers deserve to die in your universe?
Huggy
Puleease! What makes you think they feel alienated? If I were a young Somali engaged in pirate activity in the Arabian Sea I’d not feel alienated at all but just a regular participant in a centuries old tradition of my forefathers and having a bit of fun at the same time.
I’m not at all sure that the participants in the Mumbai massacre would have felt alienated either. Certainly they were not from the society of Mumbai, since they were not part of it. More likely than feeling alienated they would have felt imbued with a noble purpose, consistent with their religion as they have been taught it, and the traditions of their society.
If the details of the event are true it sounds like a reasonable use of force in self defense.
I’ll take a bullet to the leg after you take a couple of stabs in the chest.
It’s probably a reaction to the racial centred cliques that exist, the ‘white’ boys feel the need to form their own just to feel at home in their own country. There are violent gangs of all races and ‘whites’ aren’t any exception. I think the link to the Australian flag is just an incidental thing linked to the fact that ‘whites’ founded the country, and not the driving force behind it all.
Bring an end to the situation before more people get hurt than is unavoidable. At the end of the day you have to trust the police officer’s judgment to a certain extent.
I’d guess there are many factors that lead to the situation that caused the boy to become a danger to the community. We can’t blame police for bring things to the inevitable end; an end that was set in motion well before they become involved. There would be a collection of people who would share responsibility for this end, first and foremost the parents.
How do you know this? Have you conducted controlled tests on shooting people in the leg as they were running at you? If so, how many? Where can we see the published results?
Otherwise is this just not wishful thinking on your part that reasons that police officers’ lives are less valuable than those of their assailants?
You are right about shooting people in the leg with an automatic weapon though. A decent spray from an automatic weapon at close range should see someone hit in the leg, along with several hits in the torso and maybe one or two in the head.
I think you will find, though, that the officers concerned were not armed with automatic weapons but either pistols or revolvers and that their training is in shooting for the torso to bring the assailant down, and not for the legs.
GregM
“Their training is in shooting for the torso to bring the assailant down, and not for the legs.”
Exactly my point. The police are trained to kill.
You want these guys attending to your (hopefully) late onset dementia where you run down the street waving a meat cleaver? No I didn’t think you would.
Huggy.
No they are trained to shoot in the torso because experience shows that if someone is running at you, seeking to kill you, the momentum of the bullets hitting their torso is required to stop their momentum in coming at you. If as a result a vital organ is hit, and that is not a certainty, and the person dies, that is an unfortunate but unavoidable outcome. Less unfortunate though, from the policeman’s perspective, than shooting for the leg and missing, or hitting but not stopping your assailant, and being killed or injured yourself.
You, of course, would want careful training of the police so that not only do they shoot only for the legs but that in doing so they take care to avoid any vital arteries in the leg. Your just as dead from bleeding to death from a shattered femoral artery as you are from a shattered aorta.
When do you think you’ll have time to get around to publishing your studies on the effectiveness of shooting people in the leg upon which you appear to be an expert? I await them with bated breath.
lefty @28:
Its a given people are twice as mad and dangerous in Victoria.
Hitting someone in the legs with a single shot pistol would be more by accident than design. Especially when the shooter is under stress and seconds count.
Shooting a runner in the leg is sort of like firing at a spinning wagon wheel intending to hit a spoke.
Sometimes police must deal with violent people, and sometimes violence – even lethal violence – is the only option available. It will be a while before we know all the facts in relation to the death of this 15 year old child, whose protection was the responsibility of us all. Some things are clear.
Fatal shootings by the Victoria Police continue to significantly outnumber those in every other State of Australia put together. Nearly 50 citizens have been shot dead by Victoria Police in the past 20 years. We are witness to a major failure in training and culture by those whose task it is to protect us.
Calls for Tasers avoid the issue. A Taser is another piece of technology which avoids the most important policing skill – dealing with people. It is a false alternative to consider Tasers an alternative to firearms. Often they have been used to obtain compliance in circumstances where no lethal force could be justified. And over 100 people in the US have died from police use of Tasers.
It is only a few years since a policeman on highway patrol was shot dead with his own weapon in Launching Place. Carrying guns on routine duty does not make police safer. Many of the guns used in the underworld are police issue. We should follow the UK model of issuing firearms only to specially selected and trained officers for a purpose justifying their use, and not leave handguns as part of the everyday equipment for police.
Shortly after this boy died, and while his body was still warm, police hierarchy were in full spin mode, confidently putting forward the police version of events – even though this appears to be disputed by some witnesses. The ongoing investigation is already compromised as a result. This approach shows an unwillingness on the part of Victoria Police command to acknowledge that they have a serious problem.
If something good is to come from this tragedy, let it be a change in police training, culture, and operation, so as to make the Victorian community safe from police firearms.
Here’s a pertinent question: why do Vic cops use lethal force at twice the rate of any other state police?
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Because there’s a lot of out-of-control violence down here? Seriously. It looks like suicide by cop. I’d hestitate to judge them. I’m not sure how I;d react if someone was coming at me with a cleaver and failed to respond to warning shots and said repeatedly it’s you or me. Can you judge?
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Also anyone who thinks it’s a simple matter to fire a non-lethal shot has no experience. It really isn’t that easy.
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It really is strange however. What goes on when a 15 year old decides to flake out like this. What happened? Apparently capsicum foam didn;t work so perhaps he had amphetamione psychosis. I guess we’ll find out when we do.
Actually a lot of the wingnuts have been calling the kid a criminal and saying that’s the end of the story. On the other side you’ve got people saying the cops are bastards and this isn’t necessary. They’re both wrong.
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Whatever the extenuating circumstances are if you threaten to kill a bunch of cops with guns, possess the means to do so, ignore warning shots and disregard non-lethal means of restraint well, then there’s a good chance you’re gonna get shot isn’t there?
He seems to have had quite a drinking problem for a 15 year old. It’s pretty young age in brain developmental terms to be tanked up on rum on regular basis.
That’s not to say that loads of other underage kids get wasted and don’t end up in violent confrontations with police, some obviously get into punch-ups or killed in car crashes however.
I reckon the parents will cop a bucketing, more than they would have expected for “allowing” their 15 year old to become a punchy drunken thug it seems on a regular basis. See photo on myspace page with bloodied knuckes titled: “I had a bundy night.”
Lefty E. Something definitely amiss in Vic Police training.
Just so people can be informed.
1. Victoria Police are issued with .38 Smith and Wesson revolvers which are so old they should be in a museum.
2. Capsican spray affects 9 in 10 people so it could be a case that young Tyler was one of the 1 rather than the 9.
3. Tyler had already attacked and attempted to take control of a vehicle prior police arrival including stabbing at a window wth persons in the car.
4. Police had used all other options prior firearms. Talking, capsican spray more talking, capsican again more talking, warning shots.
It is a tradgedy on all sides but lets get fact before condemming anyone. Police or Tyler.
It seems that every1 has an opinion about this poor unfortunate at risk child. YES I said “CHILD”. As for Vic Police & their history of shooting offenders. As a former 15yr old very much like this young boy, who went onto spend time in 5 different Youth training Centres, before graduating to jail. I wont go into my personal experiences growing up siffice to say by the age of 15 i had more pain than most will experience in their whole life. Had I have become yet another Vic Police statistic, I would not be the resonsible tax paying, law abiding 41yr old. I am a youth worker , working with kids like myself & Tyler Cassidy.I am also a sole Parent of a 15yr old Daughter & 10yr old Son. I now know the Challenge Parents face bringing up teenagers in this day & age. As for Nomad open your eyes before your mouth & have some compassion for those mourning the death of a Child. If four armed adults with batons, cuffs, spray & the numbers on their side can’t get a 15 yr old under control without 3 of them shooting , they have no place being paid as our Public Servants responsible for maintaining Law & ORDER. We have some very dangerous men in our jails & on our streets that it would take 4 grown men to get under control, yet they are arrested, brought to court, sentenced & placed in jail. Now if they can be controlled & kept under control in jail by poorly trained & UNARMED prison officers why cant 4 Police officers unarm a 15yr old BOY ???? Maybe another Walsh Street is on the cards???
I must also ask the question, ” what is the state Govt. doing about addressing the current problems our youth face”? When I was 15yrs old (1983), there was 5 Youth training Centres in Victoria. Now in 2008 we have only two. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise their are a few more kids running amok than their was 26yrs ago. We have more kids in state run residential care than ever before & the number is growing daily. I think some kids who may have been put in boys home 26yrs ago now end up in an under staffed residential unit, free to come & go as they please. This is a better option for some, but their are some kids that need to be taken out of society for a period until they sought out their issues.
Letushavefact: let’s indeed have fact, and let inquiries run their course. Until that happens, simply asserting that the police had no other option is premature. It may well be the case, but other possibilities need to be examined carefully.
Brian Walters: thanks for the comment. I echo your concern about the investigation being preempted by senior police.
TO Greg M,
“Puleease! What makes you think they feel alienated? If I were a young Somali engaged in pirate activity in the Arabian Sea I’d not feel alienated at all but just a regular participant in a centuries old tradition of my forefathers and having a bit of fun at the same time.”
Greg I really think you need to come back from your sea adventures & pirate Fantasies & try to see for yourself what is really happening in our society to our kids. It seems to me that you only know what the media tells you to be fact..
So why don’t you? How did you get out of it? I’m sure we’d all like to know, not least because the likelihood of finding oneself an innocent bystander being threatened with death by an armed out-of-his-mind boy (as happened in this case before the police arrived) seems to be increasing by the day, and forewarned is forearmed.
I was quoting the reports that I heard and read, of which there were several and they were all consistent. See p 3 of the report I linked to at #3, where the word ‘cornered’ is used to describe the cop under threat. Obvs you have heard and read something different, and think the police are lying.
Again, where do you get ‘cornered’? (Or, if it comes to that ‘just’? As in ‘Oh, pay him no mind, he’s just an out of his mind kid with two big knives saying ‘Kill me, I’m going to kill you.’)
Don’t be ridiculous. What I meant was that any kid who has managed to stay (virtually) illiterate in Australia by the age of 15 is probably not going to be thinking very clearly or rationally.
So your telling me that 3 or 4 armed police are not intelligent enough to out think a drugged up 15 yr old please, don,t they have batons cant two distract him and the others tackle,a long bit or wood, its is easier to kill him.
But then that,s Victoria like WA a state that needs a Royal Commission into the Police force
That’s right, Jo, the comparative stats pretty much speak for themselves re VIC police training. Putting that down to ‘lots of out of control violence’ in Vic compared with other states is plain silly. I suspect there’s would be slight pro-Vic bias in the sense that community mental health follow up is relatively poor here. Where QLD went for community based case managers, Kennett just booted them out the door (…and apparently issued all-day Metlink passes).
But twice the national average? Highly unlikely – that’s got to be a problem with training cops in this state, or with police culture around lethal force. Australian states are just not sufficiently distinct societies to account for a 100% differential in terms of quantum of violence encountered by police in their duties.
No Palov, you can work out your own salvation. This is a fifteen year old kid – if you can’t talk him down you deserve to die.
The police always lie in a situation such as this. A cop in rural Victoria once pulled his handgun on me, he put it away after his senior officer told him not to be so stupid. The officer then asked me to deny that a gun had ever been pulled and that they were not stealing stuff from my neighbours yard.
