6 from "gang of more than 40" who lured police into riot ambush sentenced

no you won't. you don't know much about the criminal justice system, do you?

Tbf, the sorts of people in an area like Newtown with access to firearms are not the sort of people that tend to be community minded.

do you have anything more than allegation to link these men to a campaign of parasitism?

more 'detrimental' than the wealthy, powerful, globally pervasive neo liberal elites ( and their represantatives ) that shaped the lives and conditions of "those we are talking about " ( powerless 'underclass' ) in the first place ? huh ?

total nonsense.

..

They have guns. What do you think they use them for?

i'll take that as a 'no' then.

No, not about these lads personally,and i didn't allege it,my point was more general.I agree about robbing local businesses etc on the night but i've already said i think they were grand standing to make a point locally.They had to have come from somewhere and given their access to firearms they're either a violent gang or an underground cell of militants looking to make a thought out political point,i call violent gang.In theory that doesn't negate their act being political,in context it questions the motivation behind it.

Well we know they used them (ineffectively) against the police in an ambush.

having access to firearms , due to criminal/gang links /activity , and being 'community minded' are not necessarily mutually exclusive, eg : as those involved with militant anti fascist activities/local community politics in parts of NW England in the 90's would know.

ok. can we have less about an unsourced campaign of parasitism theme here then? it muddies the waters and doesn't advance the thread.

I fail to see how it muddies anything,has anyone given sourced information that implies anything else?I thought the thread had moved on to discussing gangs in working class communities,if not, i'd like to move it on,alright?

Not as much as an old lag like yourself.

do you remember last august all the riots were supposed to be the work of gangs?

and then that turned out to be a load of auld shite?

and now we're talking about six men who are *alleged* to have been in gangs but *no one* has been able to supply any proof of their involvement in gangs, or of their carrying out a parasitic campaign against the communities in which they lived.

it seems to me that if you want to discuss the effects of gangs on working class communities, then the best thing to do would be to start a new thread because as far as i can see it has scant relevance to the topic at hand.

people currently get released (generally speaking) after serving 50% of their sentence

Your entitled to your opinion.Lets crack on eh?

Or as you said before something to do with "turf wars". Its one possible motivation for attacking the police but wouldn't a better course of action in that case have been to lure the already stretched police as they did but fuck off before they arrived and take the opportunity to deal their rivals a blow?

Possibly,aye,but apparently nobody knows enough about these particular lads to know why they did it this way and for what reasons.I don't think we should be assuming that's it's driven by politics,just because it happened during the riots.Imo it was more likely to be oppurtunist grand standing by a local gang to make their mark.Has there been any ballistics report on the guns,or previous convictions come to light?

can you give me an example of a gang doing this sort of thing 'to make their mark'?

I just can't see that tbh. If they want to make their mark, they'll bump off a high profile member of a rival gang. I suppose it's possible something big kicked off between them and the OB, but even then, I find this sort of thing very out of the ordinary.

yeh, outside the six counties in the 70s i don't think i've heard of something on this scale in the uk. there's lots of precedents of people setting a car on fire and calling the police then hurling bricks or petrol bombs at them, but not luring the cops into an ambush and then shooting at them.

Nope,but then opportunity can be a fortuitous thing...

not in this case where of the 41 people alleged to have been involved, six are inside on long sentences. the other 35 are, presumably, trying to forget they were ever involved in the incident.

seems to me that

a) it is self-evidently political;
b) that for most people taking the cops on with guns may seem like a good idea at the time, but it's one of those things which it's likely you will repent of at her majesty's pleasure;
c) it is qualitatively different from pretty much all the other riotous activity taking place in august last year.

it's plainly not a gang seeking to make its mark, it's a quite large body of men with some degree of discipline attempting something quite audacious.

I think it's also probably worth begging the question what sort of gang are we talking about here. Are we talking about a gang that would fit in with the Eurogang definition (one which is accepted as being problematic, but the one most commonly used by academics / the government) or was this a group of criminals coming together to perform this one specific act. The media have defined it as a gang, but as far as I can make out that's purely because it was a group of people with guns. That is, technically, not what a gang is. Have these group of people said they are a gang?

Perhaps that's not such a relevant point, but I'm fussy about that sort of thing.

what's the 'eurogang' definition?

I agree with a lot of what your saying here especially a,b and c,but i think your last sentence is too absolutist,i don't think it's plainly anything.I know what i think it is and in the abscence of hard evidence one way or the other it's an opinion.

A Eurogang is defined as:

‘A street based group of young people who see themselves (and are seen by others) as a discernable group, engage in a range of criminal activity and violence, identify with or lay claim over territory, have some form of identifying structural feature and are in conflict with other, similar gangs’ (Working Group 2009)

This specific group could possibly be a 'street firm' - that is a group of criminals who come together to perform a specific act before dispersing e.g. a group of bank robbers from across a region coming together to perform a specific bank job before going back to their respective areas.

US gangs operate differently from most European gangs, hence why it's known as a 'eurogang' definition; US gangs have a much stricter hierarchy and social structure, whereas over here things are often more fluid. In the US, it's usually those inside who pull all the strings; certainly in projects in the States aimed at reducing gang activity, the most successful have been ones which deliberately sought out the top players inside and got them on board, as what they say goes (The Boston Gun Project is a good example of this). I just did my dissertation on gangs, hence my fussiness.

This is gold

dunno why you're , you've already said much the same above

The reason why the Eurogang definition is problematic is largely down to the being seen by others as a discernable group. This has resulted in cop intelligence largely relying on a guilty by association approach; so somebody simply seen with a known gang member is put on a list as a potential offender. This has resulted in some kids being searched several times a day, for no other reason than they were seen with somebody, and problems surrounding facilities such as community centres being used. Some non gang members have reported being uncomfortable about using a community centre or youth facility because a gang member will use it and thus, they will be marked out as guilty by association. In some areas, brand new, state of the art youth facilities have been empty for months because of these sorts of ridiculous situations. It's also worth remembering that territory does not just have to be the physical roads, it can also relate to which gang gets to deal the drugs in a particular area, which gang gets to sell guns, whatever.

It made me laugh because it sounded like propaganda,and a wee bit erotic.Where did i say anything like that?