And that is the problem for both mistaken and unarmed targets. The SWAT mindset is to European armed policing as that of 1 Para in 1972 was to that of troops trained in riot control. The paper I cannot remember found that the UK armed police were both much more likely to fire weapons if they needed to ready them, and more likely to kill their 'target' when they did fire. As I say, look at the data.
]]>I was attempting to cross any culture gap for US / European readers (who are accustomed to all police officers being armed) by explaining that the term "armed police officer" in the UK is somewhat different from "your average police officer, who unsurprisingly happens to be armed because all police officers are armed".
Namely, that in the UK, "armed police" are a specialised subset of police officers, who focus on their armed duties (and the qualification and training that go alongside them). AIUI, the easiest way to explain this to a USian is to say "SWAT", because those are the US police types who specialise in the use of firearms.
I wasn't trying to indicate that the UK armed police employ the US SWAT mindset... in fact, I'd suggest the opposite (knowing several armed officers as individuals, and actually having a rather high regard for them, and trust in their mindset should a decision have to be made about the use of lethal force).
Oh, and 1 Para in 1972? Compare them with the unit 200yds away, who encountered similar levels of bricks and bottles, but didn't beat or shoot anyone. Or even compare Sp Coy 1 PARA (and the four individuals who did all of the killing, or should I say murder) with C Coy 1 PARA, who didn't shoot anyone on that Sunday.
]]>A cynic might suggest that repairing decaying infrastructure, providing healthy food and free medical care to all children, and a host of other social goods that there are currently no money for might be a decent way to otherwise employ people.
It would need a different way of allocating the resources, obviously, but considering (for example) how much more it costs to deal with someone with mental health problems through the police and courts, versus treating them, it would probably result in lower overall costs.
*military-industrial complex, health-industrial complex, police-industrial complex.
]]>I have known a lot of military and police, and they were all decent - off-duty. But I know enough about the psychological effects of groups and adrelanine to know that is not a reliable indication of how they will behave in action. Ask yourself, were all the people involved in the torture and murder of Baba Mousa utter shits?
Your last paragraph is a disgrace - blaming the ordinary soldiers for the negligence of those in charge. As the Bloody Sunday inquiry makes clear, they were not trained or properly briefed for crowd control and the whole event was a fuck-up.
I notice that you also haven't said what an innocent, severely deaf, but not visually decrepit, person (and there are a LOT of us) should do when we hear a loud shout behind us in a location where there might be armed police.
]]>Nope. Until I read the Savile Report, I would have agreed with you - incorrectly-trained troops, led badly. And I don't doubt that it was a colossal screwup.
I agree that CO 1 PARA did wrong - and disobeyed the explicit orders of the Brigade Commander in doing so. But the other sub-units, and other units, on the ground didn't feel the need to kill rioters and then lie about it.
At some point, however, you have to accept responsibility for your own actions - these weren't "green" troops, they'd faced rioters and shooters before. Some had served in Aden, and other wars. Support Company isn't somewhere that you typically send new soldiers and NCOs, it tends to be more experienced than the Rifle Companies.
From Savile, Volume VI, 112.58: "Our overall assessment of what happened in Glenfada Park North is that the soldiers who went in, led by Corporal E, fired at fleeing civilians, and then, in the knowledge that what they had done was unjustified, proceeded to invent false accounts of what they had seen and done... We repeat that we have found no evidence that suggests to us that any of the four soldiers might have believed, albeit mistakenly, that he had, or might have, identified a target at which he was justified in firing."
From Savile, Conclusions, 5.4: "In the case of those soldiers who fired in either the knowledge or belief that no-one in the areas into which they fired was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, or not caring whether or not anyone there was posing such a threat, it is at least possible that they did so in the indefensible belief that all the civilians they fired at were probably either members of the Provisional or Official IRA or were supporters of one or other of these paramilitary organisations; and so deserved to be shot notwithstanding that they were not armed or posing any threat of causing death or serious injury. Our overall conclusion is that there was a serious and widespread loss of fire discipline among the soldiers of Support Company."
]]>The few who beat those detainees until one died, were utter shits; there's one who should be serving life, but couldn't be prosecuted successfully.
The ones who stood by while it happened (over days), and did nothing? It's easier to commit a sin of omission, but I hope they regret it for the rest of their lives.
Too many people in that unit knew that the detainees were being beaten, and yet nothing was done until one of them died. They wrote it off to themselves as "harsh", probably not thinking through that it was "potentially lethal". The Padre was specifically criticised, and the Battalion's Medical Officer has been struck off. The Commanding Officer had to leave the Army (not sacked, just...) and the Battalion was disbanded.
On another forum, I read a post by a young officer who had been at Sandhurst with the Platoon Commander concerned; had never perceived him as "that kind of man"; and how it had made him wonder exactly how he would have reacted, and whether he would have been strong enough to say "No. Stop." - because that's the job of an Officer, to do what's right even though it isn't easy.
]]>Back during the Troubles, my grandfather was in the British Army serving in Ireland. He never talked about it. (Or much about WWI either. We heard lots of stories about his mates during the war, but nothing about the fighting. Ypres, the Somme, Greece, Palestine… the closest to a 'war story' he told his grandchildren was how he hung on a cavalryman's stirrup during the retreat to the Jordan, until the chap's officer rode up and ordered him to leave the Tommy — my grandfather — and save himself.)
Anyway, once the Alzheimers kicked in poor granddad began living in the past. All the horrible memories he'd suppressed came out, in present tense.
During the Troubles his section was fired at from a crowd. The sergeant was down. And they couldn't return fire because it was a crowd of civilians.
Ordinary Tommies. Would they have obeyed orders to return fire, rather than let themselves be shot? I can never know, but knowing my grandfather I doubt he would have.
]]>One of the worst I heard of was someone being confronted with a child pointing a real revolver at them. They watched as the child pull the trigger, and it went 'click'...
Regarding your grandfather, another story was that of the OP pair watching a weapon hide. For some reason, the teenager who had found the weapons (and reported them to the police), went back a day or two later for another look. He picked up one of the weapons, pointed it in the rough direction of the hide; and the OP team shot and killed him. Tragic; and as I heard it, the soldier concerned was permanently screwed up by his choice.
These are instances where soldiers were trying to do the right thing (a US General tried to describe similar behaviour to your grandfather's as "courageous restraint"). Unfortunately, Sp Coy 1 PARA weren't.
]]>http://www.queensroyalsurreys.org.uk/1661to1966/birkenhead/birkenhead.html
]]>Ticket to Ride: Post-Earthquake LA
It was really fun trying to build routes through the city. Rail, road, sea. Special cards included engineers to repair routes, and aftershock cards to damage routes.
As usual with dreams, the memory is too fuzzy to try to actually create the game. For instance, it had a really nice map of LA, and I have no idea what LA looks like but I'm certain it's not like that map :-)
But I'm certain there's a market* for a disaster-recovery game, if it can be fast and fun as well as realistic. (I'm thinking Greg Porter's Black Death as an exemplar.)
*Maybe not a large market…
]]>No idea how they were used, but they were there*. Must have been time travel rules in the game :-)
Why my subconscious include them is obvious, but I'll have to ignore them if I want to turn this dream into a game. Or make a very different game* :-)
**Ticket to Ride: Deep Time?
]]>