The comments by Brian Walters are spot on in my view. A situation such as the one we are discussing should be handled by a properly trained group. Also it would help if the average IQ of the coppers was such that they would think to go get his Mum.
Huggy
Helen @ 22. The meaning of the title is quite simple really. He was an Aussie kid. Now he’s dead. Just like Thomas TJ HIckey.
Tyler was one of our own, even though I personally found views of life and society to be repugnant.
I want to know how and why he ended up shot dead at 15 after an apparently short and misguided life, fueled with extremist xenophobia and yes who knows probably PCP and/or booze too.
He was one of our own.
D’rey – It’s a denial of certain significant facts to label an adolescent ‘a child’. 15 is plenty old enough to know that you don’t attack people with knives. Especially if they have guns.
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He was a kid sure. But he was a teenager. And he was capable of inflicting harm, even death, in a way that a six year old isn’t. It would be better of course if the police had been capable of disarming him.
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Lettucafact – Capsican spray affects 9 in 10 people so it could be a case that young Tyler was one of the 1 rather than the 9.
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Didn’t know that. However the kid’s behaviour does suggest intoxication. And I thought ‘ice’ when I read about it. Or chroming. Both of these things are major pains in the arse.
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Victoria Police are issued with .38 Smith and Wesson revolvers which are so old they should be in a museum.
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Yeah and if they had TASER?
Young men are dying for a better way to deal with grief and failure all across Australia. Being part of a masculinist subculture can only fuel such feelings so they are emotionally cornered into playing ou being tough and angry.
Even the most sensible police I have met are also part of such a masculinist subculture. Unless they’ve had special training, how are they expected to help a young bloke deal with the shit in his life when they only have the same set of emotional skills to draw on?
Glen – What exactly is an emotional skill? I’m not being snide. I’d really like you to tell me.
Again, Puleeeeease! What is happening in our society to our kids has got sweet b*gger all to do with what is happening to kids growing up in Somalia and other kids growing up in some dusty village in Sindh. I suggest that you consult an Atlas to find out where those places are.
I suggest that you also take the trouble to learn something of the history and society of Somalia and of Sindh before you prattle on with Sociology 101 garbage about how that amorphous thing “society” is to blame (isn’t always, and for everything?) and make ignorant comments about how what may, or may not, be affecting children in Australian suburbs has the same cause, and effect, on young people in other countries.
He was one of our own.
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Actually. I didn’t know him. But I’m sorry for your loss.
??? I did not write the above as an expert, only someone who has had to deal with quite a number of very angry people. Off the top of my head:
First, it is a question of being able to locate yourself within the situation in a relatively objective fashion.
Second, it is having the maturity to realise that negative emotions once expressed in the heat of the moment can only make a situation negative.
Third, combining the first two, realising that there is a ‘heat of the moment’, that it is ok to feel angry and sad, that these feelings pass, and that the best thing to do is to ‘walk it of’ or similar, ie disengage from the situation. From my understanding of what I have read the about this particular confrontation, it apparently precluded such a disengagement as one police officer was ‘cornered’.
Fourth, these are all after-the-fact skills. The most important skill of all is to avoid the expression of such negative emotion in the first place by having better coping strategies and these normally stem from a development of the first point above.
I have met many people who are incapable of this and they have normally been brought in a culture that valorises a pugilistic conflict resolution strategy where toughness and hardness are cherished qualities. I don’t have much time for such people.
Glen okay.
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I think the first is what Freud would refer to as a well-cultivated super-ego. To use less technical language someone with a conscience that isn’t retarded. The capacity to put your feelings on hold in viewing a situation.
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The second is the ability to control one’s self. No act or not despite feelings: discipline.
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Last week-end I saw these lads beating up on two boys. Afterwards the boys were understandably angry and they got in a shouting match with a group of girls who appeared to think that a group of six boys who attack in strength because they were refused a cigarette – were admirable!!! They kept screeching at one of the victims: don’t act hard, don’t act hard!
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Now I don’t act ‘hard’, as in act like an ignoramus who’s never read a book or had a thought. But, when confronted with people who do, I certainly don’t act ‘soft’ either. Any excursion into a willingness to talk reasonably is, in my experience, seen as a sign of weakness and provokes attack. The third alternative is to act ‘cool’ as in neither be riled by the behaviour of others nor engage in any aggressive action. To do this it helps if you’ve been trained to defend yourself. And it helps if you’ve been in a fight.
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I see a lot of lads about these days who walk like troglodytes and talk like they just got out of jail. They seem to think it’s cool. Or sometimes they seem to be doing it to appear ‘hard’ so they won’t get picked on. I don’t just see a subscription to a particular kind of ‘masculinism’ here what I see is an absence of masculinity. A civilized cultivation of the male human.
Charming.
Glen, that’s exactly right.
Huggybunny wrote, “This is a fifteen year old kid – if you can’t talk him down you deserve to die.” This is not a sensible comment. If the fifteen year old is psychotic (as in, in the clinical sense) or affected by one of any number of mind-altering substances, talking them down simply isn’t possible. You can not reason with a person who’s going through serious delusions. Their reality can be utterly different to yours, and there may be no common ground.
I do not know enough about what happened to comment, although I’d agree with people who have said that shooting out a person’s legs may not always be practical. If we actually have long enough memories, perhaps another post when the coroner’s report comes out might be in order. I agree with large parts of Brian’s post, and think the most relevant comment (taking a long term view) is Lefty E’s @ 1 – why do Victorian police use lethal force at twice the rate of other states?
Glen, that’s exactly right.
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Is it? It seems to me that the skills Glen speaks of above must be possessed by the police if they’re to function within the law. The police use violence, they have to do don’t they? But the violence they deploy is subject to strict rules.
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Given their function I’m not sure to what extent they can absorb socio-psychological extenuations into their purview when dealing with someone brandishing a knife and saying kill me or I’ll kill you.
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In that situation it would take a saint to be preoccupied emotionally by empathy for one’s attacker.
Why is it so difficult for people to respect and obey completely acceptable requests from authoritive figures – eg from Mum, Dad, Police, etc.???
In any case when the police instruct you to do something, you do it. No questions asked. Otherwise what is the point of being the police if they are not given the responsibility to protect the public from scum like this person.
Would he have been shot if he had NOT attacked with a weapon. Definitely NOT!
As we know, even punching and kicking is possible deadly force so police have every right to protect themselves.
Adrien I am the exact same height & pretty much the same weight as he was, I have slao been trained in a couple of fighting styles & trust me used them extensively. I said it once & I will say it again ” If 4 grown adults with batons & handcuffs, “FOUR”, cannot gain control & overpower a 5’7″,60kg 15 yr old boy they have no buisness taking Tax payers money in payment of protecting ALL our citizens.”
Brian Walters SC re:
Exactly. Take the case of a person with an intellectual disability carrying a garden fork down the quiet street of a rural towns’s suburbia for a legitimate purpose (digging for worms for fishing by the river). Cops arrive, one thing leads to another and before you know it, 8 charges: resist/hinder police in execution of duty; assault police; use/possess weapon to resist arrest; offensive language; armed with intent to commit an indictable offence etc etc. And police at one stage pull a gun on this person–who has the intellectual capacity of a 12 year old.
Proper training and community liason with the relevant institutional people involved with this person and others (resource advice and assistance IS available to assist police to identify those with intellectual or mental disabilities AND how to approach them in a non confrontational manner from outside agencies) would most likely have avoided all of this.
Police it seems to me (not condemning all by any means), often have a propensity to jump all over anyone who does not fit their subjective, narrow minded standard of what constitutes “normal” law abiding behaviour. And when it doesn’t, belligerent, provocative one-size-fits-all violence, EXACERBATING a non threatening situation, is so often the sad outcome.
In NSW, IMHO the system of experienced police mentoring young police officers is breaking down, not just reflected in examples as above, but across wide areas of their jobs: search warrants, for example (and not bothering to get them–bullying threats and bluster to gain entry is quicker!); statements in police briefs stuffed full of inadmissable hearsay evidence (wasting everybody’s time) which the brief’s officer is too lazy or incompetent to correct. Etc etc.
I rather suspect Victoria is even worse, given the case of this tragedy.
Glen M
Yes there are children in every part of the world living under the harshest & most inhumane coditions and my heart & prayers go out to ALL of them. However my Children & I, along with the rest of our Family & friends live here in Melb.,Vic.,Aus. So rather than crap on about whats happening overseas & trying to makeout u are the only person who studied Geography at school. I choose to get my hands dirty by making a difference in my community. I suggest U put the atlas down, close your World Vision site down for a mi nute & book your flight to Somalia. No disrespect to World Vision who both my children & myself are keen financial supporters. So in short Greg M ” more action, less talk by more ppl & the world could be a better place !!!!PEACE
Glen M
Your last comment really shows that you live with your head stuck in books & some other dark places and that outside of social sites u have very little contact with reality or the real world. Get a LIFE!!! Look that word up in your dictionary, LIFE…
Sorry guys last comment was to glen, previous was to GregM
Both too much reading, not enough living !!!
Why should I, D’Rey? I live thousands of kilometres from your community in Melb., Vic.,Aus. If you can’t sort your own affairs out what right does that give you to expect me to do so when I don’t even live there and have contributed nothing to their creation. I don’t expect you’d like my solutions anyway. I’d be bit too much on the “tough love” side for your tastes I expect. None of this “society’s to blame for everything” cop-out that you’d find so attractive.
I actually do focus my efforts in SE Asia, where I lived for four years, and since you want to turn this into a p*ssing contest with your mention of your contributions to Worldvision, I’ve no doubt that my efforts there are a good deal more extensive and effective than whatever you are doing through them.
Dangerous person with knife gets shot by police. Take away the 15 years old bit and it’s hardly newsworthy. Of course it may turn out that the police could have handled it better, but probably not much better. After all, the officers had been trying for some time to subdue this knife-wielding loony without the use of lethal force. If the three of them all suddenly and simultaneously saw a need to shoot it seems likely to me that they had good reason. Anyway, it’s best left to the coroner to sort out.
Seems to have been some significant posting since last night.
As I said in one of my earlier posts, I am with an emergency services organisation, although I wont say which here. We see this stuff on a regular basis. And it is a pretty safe bet to say, if someone has been sprayed twice and is still going, 9 times out of 10 they are off their tits on narcotics of some type, ice is a common favourite at the moment.
Re Caroline’s comment about the MySpace page saying 37 years of age, thats a very common thing for teenagers to ramp up their age, it provides greater access to other members, as there are restrictions applied to those who correctly set their age to being under 18.
As I said, and I think a fair few here may agree, there was definately something amiss in the family unit, and this white power crap was probably promoted by the parents, or at least allowed to continue. If they say they didn’t know, I would suggest they did, they were party to it, or turned a blind eye.
Surely they would have some inkling as to what he was into and what interests and beliefs he was following. To suggest otherwise would be silly on their part.
People, the bottom line is this: IT ALL STARTS IN THE HOME
Like I said maybe the ‘Good ‘Ol Aussie’ boot in the arse woulda done some good.
Where was Spider Man when we needed him? Netting this kid in a literal sense would have given the police a chance to back right off. He may have damaged himself, but he’d probably still be alive. We say that we consider life to be sacrosanct, but its clearly only so many words.
