Great. A 'shooting incident' board outside my door

[Mrs Magpie]

That's a relief (of sorts).

 

[Brixton Hatter]

fuckin hell ed, scary stuff. there was also a "firearms incident" in my street a few weeks ago. i was dozing on my sofa in my bedroom and could hear loads of shouting out on the street...a man and a woman...but didn't think anything of it. next thing, i pop outside and there's 3 riot vans, 2 police cars and loads of armed police there. i saw a guy being arrested and stuck in a van so hopefully whatever it was (a domestic that got out of hand perhaps...) got sorted. it's just scary to think that there's a very small minority of people who think nothing of carrying a gun and waving it about when they feel like it

The only thing to do with yellow boards on your doorstep is pretend they dont exist - ignorance is a murky sort of bliss.

to be honest, i'd rather know what's going on in my area - i'd rather see the yellow sign than not at all. they might worry people but they also might act as a kind of detterant to further crime in that road. they do add to people's fear of crime....but people generally percieve that there is more crime than there actually is.

 

[Structaural]

I lived for a short time in Clapham - there was a yellow sign to the entrance to Abberville Road that said 'Woman had purse snatched 18.07.97, please be aware of muggers' - different world eh?

 

[Jonti]

fuckin hell ed, scary stuff. there was also a "firearms incident" in my street a few weeks ago. i was dozing on my sofa in my bedroom and could hear loads of shouting out on the street...a man and a woman...but didn't think anything of it. next thing, i pop outside and there's 3 riot vans, 2 police cars and loads of armed police there. i saw a guy being arrested and stuck in a van so hopefully whatever it was (a domestic that got out of hand perhaps...) got sorted. it's just scary to think that there's a very small minority of people who think nothing of carrying a gun and waving it about when they feel like it

Many years back, when I lived in another gaff on the same street I am now, I heard an enormous commotion one evening. Disturbances and noise in the street were very common (my gaff was right opposite a late night pub) but this one sounded ... different.

So I stuck my head out of the window to see what was going down. I wasn't the only one! There were heads popped out of windows right down the street. They too had been disturbed by the extraordinary commotion.

The noise was coming from a small mob of people fleeing a solitary gunman who, apparently calmly, was walking down the middle of Railton Road waving (what looked to be) a handgun over his head

Highly alarming -- but the intent did not appear to be homicide, more intimidation. There had been no discharge of the firearm that I had heard, nor was the guy holding it in a way suggestive of immediate murderous intent. So I felt it best to watch the situation develop. (If any readers ever find themselves in a similar situation, my suggestion is to take notes, then and there if possible. Shock and horror can freeze the mind making later recall very difficult and unreliable).

That will sound downright odd, irresponsible to many readers. Perhaps I should have called the police. But this was a long, l-o-n-g time ago. Illegal policing methods had triggered rioting in the area just a few years earlier. I honestly did not want a bunch of adrenaline fuelled youngsters turning up with shooters and making the situation worse. Nope, not even if they were wearing nice neat blue serge suits. But I did reckon (oh, don't we always) that someone else was bound to call the cops. So I thought I'd just keep an eye on things until Someone Else did just that.

Well, the yelling and shouting, panicking people were herded down the street away from me and vanished out of site around a corner. I listened intently. The sounds of folk fleeing in fear of their lives faded. I kept listening, straining my ears for a shot, a scream, anything that would indicate I had misread the situation and perhaps, through my inaction, contibuted to a murder or a maiming.

Quietness settled over the street. One by one, the witnessing heads withdrew back into their rooms, windows were shut, curtains drawn. Soon, I was alone, waiting for the wail of sirens. They never came. No-one had called the cops. Not one of the half-dozen witnesses from the houses lining the street, no-one from the pub, no-one from the fleeing mob had felt that police involvement was going to help in any way.

Just like me, I guess.

Well, times have changed, I'm happy to say. I do not think such an incident is at all likely to recur on this street -- at least not in the same brazen way. And, if it did, I like to think that community-cop relations have improved. Now, I think, more folk are more trusting of the cops' ability to respond to crazy and dangerous looking situations while remaining calm themselves*.

I sure hope so. The unrestrained use of force to settle disputes is a slippery slope from which some (mainly those protesting about being on the raw end of an offer they can't refuse) never return.

*Yes, we hear when they blow it. As we should. But they manage not to screw up far more often -- it's just "Cop does job right" is, of course, not newsworthy.