Much angst is often further exacerbated simply by a police presence. I remember a ‘disturbance’ at a pub one night many moons ago, which almost erupted into a riot when more than ten police cars arrived to set up on the opposite of the road to the pub. It looked to be on for young and old as all the patrons spilled out of the pub onto the street to hurl abuse and the odd beer can. After ten minutes of this idiot’s stand-off, one bright copper twigged and they all got back into their cars and drove away. Within a few minutes everybody went back inside to order another beer, peace was restored and a memorable night was had, and a lesson learned.
And pray tell Mercurius, what is it with this ‘he was one of our own’. What does that mean exactly? If he had been ‘somebody else’s', whatever that may mean, it wouldn’t matter terribly much I suppose or it would at least be somebody else’s problem and not ours. I’d suggest it is a problem for us all regardless of who he ‘belongs’ to.
er . . .oi oi oi
Like I said maybe the ‘Good ‘Ol Aussie’ boot in the arse woulda done some good.
Perhaps. But first, I’d prefer to educate Eureka flag-waving blighters about what actually went down at and after Eureka. Of the 13 folks brought for trial (and acquitted), there was one black man from Jamaica, another black man from New York, a Dutchman, an Italian, a Scottish Jew, and (with one exception – the only one of the lot actually born in Australia) the rest being Micks.
Nomad – hopefully the lecture would snap the chaps out of their white-power/anti-immigration viewpoints. But if they persevere in their recalcitrance, then by all means boots away. Ugg, steel-capped, or Doc Martens – it’s your choice.
Greg M
I expect nothing from you. I just think you should choose your forum to use as a platform for your own ideaology a little more carefully. This is a forum regards the shooting death of a 15yr old offender in Melbourne, Australia. If you want to discuss the problems of south east Asia maybe involve yourself in a discussion on that topic. As for your “tough love”, we have all seen the sort of “tough love” that comes out of S.E.Asia and this probably adds to their woes rather than fixes them. The world needs more compassion, rather than “tough love”. How about Human rights ??? Now there’s an issue !!!
All those posting apologies for the police behaviour are providing arguments for why we should all be carrying guns. Or we should all be police oficers. Nah, his age and his politics are irelevant. The pertinent point is the abysmal lack of police training. If three adult oficers are unable to disarm a kid with knives, we’re all in deep shit. BTW< I took the “One of our own” title to be a reference to the Greek incident.
I haven’t seen anyone posting ‘apologies’ for police behaviour.
If it cheers you up, Ozymandias and others, apparently when police officers shoot someone dead under circumstances like this, the statistic for them then flaming out psychologically and having to leave the force and find something else to do for a living (if they are not too hopelessly messed up to work at all, which they often are) is about 50%.
Actually they’re trained to not kill innocent by-standers while attempting trick shots off the corner cushion. They do that by maximizing their chance of hitting the target, i.e. by aiming for the center of body-mass – the biggest part of the target.
Caroline @ 77. I’ve already answered your question @ 53.
Well the title was designed to mess with people’s us-and-them-o-meter. I guess it did a bit.
And yes, the situation Tyler got into is more of our problem to sort out than, say, the nutjobs who go on gun sprees in US or Finnish schools.
I think we’re in furious agreement here.
Also it would help if the average IQ of the coppers was such that they would think to go get his Mum.
Wait! Don’t stab me ’til I get your mum! Oh, alright then. Duh-de-duh-de-duh [foot-shuffling][whistling][looking-at-watch]…
Huggybunny.
“No Palov, you can work out your own salvation. This is a fifteen year old kid – if you can’t talk him down you deserve to die.”
Are you kidding. Have you tried to get a 15 year old male to do something he does not want to do I know my father had to threaten me with death many a time, twenty years ago to pull me in line. Try to not be so extreme in your black and white world when there are many shades of grey.
John Ryan
“So your telling me that 3 or 4 armed police are not intelligent enough to out think a drugged up 15 yr old please, don,t they have batons cant two distract him and the others tackle,a long bit or wood, its is easier to kill him.”
Look the police offcers probably could have gone in with battons. but if this kid was as determind as his X-Friend says in the Herald Sun then everyone would be screaming about the similaritys to Rodney King
Adrien
“Yeah and if they had TASER?”
Not sure I don’t have the facts on that. In my limited knoledge I would expect that if he was on a stimulant drug there is the possibility that his heart could have side effects but still that is better than dead
Glen
“Even the most sensible police I have met are also part of such a masculinist subculture. Unless they’ve had special training, how are they expected to help a young bloke deal with the shit in his life when they only have the same set of emotional skills to draw on?”
This problems stems from the Victorian Mental Health System. The mainproblem is the lack of resorces because people are time and time again brought to the attention to the “System” by family, police, family services and so on ony for the “Professionals” (Pshyc services) to say either “They are just attention seeking, not a pshyc issue.” or “Sorry we don’t have the beds heres a weeks meds come and see us when they run out.” I am not viewing an opinion here I have personally witnessed this first hand.
Alister.
“1 – why do Victorian police use lethal force at twice the rate of other states?”
I belive this also links to the Mental heath system because of the amount of people that desperatly need help being turned away by the system landing back on the streets.
D’Rey.
“Adrien I am the exact same height & pretty much the same weight as he was, I have slao been trained in a couple of fighting styles & trust me used them extensively. I said it once & I will say it again ” If 4 grown adults with batons & handcuffs, “FOUR”, cannot gain control & overpower a 5?7?,60kg 15 yr old boy they have no buisness taking Tax payers money in payment of protecting ALL our citizens.”
I have one question for you D’Rey. If it was your Husband, Wife, Brother, Sister or other loved one as one of the police officers would you want them to be the first one to rush the knife weilder and have them come home and expain why they have a substansial possible lifethreatning knife wound. It comes down to Tylers state of mind.
Peter Kemp
Police it seems to me (not condemning all by any means), often have a propensity to jump all over anyone who does not fit their subjective, narrow minded standard of what constitutes “normal” law abiding behaviour. And when it doesn’t, belligerent, provocative one-size-fits-all violence, EXACERBATING a non threatening situation, is so often the sad outcome.
Are you trying to tell us that Tyler was portraying a NON-VIOLENT situation. Please read the papers he was threatning people prior police arrival. Tyler himself caled 000 threatning the death of SOMEONE. Tyler may have been troubled and requied Pshyc help but his parents had 4 months to take some proactive measures towards his violence. Do you expect the police to address that in miniutes.
In total this situation was a tradgic set of circumstances that at any point since the death of Tylers father someone could have interveened and avoided the situation. And when I say someone I mean doctors Pshyc services Family services Family Police and friends so lets not point fingers at any one person or service.
sorry about the typo’s in above text but hey its late.
According to at least one Age article, it was his mum who called them in the first place.
The reports say that his father died of cancer two years ago and apparently the anniversary of his death seems to be what sparked all this. But how that translates into going looking for cops to kill and stealing knives for the purpose is anybody’s guess.
Mercurius, I read your answer to the ‘one of us’ question but I still don’t quite get quite who you mean by ‘us’, though I do get that you were meaning to problematise that. If the criterion is ‘Australian’ then you’d have to make the same argument about Martin Bryant, who also went looking for people to kill, with considerably more success. Would you call him ‘one of our own’? (This is a genuine question, not snark.)
And to take that parallel a little further (though I’m not saying they’re ‘the same’; Bryant was an adult, for a start, albeit one with an IQ of 66), if Bryant had been shot dead by a cop before he’d managed to kill anyone himself, I’m quite sure there would have been an outcry about police brutality and abuse of force on disturbed and unfortunate victims. And given that Tyler Cassidy has already threatened several civilians and was clearly in a deranged state, nobody knows what he might have gone on to do if left to his own devices.
Allowing police the option of shooting to wound is possibly the dumbest policy I have ever heard. Just watch police shootings, and deaths, go through the roof.
BBB
Dr. Cat, I wanted to give everybody a nudge to resist the impulse to “otherize” Tyler. Or the police. Or Martin Bryant for that matter.
Sure normal, well-adjusted, emotionally resilient people don’t go waving knives at police or massacring people with semiautomatic weapons.
And when we hear about people who do, I think there’s a strong instinct to find reasons to otherize the perpetrator. Any axis and any label will do (gang-member, race, religion, party, heck — habits and attitudes), as long as we can mentally reassure ourselves they’re “not like us”.
Look at the myriad ways Tyler could be otherized so that he ceases to be “like us”, just based on the little we know for sure: His political beliefs, his alcohol use, his teenageness, his previous criminality and misdemeanours — and the little more we suspect — possible drug use, possible mental illness, possible dysfunctional home.
And yet I believe the moment we stop thinking of Tyler Cassidy, Martin Bryant and such as “our” people, we sow the seeds to create more of them.
Got it, thanks. All true.
Really? So you’re actually making an argument, that would stand up as empirical criminology, that the ‘otherizing’ of spree killers is a factor in their creation? Is that science or sentimentality? Like to cite any papers to back that theory up?
Presumably nice inclusive Scandinavian countries, with high levels of social inclusion and a strong welfare state, don’t suffer from such individuals?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauhajoki_school_shooting
Oh dear.
Geeze, back up a little Paulus. It’s not sentimentality or science — it’s a blog post. But I daresay it’s a commonsense one.
If you’d read my comment @79 you would’ve seen I actually made reference to the Finnish spree killers — and stated they were less of “our” problem than is Tyler Cassidy. So thanks for the redundant link.
Let me spell this out, again:
When people commit crimes, our instinctive, gut reaction is to find some reason to conceive of them as “not like us”. Some means to otherize. It can be anything at all – it doesn’t really matter – we invoke whatever real or imagined difference we can so that we don’t have to see them as fully human as ourselves, and we don’t have to deal with them as such. (BTW, this is the mirror-image of the thought process that the criminals themselves apply towards their victim, which lowers or removes the inhibition against rape and murder.)
Ironically the old-style religious expression of “there but for the grace of god go I” is a good admonishment against this gut instinct to otherize.
I argue that this otherizing of criminal behaviour is the first step towards guaranteeing that we won’t understand why they did it, and so we won’t be able to prevent more people going down the same road.
And yes, I argue the one does contribute to the other. Our failure to understand why Tyler Cassidy did what he did — and the refusal by some to even accept it as a legitimate field of enquiry — virtually guarantees some other kid will end up in a very similar situation some day.
I think he was pretty instantly ‘otherized’ when it was quickly noticed he was a member of the Southern cross boys, and ipso facto probably a KKK cardcarrying neo nazi + probably psychotic + definitely iced-out meaning that the police had added justification for ‘taking him out’. Such things as they may not necessarily have known before they all ‘brain snapped/exploded’ and decided to kill him simultaneously, ensuring that no one person knew whose bullet it was that did the deed (although I’d suggest on some deep level that person actually does know).
The ‘one of our own’ is troublesome as it is obviously the type of language neo nazi, nationalist, white suprematist, male bonding groups use. But I appreciate that you realise this.
Angry, drunk, iced-out, disturbed teenagers, wielding knives and going off aggressively at police probably happens around the countryside and all over the globe on an hourly basis. But they don’t usually end up shot dead. There was probably nothing all that out of the ordinary about Tyler Cassidy for his demographic. But there is now.
Are British police officers still unarmed? If so, I wonder how they would’ve handled the situation.
What is kind of chilling is the apparent trend for parents to come out and make statements to the press which appear to gloss over or even approve of their kids’ actions. When Thomas Towle sped down a country road with his four year old son on his lap at the controls, killing six teenagers who were walking at the side of the road, his father went on record abusing the teenagers themselves and implying that they deserved to die and had been jaywalking. No mention of his son’s culpable behaviour. This time, we have a statement from this boy’s family. Of course it’s appropriate for them to mention that their son wasn’t a monster, but the fact that the matter of the knives, and the behaviour with the knives, got no mention at all is telling. To read the published statement, you would think that the police reaction came from nowhere.
Yes, every parent wants to support their little snowflake, but the idea of acknowledging their wrongdoing – even to say it was “out of character”, the usual footballer excuse – seems to have given way to a narcissistic refusal to believe that ones loinfruit can ever do a wrong thing.
Pavlov’s Cat @ 77 -if you haven’t seen any apologies for police behaviour, you haven’t been reading. Most of the above posts are exacly that. I am definitely not anti-cop and I’m not so callous as to be cheered up by reports that police break down after shooting people. That is acually another strong argument for better police training. I have friends in the WA police service who tell me they are horrified at what goes on in Victoria, and that it is the last place in Australia they would work as cops. The macho gun culture is rife there. Arguments that it’s hard to shoot people in the legs don’t stand up, either. Again, training is the answer. Ten shots were fired at this boy’s body, and four of them missed him entirely. Where did the other four go? Also, it is standard policy in police services Australia-wide that if one cop opens fire, any other police join in. This is so that the responsibility for any single lethal shot is shared between them, much the same as the issuing of blank rounds to some members of a firing squad. This has to change. Training, training, training!
Perhaps the family are just too mired in the early stages of grief to recognise their son’s actions.
Perhaps the failure to teach children resilience and responsibility is another form of abuse. Perhaps they wish he was the boy he used to be (and that doesn’t just mean alive).
Looking at the photo of the young boy becoming a teenager that’s appeared in many newspapers and then the picture that features on the MySpace page makes one wonder what happened to cause such a change. Being a teen can be a really difficult time and some join certain groups as a way of trying desperately to fit in (why some hook up with nasty vicious gangs rather than more positive groups is complicated, I suppose).
The question of the rights and wrongs of the shooting is best left to the coroner.
Speaking generally, there are lots of abused and traumatised young people out there. Often they only get sympathy when they meet a fatal end at the hands of mum’s “de facto”, dad, mum or some stranger. There photos decorate the front pages of the newspapers on a semi-regular basis.
The trouble is we usually only hear about the kids who survive abuse later on when they get into strife due to their own actions. Then we usually hear the usual “I was beaten ten times a day and I grew up okay” nonsense in response.
Why is that chilling or even a trend?
It’s nothing more than human nature and seems to have been going on since the ’20s, at least.
Absolutely Ozymandius, and it doesn’t surprise me to hear WA police attitude to VICpol.
I know one VICpol officer myself (from when she was UN police in Timor) – and last time I saw her she was just heading off to Mental Health Awareness training. Whatever their spin, I suspect the upper echelon of VIC police actually know its a big problem here, and that they’re well behind the 8-ball nationally.
Yes, very likely Bill Posters. But the latest offering is so crafted, so polished, so quick off the mark, so in an MSM forum. Parents of violent offenders would have defended their kids before, but not in such a slick and coordinated manner. What’s with that?
I’m not trying to get you going here, but seriously, I would have hated my kids to have been hanging around that mall and that skate park while he was on the rampage with two knives. It’s good that the boy’s mum supports him, but to present a sanitised version of the incident really isn’t helping anyone.
Pavlovs cat, His Mum took away his knives and then called the police. He then went to KMart and stole some more. The cops knew his Mum had already disarmed him once, but hey whats the fun in getting a kids mum to do what you are charged with doing – ensuring the safety of the community. Instead they executed him. They found six, repeat six, bullets in his body. Defend that all you apologists for summary execution. Oh he was illiterate and deserved it, I forgot.
Huggy
did i offend someone/thing Mercurius, or did i just get lost in spam? just wondering.
You’re a class act Huggybunny.
Perhaps the K-mart staff deserved to die. After all, it was they who were unable to talk down a mere 15-yo who stormed into the shop & demanded some free knives.
If the K-mart staff had not given up the knives, the dear departed would have had to charge the police unarmed, resulting in a possible knee in the groin and severe abrasions from handcuffs.
My child went off the rails very badly at 14. I struggled with it, their behaviour was so far beyond what I’d consider acceptable that it was one long obscene battle for two years, till some predator walked in and they marched off together into the sunset, with my child waving every bit of abuse they encountered under my nose to prove how ‘adult’ their choices were. the police said at that point that would not interfere because there was no point.(we take them home and the next day they’re gone again) They don’t charge people with things they can’t prove if the child prefers to remain in that situation, and won’t testify. The prevailing attitude was fuck off and go away. Your kid is scum and so are you.
Seeking help caused more problems, and usually took the form of an attack on my parenting (my restrictive discipline!), or the counsellor/doctor trying to gang up on me with my child. (apparently this was to encourage the child to confide in them). Over two years, I encountered three counsellors whose behaviour was hugely inappropriate (lack of confidentiality was the least of our problems – at one point my concerns for my child’s mental health were repeated to my child as ‘your mother thinks you are going mad’.) We had other adults in my child’s life seeking to undermine and attack me and my parenting whenever possible (choose between your mother and me!)
I feel for Tyler and his family because my child is now 18, and we are friends again. My child tells me their plans for the future, is enthusiastic, creative and back on track. They acknowledge their bad behaviour. Maybe one day they will acknowledge the bad behaviour of those who wanted to latch onto them and exploit their unhappiness and confusion.
I’m sure Tylers mother was aware that things were not going well for tyler. she disarmed him once. she appealed to the police for help. My heart goes out to her- she probably wanted some help, some back-up, a bad scare for tyler in the hope that it might make him stop and consider his actions. At worst, having rung them, she hoped he might be taken into temporary custody and that someone would realise that things were badly wrong, and offer her some idea of what to do.
He was still a child. In the wrong company, in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. the adults that were meant to protect him, killed him. His mother couldn’t protect him. My heart goes out to her.
Sorry, Ozymandias, but there’s only one bad reader in this exchange and it isn’t me. I obviously did not make the point directly enough so I will spell it out in words of one syllable. What I was questioning was your use of the word ‘apology’, which implies an admission of deliberate wrongdoing. I make no such admission. Neither I nor anyone else here who has refrained from joining in the knee-jerk cop-hatin’ (and there seems to be quite a few of us, I’m heartened to see) thinks we need to “apologise” for the actions of cops who did what they had been trained to do, as an absolutely last resort.
Huggybunny, I’m as surprised as SATP no doubt is to find myself in furious agreement with him regarding your class-act-ness, and I’m sure the cops will be glad to know (1) that you understand exactly who does and does not deserve to die, and (2) that next time they are confronted by an out-of-his-mind teenager armed with knives and threatening murder and suicide, all they need to do is call you and you will fix it. In mentioning Tyler Cassidy’s mum I was offering a neutral fact in response to something someone else had said, and I have already answered, at #49, your stupid misunderstanding of my shorthand reference to his apparently lack of ability to think clearly. I can only assume that you haven’t bothered to read anyone’s comments here but your own.
A point that has been bothering me — who was supplying this fifteen-year-old with Bundy frequently enough for it to have become his totem, and are they aware that it is an offence, and will that be followed up? And if there were illegal hard drugs involved (which seems almost certain), where did he get those?
If we’re going to go around self-righteously laying blame for this death, then perhaps we should spread that blame around a little wider.
Huggy Bunny. At no point do I think that Tyler deserved his end, but to use the term EXECUTED is wrong. The fact that his mother disarmed him points to his determination. Then when the people charged with keeping the general public safe attempt to do so he approaches them in a armed state aggressivly and according to newspaper reports they defend themselves\their colleauges and fire as a last resort(just for maths that is two shots each, which is reffered to by millatary as double tap).
I don’t think that police enjoy shooting people when they know it will open investigations where they are interogated by not only each level of supervisor then their Ethical Standards Division then the OPI then the corronor, all second guessing each action and reaction made on the night with 20\20 hindsight.
The defenders of summary execution by the police and that’s exactly what the defenders of the killing of this deranged kid are defending; should think carefully about their position. In my view, any police officer who shoots dead a person under any circumstances should face a mandatory manslaughter charge. No extenuating circumstances, no extra judicial pleading or secret police enquiries.
If this law was enacted nationally the defenders of summary execution would suddenly find themselves with almost nothing to defend. The absurd position where the more coppers who take part in the shooting the safer they are from prosecution is a grotesque travesty of natural justice. Such a law would actually protect the Police themselves by removing the requirement for them to act as executioners of the mentally deranged.
The defenders of summary execution by the Police should remember that it may be them or their loved ones who next find themselves on the receiving end of a firing squad.
Huggy
Good luck aelo, my son lost his youth to mental illness and didn’t get balance chemically for too many years. They were very hard yards and on several occasions could have ended badly. Who’s fault? The finger of blame was pointed in many directions. Finally it was a chemical answer and without it we’d still be at fault in the public eye.
And there I was thinking Terry Hicks was popular around here.
It bears repetition that it is premature to assess the rights and wrongs of the actions of the police in the Cassidy events until we know the facts. The only witnesses to the fatal events, so far as I know, were the police themselves.
LE is correct about the relative propensity of Victoria Police to use fatal violence.
It is perhaps noteworthy that since the Tynan/Eyres slayings in late 1980s 20 police have been feloniously slayed in Victoria. I wonder how that statistic stacks up against other states.
Melbourne is notorious for the violence of its underworld, as celebrated in “Underbelly”. In earlier upsurges of underworld violence the police got involved, sometimes killing persons with underworld connections in extra-judicial ways.
The police themselves can become a major vector for transmitting a culture of violence into the wider community. A cycle of revenge or copy-cat confrontations with the police over the Cassidy events is possible.
Victorians have every reason to be interested in finding ways to protect the police from elements in the community, and vice-versa.
Huggy Bunny. You seem to see only one sde of all this. Let me put this to you. We change the law and say that there is absolulty no defence to the taking of a life no matter who you are (including police) Soon after this a criminal enters your home and takes your loved ones hostage Threatning their lives in a drug induced rage. At some point either police or even yourself have the opportunity to kill the criminal AS A ACT OF LAST RESORT and lets say it is you. This is a case of a death of one to save the life of a muliple. I take it you would act to save your hubby wife or kids. Now you rot in jail for an act of preservation of life (I refer to the presevation of your family member) again I repeat try and see the shades of grey hat exist in the world.
Letushavefact. Yes there are shades of grey. That’s exactly why in all cases of killing of one person by another there should be a minimum charge of manslaughter. The facts of the case can be then presented in court.I did not say that there is no defence. Of course there is – in a duly constituted court of law. The present situation is actually unfair to the police because they are forced to become the summary executioners of the mentally ill, the temporarily deranged and the occasional deliberate killer.
To protect themselves against prosecution the Police now have to constitute themselves as a firing squad. This is absurd and unfair both to the police and to their victim. If the Police knew that they would have to defend their actions under a charge of manslaughter or murder they would not be trigger happy and they would not be inclined to form ex officio firing squads.
Huggy
Huggy Bunny
Why do you want police to instantly face a charge when no one else in Victoria does. If you are arrested for an offence prior to you being charged there is an invesigation undergone. Once the corronor has undergone his investigation if he finds that the police have acted improperly then they will be charged and face Victiorian court where a jury will give a finding a guilt or inocence. The same if it was any other person facing the same situation. If my sources are correct the four police officers will now have their careers put on hold untill the corroners finding. How many other ocupation do you know of where this happens if the employee in under investigation. Please lets be fair to all involved.
HuggyBunny has a very valid point.
Just say…. instead of three police responding to a call, it had been three of us from this site were at a skate park (say) comparing our Smith & Wesson thirty-eights or something, prior to going for LP christmas drinks, and a crazed knife-wielding teenager charged us leaving us no alternative but to shoot him dead.
Does anyone here believe the police media releases would be exactly the same (just with the words “three Victoria Police” changed to “three LP partygoers”)?
The chances of us NOT being charged would be VERY REMOTE.
Police should face the same rules as the rest of us.
I don’t mean that police should get off scott free it is only common sense that they be restricted in some way. Because in the end they have taken a life and that should not be taken lightly.
Pavlov’s Cat, #102. I am not surprised at you agreeing with me. At one time or another I have agreed with just about every regular here, likewise for disagreement.
It is a discussion forum.
steve at the pub, yes anyone in the same circumstances would be charged, but only after investigation. The police cannot instantly charge anyone with this type of offence before officially asking the necessary questions, and yes they should be expected to face the same system as the rest of the community, not any more or not any less. That is what I also am trying to say.
Letushavefact “I don’t mean that police should get off scott free it is only common sense that they be restricted in some way. Because in the end they have taken a life and that should not be taken lightly.”
Common sense?? Restricted in some way ? What exactly do you understand by the rule of law ?
Surely the police should be subject to the same rules and sanctions as the rest of us.
Are you proposing a special set of laws for the police? “restricted in some way” restricted by whom ? Secret tribunals? Police sitting in judgement upon themselves?
I can only repeat that there should be one set of laws for us all.
“In the end they have taken a life” – exactly. They should have the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us. Including the right to an independent investigation and a fair trial. If this was the process we would not need to have this debate.
Huggy
Huggybunny wrote: “Including the right to an independent investigation and a fair trial. If this was the process we would not need to have this debate.”
Um isn’t the Coroner going to make an independent investigation?
All that is happening here is a whole bunch of people proclaiming their prejudgement of the outcome based on limited media reporting.
If the Coroner recommends, no doubt there will be a trial.
The need for this debate seems to be the need for some to get stuff off their chests.
Huggy Bunny. I understand the rule of law as innocent until PROVEN guilty. When a civillian is arrested they have the restiction of being under arrest until investigation either clears them or deems there enough evidence to lay a charge. In the case of the police officers they were effectivly under arrest (they are not allowed to leave the scene under direction from the corroner or be left to their own devices until interviewed on tape again for the corroner) until all physical evidence is located on behalf of the corroner, the same as civillians. Then due to them being police they have the further restrictions I mentioned before which civillians don’t have. So police are subject to harsher sactions than the general public, as they should be due to their duty of care.
As for an independant investigation that is exactly what occurs because corroner is not connected to the police, generaly he or she is a sittimg magistrate. Police have never sat in judgement of themselves in Australia and I can’t See that ever occuring. They do have internal penaltys but these add to any judicial judgement, not instead of.
The bodys entrusted in gathering the evidence for the corroner are as follows.
Hommocide squad and ESD. Yes police body’s
OPI. A independant government body designated to investigate only complaints of police incedents and corruption in Victoria. These guys are in the papers as very anti police by their own admissions.
As for the guilt or innocence of the three police I don’t know and neither does any other person in the state with the exeption of the sitting corroner.
All I am asking is that we do not jump to demonise the police as executioners and killers and subject them to increased penalty than they already have without all information. Like you said lets treat them as any other person in the state.
I think Marks has it perfectly understood.
It doesn’t stack up at all because it’s untrue.
As ever, Katz, you can’t get your facts right.
Since the slaying of Constables Eyre and Tynan in 1988 there have been 17 police deaths while on duty. Of these 13 were as a result of traffic related accidental deaths and one in police training. Only three, the deaths of Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller in 1998 and Senior Constable Tony Clarke in 2005 were due to felonious slaying.
http://www.policeblueribbon.com.au/pageGenerator.php?page=5
During that same 20 year period eight NSW policemen have died of felonious slaying:
http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/about_us/proud_traditions
Between 1989 and 2007 four Queensland police were feloniously slain:
http://www.police.qld.gov.au/aboutUs/commemoration/honour/roll05.htm
letushavefact
“I have one question for you D’Rey. If it was your Husband, Wife, Brother, Sister or other loved one as one of the police officers would you want them to be the first one to rush the knife weilder and have them come home and expain why they have a substansial possible lifethreatning knife wound. It comes down to Tylers state of mind.
I maintain that in my opinion if FOUR “trained” adults cannot overpower a 15 yr old with knives, they have no buisness being in an organisation whos JOB it is to protect & serve our community!!! Every job has its risks, some more than others. Usually the higher the risk, Higher the incentive to take those risks!!! Again I point to the prison officers who deal with vicous criminals everyday without guns & let me tell you this my friend, the shanks that they make in jail are just as sinister looking ( if not more so) than a couple of shiny knives from K-Mart. Usually these knives are designed so the handle breaks off once you have the blade stuck in where & who you want it in, making it more likely that you will die of blood loss before they can remove the blade. Yet they seem to cope with some very big, strong,mentally unstable & probably off their heads on either some state prescibed medication &/or some illicit drug that was either brought in through visits supervised by some corrupt, paid off prison officers to look the other way or if you have the finances to bring in more regular, larger quantities, then the P.O.’s will bring it in for you personally.. That is reality !!!
Four cops with night sticks/billy cloubs/truncheons couldn’t deal with a 15yr old?
But hey, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To someone with a gun, everyone is a (threatening) target.
I generally side with authority in any contest with law-breakers. But in this case I think the Police overstepped the mark.
The kid was armed with a kitchen knife, not a purpose built deadly weapon such as a sword or gun. He ran away initially indicating that he was rational enough to be scared.
There were four police attending the scene. Enough to overwhelm a lightly armed person. Or at least contain him from members of the public. I mean the kid was tiny, a mere 5′ 7″ and 120 lbs.
They could at least have nominated one policeman to shoot at the kids legs if he made a charge. If that plan failed then deadly force could then be used.
Police seem to spend a lot of time dealing with instances of violent or threatening behaviour coming from drunk or drugged or disturbed people. Its probable that quarantining them would be more effective than killing them, from the perspective of maintaining civil order.
Okay, so lets get it all straight.
The kid had to be stopped from taking knives from home as he was leaving, he went and stole some from Kmart and began to threaten police.
He IS a moron, one less on the street.
as for police shooting the leg. ILLEGAL. theres a law in which they must only shoot a ‘keyhole’ of the body, being head to upper chest, usually hitting opposite side of the heart.
yes 6 bullets was too much and he shouldnt have suffered this fate, but he was a menace to society and was nothing more than a moron without a future anyway. They did us a great favour, we dont have to support him for the dole.
GregM, your post is now @ 120.
A diversion of sorts: what occurred to me early in the media release of this story was just how few people are killed by police in circumstances of this kind.
As a dweller of the inner city, not too far from the incident actually, I get to see at least a person a day who looks like they’re hanging on to the frayed edge of sanity.
I work in Collingwood where it’s much worse than home. Drugs, anger, weapons – never too far away. Especially anger and irrational hostility.
At times, I look at the streets I live on, and wonder what the rules really are. An event like the death in the skatepark crystalizes just a little bit what those rules are. And how hard, hard beyond my understanding, it must be to deal with people whose next move you have no hope of predicting. Almost every day.
“They did us a great favour, we dont have to support him for the dole.”
Speak for yourself Norom,or is that Moron?
letushavefact
(just for maths that is two shots each, which is reffered to by millatary as double tap).
I dunno about you but when i went to school,10 shots – 1 warning shot between 3 police equates to 3 shots per cop. Still I suppose thats OK as long as some DEFENCE FORCE come up with a suitable name for it like “triple tap”!!!
Give me a break..
Norom your name is not the only thing backward about you. I mean I know that I still hold the exact same views & continue to have the same understanding & maturity now as a 41 yr old Father of two, that I had as a 15yr old Boy who was smack bang in the middle of adolesenc with hormones off the richter scale. Good thing not too many held your view back then cause I may have been written off as a menace to society, whose life was somehow worth less than yours or YOUR loved ones. I appreaciate every1 is entitled to their opinion, but the lack of compassion that comes from some of you is very disturbing & largely to blame for the break down of community consciousness…
Dylwah & 99: sorry, no sign of your comment in the spaminator or anywhere else…
Norom @ 123, that’s pretty offensive I think, saying that some people don’t deserve to live.
I’ve got a few comments. The first is about the difficulty of hitting anything with a pistol.
Back in 1963 I worked for a while at the then PMG (Postmaster General’s Department = Telstra + Australia Post) and was at times on payroll duty. People were paid in cash. So one of us had to bag with, at the start of the run, over 5,000 pounds of money in pay packets. The other, me as the junior person, followed with a loaded pistol in my pocket. We were told not to use it unless in dire emergency and then only to shoot into the air to scare some thief. I recall being briefed that having the gun made it more likely that we would ourselves be shot, but the union had decreed it necessary and so we did it.
One day all officers in line to carry a gun had an excursion to Enoggera Rifle Range, I suppose to practice missing the target, which turned out really easy to do. But the union had arranged that it be done and so it was.
The target was a rectangular piece of cardboard with a life-sized outline of a man with the heart marked at about 10 paces.
My first shot went straight through the heart, a sheer fluke. The next missed the target entirely. From memory we had about 5 or 6 shots each. I managed to get the rest on the cardboard, but missed the man.
I’d been using a rifle on the farm since I was about 10 and was a reasonable shot, but always used something solid to steady the gun. A pistol a few inches long wobbles around like crazy when you hold it out in front of you with arms extended.
So shooting at the legs is IMHO as useful as aiming at the ground in front of the target. I’m not surprised that of the 10 shots fired 4 missed. I am surprised that the officers kept shooting long enough for 6 bullets to hit. A .38 is a fair lump of lead with significant momentum.
One thing’s for sure. The number of shots indicates the police had new issue automatic, not antiquated single shots.
At 77 PC said:
A couple of years ago I heard an interview with a person who had expertise in training soldiers and police. He said that 85% of the population would find it almost impossible to fire a gun at another person. He claimed that research showed that the majority of soldiers in WW2 shot to miss when the enemy was in view. He said that in later conflicts their training and leadership was such that this was no longer an option and it was one reason why returned soldiers sine WW2 have fared less well psychologically.
He said that police recruits were given a hypothetical where a villain was about to kill a defenceless victim, but there was a fence between them and the scene that you couldn’t go under, over, around or through. The recruit was told they had a gun and asked what they would do. Many would simply not accept the situation and would suggest calling in a police helicopter, or something, although this was quite impractical. These recruits were quite unsuitable for the role they were being trained for.
He did say that only about 3% of the population could kill in the course of duty and be psychologically unaffected. They have a personality profile which has a label – psychopath. They can be quite good soldiers, other things being equal, but I’m not sure you’d want them in the police force.
There has been some slagging off about the IQ of coppers. I’m not sure I’d be looking at IQ as defined by IQ tests as a main criterion for recruitment. That’s another complex area. But it seems to me that the personnel problems in recruiting suitable police are essentially unsolvable. You simply couldn’t find enough recruits with all the desirable characteristics in full measure who were willing to do the job.
Which means we will always need a big effort in training and it’s never going to be enough.
Here’s a strange one which seems to have an element of copycat. If a 55-year old woman managed to cut a policeman it shows that disarming a knife-wielding person is not a walk in the park.
I had wondered under what circumstances I’d attempt it. My conclusion was I’d want body armour, a shield in one hand and a long truncheon in the other, plus the help of at least one other officer.
I can believe that 85% would have missed when the enemy was in plain view, soldiers are notoriously crook shots, even today.
The numbers of american civil war battlefield dead, still with a loaded (ie, unfired) rifle, after a set piece napoleonic style battle, was indisputable evidence that soldiers were most reluctant to fire on other humans. Battle casualties found dead with an unfired rifle, despite ample opportunity to brass up the enemy, and indisputable personal danger (ended up dead) is a feature of many many conflicts.
Police are on average quite hopeless marksmen. They just don’t get enough practice, and very few are keen recreational shooters. Not only is a pistol difficult to aim (as explained by Brian), but deflecting the aim to allow for recoil requires experience, (and is where most people with longarm experience come unstuck when firing a pistol) and is often forgotten in the stress of a rapidly unfolding deadly situation.
From what I can ascertain, the preferred police method of handling a crazed knife-wielder is to unleash the dog.
Dogs sound good. But they are not inexpensive and require expert handlers, so they are unlikely to be available when you’d need them.
Great. Poor bloody dogs have to do the dirty work countering the human excesses which even other humans can’t clean up, and probably get slashed in the process by someone they wouldn’t have approached by choice. The police may have inadequate training and support but at least they got to choose their career.
Mercurius
I want to know how and why he ended up shot dead at 15 after an apparently short and misguided life, fueled with extremist xenophobia and yes who knows probably PCP and/or booze too.
Welcome to the neoliberalism of Gillard’s Australia, high as a kite on meth-vouchers.
Helen, a dog’s reflexes are such that even the most athletic human seems to be standing still when compared to a dog. Example, when a dog runs down and kills a rabbit look how it exceeds the speed & turning ability of a rabbit. And to exceed as a pursuer one has to be considerably superior in reflexes.
A dog, trained for police work, when sooled onto a recalcitrant human, is unlikely to be slashed, or even touched by ANY human. The human, if it exhibited agression to the dog, is likely to have either a broken forearm, or a missing face.
“Poor Bloody Dog” indeed! That is what they are trained for. It is a case of “Poor Bloody Crazed Knife-Wielder”, and a sweetmeat for the dog, which didn’t even have to exert itself.
@21, I can guarantee that if he was shot in the leg with the kind of pistols the police are issued with over here in the West he would be incapable of getting to me quickly enough to stab me. It would be just a matter of time before he passed out. He’d be lucky to keep the leg.
@50. Agree entirely. I mean it may sound comical but why couldn’t the3y just chuck a net over him. Shooting someone dead should be the absolute last resort. Rubber bullets, blow to the head, high pressure water hose, I mean there are lots of ways of knocking a person off their feet. I sustect that the advocates of firearms haven’t had a lot to do with them. And this goes for police. Most would be city bred and only ever get to use their weapons on the range.
Patrick, what qualifications do you have to give such a guarantee other than just your personal,and quite possibly uninformed, opinion?
Then there is the issue of “if”. What if they shot at his leg/s and missed? I don’t expect too many coppers on the beat would be crack shots.
Then there is the further issue of if they aimed at his leg/s but hit his chest instead? Again, you are not dealing with crack shots here.
Still you are probably right. A decent sized high velocity bullet hitting bone and artery anywhere, including the leg, will do an awful lot of damage. Quite possibly someone hit in the upper leg would be lucky to keep their lives, let alone their leg.
Mercurios @ 130 No probs, i just wanted to say that in the 10 or so years that i worked in the adolescent welfare field in Melb i was surprised about the strength of feeling against the police here. When i was on the streets in Kings Cross in the late seventies and early eighties the general attitude was one of deflection, the police were aknowledged as dangerous and more that a couple were seen as venal and corrupt, one famously so, but they were usually avoidable, tho i guess kids like us were not teh biggest fish they had to fry. The young men that i have worked with in Melb have exhibited an almost universally confrontational attitude to the police and for that matter each other. When i finally joined the dark side and did some work for Juvenile Justice, i had two young men on my books that only came to the notice of the police ’cause they birded them while carrying drugs. stupid behavior.
this death makes me sad and i believe that there should have been another way, i’m not the first on this thread to say so. I deplore Tyler’s politics and misguided alcohol abuse, i don’t know what he could have grown up to be, but now noone will.
Pavlov’s Cat @ 102 -where did you get your weasel-narrow definition of “apology”, the John Howard Dictionary? Try “a formal ackowledgement, as of error or offense” (1) “justification” (2) “defense” (3). You obviously don’t accept that (1) is applicable. But you can’t deny many of the above posts have amounted to (2) and (3). You and many others have acted as “apologists” for the police action. You have offered “apologias” -speeches in defense. As you say, the police “did what they had been trained to do, as an absolute last resort.” I agree it was what the police were trained to do, and that is precisely what I take issue with -their inadequate and inapropriate training. Whether it was, in fact, an “absolute last resort” is far from clear at this point.
“Still you are probably right. A decent sized high velocity bullet hitting bone and artery anywhere, including the leg, will do an awful lot of damage. Quite possibly someone hit in the upper leg would be lucky to keep their lives, let alone their leg.”
So you agree with me, although you appear loath to admit it. I’ve done a fair bit of bush shooting (mainly kangaroos) and I’ve seen what the effects of high powered firearms are. The problem would be hitting the desired area. Do you think that if that’s a problem the default option should be to shoot someone on the chest with a 9mm round? I expect the intent in these situations is to subdue the person, it’s just that a pistol is not very good at that. It’s meant to kill. That’s why the American’s are so screwed up, everyones capable of offing everyone else, even the cops have to be very afraid. Can you imagine what it would have been like had this guy had a pistol? I agree with someone who pointed to the Engish model, no guns for Mr Plod, just a select few who know what to do. To late though, the cops and the right wing would scream blue murder if we tried to disarm them.
There seem to be a lot of these dopes strutting around making life worse wherever they are.
in terms of a calculus of human suffering … one could start by working out the average number of people whose day is ruined by them each day, and go from there. that is the tariff on civilised people for carrying these ‘challenging’ individuals.
Too bad for him, but I feel safer.
Okay, Ozymandias, whatever you say. You know more about words than me, and more about police training than the Victorian Police. Anything for a quiet life.
The fact that Vic Police kill twice as many people as other police forces suggests that some of these killings were unnecessary, given that overall Melbourne is not more violent than other cities.
The fact that every police force in the world sometimes kills people in these sort of circumstances suggests that some of these could probably not be avoided no matter what.
Until we’ve had a proper investigation (which may never happen, but hopefully will) we won’t know which category this case falls into. I wish people would stop jumping to conclusions until then.
Meanwhile what we can ask is what is to be done about the forces that created this situation – both the drug/alcohol dealers and the racist group he was part of. Because they should not be let off the hook.
Well just to throw something else in it appears young Tyler was a bit of a fascist:
Not so gentle then. And another bit of irony:
All nations? It probably has one of those faded kitsch murals nearby from the 70s where the multicultural tapestry is presented as a bunch of Disneyesque idiot grins.
.
Article here.
.
I don’t think it’s really come to light yet, but I’ve been noticing a lot of Aussie fascists lately. Many of them from the so-called ‘underclass’ who believe their entitlements are being pinched by Asians. Next year when the economy hits the fan expect to hear more.
.
Oh what fun.
Sadly, yes, it has to be the default option if you want to maximize your chances of stopping someone coming at you and all you are armed with is a pistol. It would have been nice if on the night the police had been armed with a net or a Taser or a dog from the dog squad had been conveniently available, but they weren’t. But as you oint out, it doesn’t matter much where you hit someone with a bullet from a high-powered weapon-it will cause appalling damage.
But as you oint out, it doesn’t matter much where you hit someone with a bullet from a high-powered weapon-it will cause appalling damage.
.
Unless you’re Graeme Bird. Then it simply tickles.
D’Rey.
“Again I point to the prison officers who deal with vicous criminals everyday without guns & let me tell you this my friend, the shanks that they make in jail are just as sinister looking ( if not more so) than a couple of shiny knives from K-Mart. Usually these knives are designed so the handle breaks off once you have the blade stuck in where & who you want it in, making it more likely that you will die of blood loss before they can remove the blade. Yet they seem to cope with some very big, strong,mentally unstable & probably off their heads on either some state prescibed medication &/or some illicit drug.”
Your dead right in relation to prison gaurds who I respect in many ways in the job that they do but according to statistics more police are injured (Fatally or non fatally) at work than prison gaurds. This is probably because when trouble starts “Screws” are able to contain all persons via locked doors and walls. A resorce that the police were not able to use in a skate park.
I dunno about you but when i went to school,10 shots – 1 warning shot between 3 police equates to 3 shots per cop. Still I suppose thats OK as long as some DEFENCE FORCE come up with a suitable name for it like “triple tap”!!!
Give me a break..
From the reports I have seen in the herald Sun and the Age police fired 7 shots 6 of which struck Tyler. If this is incorrect please let me know the source of the information. When I refered to the “double tap” I was refering to the “IA” (Inital action) taught for firearms deployment being;
Two inital reactive shots. Followed by assesment of the situation. Followed by any further shots required to neutralise the threat.
IF and I stress IF the 3 police fired at about the same time two ractive shots by 3 police is the 6 that struck the boy with the 7th being the single inital warning shot fired by the most experienced Leading Senior Constable.
I’d say Tyler was almost certainly in psychosis on ice. I was the victim of a random attack by an ice user and I can fully understand the police shooting someone in that state. A knife-wielding psychopath could easily leap 10 metres and cut anyone’s arm off in two seconds, and be onto another victim in another split second. I am probably only alive because I was rescued by an off-duty security guard at a petrol station, when my kidnapper/attacker took me at knifepoint to get money for petrol.
Brian.
Can I ask what WA police are using?
For fact Victoria police in general duties are armed with one firearm and it is a .38 smith and Wesson 6 shot revolver. Some plain clothes are using a 5 shot version of the same revolver due to the size of the holsters. The only groups of Victoria police that have anything different are the Special Operations Group “SOG” and Force Responce Unit “FRU”. The Victoria Police ammunition is a .38 splayed hollow point designed…. Wait for it those that are jumping up and down already… Designed to open within the body to PREVENT deep penatration so that if the round strikes the abdomen minimal damage. Also to minimise the possibillity for a round striking a limb to exit the initial target and strike a secondry target.
Glock PIstols I believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Australia_Police#Equipment_and_weaponry
adrien says
Strong
“This is probably because when trouble starts “Screws” are able to contain all persons via locked doors and walls.”
Adrien the modern jails in victoria are made up of various small units, usually 2 tierd with approximately 50 inmates a unit. All units have their own activities yard (where they are free to hide their drugs & weapons that have been brought back from industries or the kitchen), wher contary to popular belief they are free to come & go until 7pm lockdown. Most of the day prisoners are also pretty much able to come & go to the library, Gym, School & socialise & plan with their fellow crooks. The units themselves are usually designed as a horse shoe, with the “screws” box siyuated at the mouth of the “horse shoe”. In this “scews” box their are 2-3 unarmed “srews”. As with patrol Cops, the unit screws are at the botttom of their organisation and the least experienced. These are the 1st response “srews” and it is THEIR job to maitain order in this unit of 50 or so possibly armed, usually under the influence of either tax payer funded medications or the illicit drugs that are rife in EVERY Victorian jail. They manage, albeit just.
adrien says
“according to statistics more police are injured (Fatally or non fatally) at work than prison gaurds.”
Then that just goes to show that even when dealing with the most violent & seasoned offenders in the state, it is possile to maintain order without killing anybody. So again it comes back to training.
By the way adrien I dont know if you are familiar with the reality of our private prison systems here in Victoria, but unlike over in some of the antiquated Federal prisons in America (often the sought seen on the idiot box) we must physically unlock & lock every cell door. These doors are usually unlocked around 7am & do not get locked until around 7-9pm depending on which jail you are in and which company has the contract to run it.So for 12-14 hrs of the day their are 2-3 prison officers to deal with 50 prisoners.
So tell me,” why are 4 armed & “trained” Police Officers unable to gain control of an upset, knife wielding 15yr old without using lethal force”? They have so many resources at their disposal & had so many more options at hand that they could have used, but chose not to. As for 3 Police officers all reading the situation the same, that is bull#&it. The leading Constable drew his pistol and fired a shot at the ground, once he done that, it told the poorly trained & grossly inexperienced constables that was the response needed so they “followed the LEADER”. So should the I.Q. of coppers be an issue ? I ask the question ???
SATP I’m not happy with police dogs ripping the face off members of the public behaving badly. My assumption is that the dog would be trained to subdue the target without injuries to vital parts, like faces or the throat. So if they can’t do this I wouldn’t favour using them.
Helen, I’ve seen a dingo bring down a small roo then kill it. The killing took all of one second maximum. The sight of a large German shepherd in full attack mode would freeze the blood in the second or two involved. I suspect that the local moggie would have a better chance of laying a scratch on the dog’s nose than a man with knife doing any damage at all.
letushavefact @ 153, we had some hollow-nosed .22 rifle bullets when I was young on the farm. If you shot a wallaby with one of those it made an awful mess. Small entry point but maximum damage internally. A .22 is a lot smaller than a .38. I’d suspect the a splayed hollow point .38 would be designed to kill the primary target without much danger of hitting a secondary target.
After reading all the above I look forward to the coroner’s report and any official review. I think policy considerations should be looked at seriously in the light of how the English system works and whether it is realistic to bring all working police to an appropriate level of proficiency in this aspect of their role.
It won’t make any difference at all to the aggressive knee-jerk cop-haters on this thread (something they have in common with Tyler Cassidy, I would have thought), but this morning’s online Age reports that the cops initially did shoot him in the legs to disable him and it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. Someone in that state probably wouldn’t even feel it, for the moment.
He also seems, if you read this report, to have been absolutely determined to get himself shot dead.
Why are people who question the level of police killings “cop-haters”, Pav? Seems an act of ‘discursive closure’ to me.
Again, whatever one makes of this particular event (and I personally havent thus far commented on it), there’s just no escaping the conclusion that other police forces in this country handle these situations far better than VICpol.
As a general comment on specific case- relying on a disturbed 15 yo person’s desire to kill themselves is a sign of how hard it has been for police to justify their actions here. Its not a quality defence, or some winning line of legal argument. We actually prosecute those who assist suicide – its a criminal offence in all Australian states. And those are in cases where the person is making a clear rational choice based on terminal physical illness. This guy was 15, and not of sound mind.
They’re better off sticking to necessity and self-defence. Not that I personally buy that in this case, myself – but they should give that suicide by cop crap a rest for everyone’s sake. Sinse when when do cooperate with disturbed persons desire for self-harm?
I suspect the Walsh St. killings have made the Victorian police hyper paranoid into being ‘lured’ into ambush situations. There has to be reason a why the rate of police killing civvies is so much higher in Victoria than other states.
There was also a letter in the Age from someone who was chatting to Tyler just shorlty before it happened. The witness said the boy appeared agitated and obviously needed someone to talk to, but not at all dangerous.
It’s so complex. I don’t know what I think. No-one comes out of it a winner. Then there’s the larger question of what makes a 15yo boy so desperate.
No no no, that’s not what I meant — I wasn’t talking about ordinary criticism AT ALL, and FWIW I agree with you completely about VicPol and think the statistic is strange and significant. (When I first moved to Victoria from SA I was completely appalled that cops who looked too young to shave were all wearing guns on their hips in plain sight.) But there are maybe two or three people on this thread who are clearly and unthinkingly cop-haters come hell or high water as a matter of principle, and I was referring only to them. I think it’s interesting that that’s where most of the aggro on this thread is coming from.
I’m just trying to take an ever so nuanced position here, no doubt influenced by the fact that someone I know well has been a cop for many years and we have frequent conversations about it. Ten years ago I would have been in there boots and all, slagging the coppers in true ex-hippie style; now I have a bit more of an idea of the reality. Again FWIW, the cop in question (not Victorian) deplores Tyler Cassidy’s death, understands that you probably can’t ‘talk down’ someone in that state (though that is always his preferred mode of dealing and he is very good at it), and thinks it extremely regrettable that the Vics decided not to go with Tasers back in the day: ‘It would have stopped the kid [he's been Tasered himself in training, so he knows this firsthand] and he and the four coppers would all be still alive.’
I don’t know whether VicPol would go with the line that he was ‘asking for it’, but I doubt they’d be that stupid and it’s not what I meant to imply either; I was merely commenting on the hoax calls and the behaviour in KMart, which were reported in more detail in that link than I’ve seen before.
Fair enough, Pav.
Splayed hollow point ammunition is used by most security and law enforcement personnel world-wide, but definitely not because it is designed to cause minimal damage to the target. It is used because it is far less likely to pass right through the target’s body and endanger others. A solid-point high-velocity bullet could easily pass through several people if fired, for instance, in a crowd, though it is actually less likely to be effective in stopping someone on a psychotic or drug-fuelled rampage.
Pavlov’s Cat, I hope I’m not on your list of “agressive knee-jerk cop-haters”. As I wrote earlier, I have close friends in the WA Police and had a lot to do with police in my work as a journalist. I do have an appreciation of how deadly difficult their job is, and of the personal price they pay. They are poorly rewarded for long hours in often dangerous situations. And, unfortunately, they are generally poorly trained. The kid was obviously out of his mind on a combination of drugs and/or alcohol and right-wing nutbag politics, and probably wanted to die in a spectacular way. My wish is that the police there had had more choices, instead of being forced to give him what he wanted.
D’rey – adrien says,,, Strong
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Actually no he doesn’t. I have no idea who you’re responding to but it ain’t me.
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By the way adrien I dont know if you are familiar with the reality of our private prison systems here in Victoria
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Never had the pleasure.
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So should the I.Q. of coppers be an issue ? I ask the question ???
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Indeed. I’m sure that the Victorian Police Dept has the pick of the intellectual cream of society.
Anyway, on the racial politics of young men, this:
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As I was walking thru the town last night as I’m want to do I came across many a flyer decoratin’ the phone booths and such. It was from: The Southern Cross Soldiers, Melbourne Chapter. D’ah, d’ah!
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The headline reads: The Herald Scum Sinks To New Lows -
This is follows by another headline: TYLER DID NOT DESERVE TO DIE!
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The flyer tells us that Tyler unfortunately ‘strayed from the path of Aussie Prode and into the dark world of skinheads’. The SCS way, it tells us, is ‘pride, not hate’, the organization is ‘an Australian cultural pride group, not a Neo-Nazi or white supremacist group… Our Constitution strictly states that anyone who identifies themselves as skinhead will not be admitted to the chapter’.
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Alrighty then.
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It might be worth noting that skinhead doesn’t necessarily denote a fascist or racist attitude. Originally they were a Mod spin-off and many liked reggae and ska. They were kinda white rude boys, like Paul Simonon of The Clash.
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But moving right along, the leaflet also states that ‘Barely fifteen minutes before Tyler’s death, he had been ‘the victim of a racially motivated knife attack on a train by a Lebanese Muslim gang’. The flyer ends by calling for the introduction of TASER and the removal of ‘politically correct restrictions on the style of policing to enable officers to effectively deal with ethnic gangs’.
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Interesting? Perhaps the All Nations skate park is the locus of ethnic shitfighting. Fun fun fun. The flyer implies, and I have no opinion here, that police deal differently with non Anglo-Celtic youth gangs. Do they?
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Personally I think the accusations against The Hun are bit much. They haven’t sunk to new lows they’re continuing on the same low they always do.
And here’s a post with an attached stoush between some (I suppose) anarchists and members of the SCS. The SCS dude denies being a racist, the others are shouting him down.
Adrien
My apologies mate, I was replying to letushavefact but read your post after his. Apologies once again…
letushavefact,
read post #155 & #156 they were in response to your comments, but I attributed them to adrien.
It’s too new for that.
It was landfill in the 70s.
D’Rey. The fact that prison gaurds have less injuries has notrhing to do wirh training. (I say this because I have had many a job and one of them was a “Screw in a medium security prison here in victoria). You are generaly correct in your dscrption of the layout of a GENERL prison. In the prison that I worked in we had a 70% rate of Casual staff with bare essential training. In the event of a incident we were trained to retreat to the central “hub” and contain the prisoners untill backup or trhe conclusion of the “disruption” If you think the cops have so many options try talking to one. My job was a lot easier when I knew what was coming, they don’t.
Brian. Yes a .22 makes one hell of a mess (I have a mate of a mate that was sadistic and used to modify them for mximum mess. A real idiot.) the SPLAYED holow point opens on impact rather than holding form like the .22 round so you dont get the pin hole entry and map of Tassie exit. The .38 splayed round is designeg to have about 2 to 4 inch penatration power into a body if memory serves
@Adrien, #165: Trad skins are anti-racist. In the nomenclature of skinhead, racist skins are called boneheads. There’s been a struggle going on between skins and boneheads for several decades. As a reaction to the influx of racists and fascists into skinhead in the late ’70s in the UK, in the early- to mid-80s in New Yawk, a number of skins formed the anti-racist network SHARP: ‘Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice’. It’s since gone global. Other, similar, but more straightforwardly political groups include RASH: ‘Red & Anarchist Skin Heads’. Such networks are much more prominent in Europe and the Americas than Australia (as is skinhead). As you note, skinhead traces its roots to the 1960s, and the meeting of English and Jamaican working-class cultures, so the later racist and fascist deviation is a betrayal of its roots, and is understood as such.
But moving right along, the leaflet also states that ‘Barely fifteen minutes before Tyler’s death, he had been ‘the victim of a racially motivated knife attack on a train by a Lebanese Muslim gang’. The flyer ends by calling for the introduction of TASER and the removal of ‘politically correct restrictions on the style of policing to enable officers to effectively deal with ethnic gangs’.
Adrien, a discredited group is flinging mud about a hypothetical attack by – surprise, surprise, another ethnic group – following a verified news report of a rampage by one of their members. The motivation, of course, seems to be a cackhanded attempt to put the focus back on people of non anglo celtic origin. Why do you seem so anxious to believe this very untrustworthy source? Is it so unbearable that in fact it’s a “skip” kid who has gone berserk?
SCS is, itself, an ethnic gang, pure and simple. Look in the mirror, guys.
Tyler is also supposed to have been both at his mum’s and in K Mart immediately before the skate park events. He was obviously having a very busy night.
If there was a confrontation on a train between him and a ‘Lebanese Muslim gang’ (gee, I wonder how they knew that), the descriptions of his state and his actions in the hours leading up to his death make one wonder who started it. You’d also expect to have heard by now of more witnesses to the spectacle an off-his-face kid with two large knives travelling on an inner-city train.
All of which is totally irrelevant to what ocurred when he was shot by the police.
Reading this thread, I can’t help feeling that if this kid’s politics were different, or if he was from an obviously disadvantaged group, a lot of people would have refrained from criticising him quite so aggressively. Or criticising him at all.
I abhore his apparent political leanings as much as anyone, but he was a 15 year old kid FFS. The rush to judgement in this instance is quite sickening.
Adrian, (a) it’s not ‘totally irrelevant’ in the sense that all of these things played their part in the confrontation in the park, which he set up, and (b) I, at least, was simply responding to Adrien’s comment.
Sorry, but why is that bad? I think it would be a perfectly reasonable response. His politics clearly turned him confrontational and worse. If he was from an obviously disadvantaged group then the whole thing would be easier to understand. Of course it is a terrible thing that this happened, but it happened because the kid was what he was. In the end, most of us die of being ourselves.
I don’t know where to begin PC. I always thought that you were one of the sanest contributors to this blog, but really! The killing happened for a combination of reasons, not the least being the decision of 3 police officers to shoot six bullets into him.
He was apparently acting like a dangerous lunatic, but are you saying that only racist extremists act in this way? If not I still fail to see what his politics have to do with it.
I really think you are taking this argument into rather dangerous territory.
Adrian at #175: What, suddenly I’m insane because I disagree with you? Because I’m not toeing the party line on this one? Because I think fifteen is old enough to take a bit of responsibility for your own behaviour? Or because I can imagine what it must have been like for the police in that situation and have some idea of what will happen to them now?
No, of course not.
I’m going on the several detailed reports that I’ve read since it happened and piecing together various bits of information, most of which seem to suggest, as does his MySpace page, that he became much more violent and confrontational after he joined the SCS, including a sad statement from a kid who had been a friend of his.
Yes, that’s what I said.
‘Dangerous territory’ how? I don’t know where to begin either, because I can’t quite work out what you think I think, or indeed what you think I ought to think. This one was always going to be divisive in unexpected ways. It’s a bit like the Bill Henson case in that respect. Apart from anything else, don’t underestimate the contempt that most (not all, unfortunately) women have for violent and irrational testosterone-fuelled behaviour, on both sides of any confrontation, of the kind that Glen mentioned a long way upthread.
If you think I’m ‘taking sides’ then my comment at #161 should make that clearer. But I’ve already said everything I have to say on this thread at various points, I think — most importantly that on the one hand yes of course the shooting could and should have been avoided, but on the other hand that is very very easy for armchair critics like us to say.
Hey, I’m not saying that you’re insane, or anything close to it and I’m sorry if I gave that impression.
I agree that it’s divisive, but I guess my main point is that the rush to judgement on either side of the divide is to be avoided if possible, until we know, if we ever will, the full story.
I take your point re aggressive testosterone-fuelled behaviour – I’ve been a minor victim of it myself, but I still fail to see what the victim’s politics have to do with it.
Anyway, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I still think you’re one of the best commentator’s here, most of the time!
Adrian, your comment #173 came immediately after comment #172 by Pav. I’m pretty sure that was the one you responded to, as Pav hadn’t spoken up for a while before that. Please go back and read it. Pav was referring to the organisation of which he was a member and its obnoxious smearing posters, only tangentially to the boy himself. The SSC deserve everything they get and then some and it is perfectly legitimate to question the veracity of anything they say or write.
Yep, of course — thanks, Helen; perhaps that’s where some of the misunderstanding lies. My comment was intended to suggest that either the train thing didn’t happen at all, or if it did then it may have happened differently from the way the SCS are saying.
Helen – Why do you seem so anxious to believe this very untrustworthy source? Is it so unbearable that in fact it’s a “skip” kid who has gone berserk?
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If you’re implying that I am in any way an ethnic chauvanist you are barking in a forest on another continent. There’s no anxiety in my comment at all. Nor do I say I believe it. I just describe it. That’s all.
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The motivation, of course, seems to be a cackhanded attempt to put the focus back on people of non anglo celtic origin.
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Perhaps. However if you familiarize yourself with the street culture of our cities you will see that young men are using ethnicity as a basis for organisation with a view to violent confrontation. This is not behaviour restricted to anglo-celts. Some graffitti from Upfield: Lebs rule! Wogs and Aussie out!
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Adrien, a discredited group is flinging mud about a hypothetical attack by – surprise, surprise, another ethnic group – following a verified news report of a rampage by one of their members.
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Please read a little more carefully. This ‘discredited’ group about whom very little is known, no longer boasted Tyler as one of its members. He’d left their ‘pride not hate’ thing and joined the Nazi skins. If Tyler was involved both with them and the more extreme groups because of ethnic conflict that’s telling. If he was indeed attacked by a gang and if that gang’s motivation was ethnically based that’s also telling.
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The discreditation comes from The Herald-Sun a fine and reliable source of in depth and considered journalism that. I have no idea what the reality of the SCS actually is. Are they racist or not. Are they simply just one of the myriad youth gangs that operate in sub-criminal contexts? In these zones ethnicity is a reality untouched by progressive liberal niceties. In jail everyone is racist.
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There’s an underlying assumption that ethnic chauvanism and racial hatred is something upon which ‘white’ people have a monopoly. I’m sorry but that’s horseshit. You will probably deny such an assumption but shall I remind you of your assertions about my non-existent ‘anxiety’.
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It’s funny how people who’re probably very adamant about the nefarious uses of sterotypes fall effortlessly into stereotyping others when it suits. The very notion that I have any fellow feeling with ethnic chauvanism or even nationalism is absurd. And no reading of my comments sans prejudice and assumption would provide any infrance of this.
@ndy – I used to know two Trot skins once. They tried to beat a freind of mine up for singing the Beatles’ “Revolution” at a demo. He was of course taking the piss out of them.
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I have seen a bit of old school skinhead revival lately. Mostly among the urban stylists. But the Nazi skins are still alive in the West. A gfew years ago I was walking thru Footscary. My hair was cropped short and I happened to be wearing khaki shorts and shirt and big boots. I also have ‘blackwork’ tatoos. The Asians were looking at me nervously and I was thinking what’s the problem?
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They should’ve know I wasn’t a Nazi skin tho’. That lot are cowards and they never go anywhere alone.
You love to be righteously outraged, don’t you, Adrien? No, I was not claiming that only anglo-celts are ever ethnocentric. I was saying that on this specific occasion, a rightwing group claimed that OMG it was the muzzies starting it all the time, and I pointed out that it would be a good idea not to swallow this as nothing of the kind has been reported and the self-serving nature of that accusation is so obvious.
That specific accusation, Adrien.
letushavefact
I am aware of the sort of offenders sent to medium or low security Prisons & although they still house some pretty undesirable elements, they still cannot be sent unless they have a low security rating. This comes about through an assessment as you would know , that then looks at all the prisoners prior convictions, any behaviour during past incarcerations & finally the charges the prisoner is currently serving time for & the length of time they are serving. Alot different being a srew on one of those open camps like “Wron Wron” or “Morwell River”, as opposed to working in places like Fulham or Barwon, or even worse in the old Maximum security Prisons like “geelong” or “Aararat”.
As for the srews knowing whats coming, no screw I have ever seen attacked knew it was coming. The only differenced in jail is the srews know it IS coming its just a matter of when.
PC @ 174
“His politics clearly turned him confrontational and worse. If he was from an obviously disadvantaged group then the whole thing would be easier to understand.”
PC if you chose to follow things more carefully the VICTIM(Tyler), had met some skinheads 4 weeks ago & was trying to fit in. Just like some kids join sports clubs, scouts, religious groups and/or cults. If you are Liberal, you generally disagree with Labour, if you are pro capital punishment, you will disagree with the right to lifers. Every1 is entitled to jopin any group they please.I Iived the streets for years, now I work on them as a youth worker. I have never met a member on the streets I work & not too many kis I work with have heard of them. They are essentially a “Cyber based” group. There are some active “political” members that naturally try & prey on the vulnerable young, that are often just wanting to feel l;ike they belong somewhere. This is the “alienation” kids talk about. I really haven’t met too many “political 15yr olds, have you ?
D’Rey. refer to your post #183.
Both Morwell river and Wron Wron ae now closed and the types ofprisnors there are now in the likes of Fullam (Where I spent most of my time working) and similar.
“As for the srews knowing whats coming, no screw I have ever seen attacked knew it was coming.”
I did not mean that they saw it comming in the preceeding minutes, only that they knew of the extreme high potential of an incident and the only back up was the other screws and that all others are the enemy in the situation. By this I refer to the fact that on the outside in a brawl type incident police will hae some supporterssome enemy and other runners that don’t get involved at all. In prison ALL of the players are known as are their sides.
I mention all of this to refer to the “Resorces” available. The most importaint of which is the fact that screws get to know the prisnors in thier charge and can read the situation a little better than police that have got information 3rd, 4th or 5th hand as in the case of Tyler. (Mum to a police station to the comunications centre to the responding units)
Helen – You love to be righteously outraged, don’t you, Adrien?
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Righteous? Mmmm. Come on Helen you can call me a Nazi if you want to but ‘righteous’? That’s below the belt.
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I’m not outraged. I’m simply saying that your assertions of my Eurocentric Anxieties are unfounded because there is nothing in my commentary that indicates such and also they don’t exist.
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I was saying that on this specific occasion, a rightwing group claimed that OMG it was the muzzies starting it all the time, and I pointed out that it would be a good idea not to swallow this as nothing of the kind has been reported and the self-serving nature of that accusation is so obvious.
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There’s an inference that Lebanese Muslims had something to do with Tyler’s state of mind but your comment caricatures this to ‘blame the towelheads’ or some such. Again I swallowed nothing. I advocated nothing. I made no declarations about the veracity of the leaflet at all. I merely described it.
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The underlying assumptions of which I spoke are there. Perhaps you don’t make them but many do. That said, your comment is much more indicative of the existence of just such an assumption than mine is of sympathies with the SCS. And your denial follows on cue.
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I’m not outraged or righteous. I’m merely misunderstood. Again. Try it without the CRW-114 discriminator once in a while.
If he was from an obviously disadvantaged group then the whole thing would be easier to understand.
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Thing is, and I’m not expressing an opinion here, but I’m getting the impression that ‘Aussies’ (ie anglo-celtic Australians) are beginning to think of themselves as disadvantaged in some way. Various phenomena come to play here.
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This appears to feed into the racialist attitudes of groups of young people and it leads nowhere good.
“than mine is of sympathies with the SCS”
That’s a cracker Adrien, you pulled it out of thin air.
Nick, the temptation is very strong to make the obvious rejoinder, but I’ll have to abstain I think
That’s a cracker Adrien, you pulled it out of thin air.
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Citing a quote out of context to completely change the meaning of it. Mmm how honourable.
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Helen I’m sure that’s the obvious rejoinder you had in mind right?
The quote was from two posts up Adrien, its meaning is unaltered.
As is its sore-thumbedness.
Nick – Horseshit.