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Liverpool's Shame:The Shooting Of Little Rhys Jones ...
Time was when we used to take pride in being British. Time was when we loved being labeled Liverpudlians. Time was when we cherished our 'scouser' heritage.
But time's a terribly tough taskmaster, and as ever was the case, the times they are a'changing.
And not always for the better. Indeed, lately, sad to say, far too often for the worse.
Witness what follows.
Read this and weep.
Read the rest of this heartrending report.Seven held over Rhys Jones murder
Saturday August 25, 2007 - Guardian Unlimited
Seven people, including two girls, were being held tonight over the killing of 11-year-old Rhys Jones.
Six of them were arrested in raids today around the Croxteth area of Liverpool where the schoolboy was shot on Wednesday.
Police were granted an extension to detain the sixth, a boy of 15 who was arrested yesterday.
The six people taken custody today were boys aged 15 and 16, a man aged 19 and girls of 15 and 18. The 19-year-old needed hospital treatment after falling from the back window of his home apparently trying to escape arrest. Another 19-year-old was also arrested later in the afternoon.
Rhys was killed by a teenager on a BMX bike who fired bullets from a handgun as the young football fan walked home with friends across a pub car park.
Two bullets hit a car but a third hit Rhys in the back of his neck.
He died as his mother Melanie, who had run to the scene from their home nearby, held him in her arms.
As we said at the outset, we used to be proud of this place.
But that was then.
THIS - is now.
So who's to blame?
Parents? Police? Schools? Teachers? Government? Judiciary? Legal profession? Arms dealers/gun runners? Our children? Ourselves?
To varying degrees - and though it hurts us like hell to have to say it - we believe the actual answer is "all of the above."
Yet at the same time, we soooo sincerely want (several) certain somebodies to prove us completely wrong.
Labels: gun crime, killing, Liverpool, murder, Rhys Jones
posted by Richard at Saturday, August 25, 2007
7 Comments:
It's a crying shame. I hope the perpetrator suffers like that poor kid's parents are suffering.
Three things to add to your 'blame' list, Richard. Television, cinema, video games. Through each of those things, wanton gratuitous violences masquerades daily as entertainment. Why? 'Coz there's bloody big money to made - just as there is in war.
May that little boy RIP.
Why aren't the bleeding heart "do-gooders" on your list mister?
That child's blood is on their hands too.
Controversial or not, bugger the PC of it ~ ban the wearing of hoods altogether as of yesterday. Tha would be over half the battle against these cowardly retards won, virtually overnight.
I feel for the lad's mum & dad but it's not enough ~ the people can and should [be allowed to] do more to help bring about justice. Those that did this are shit. They should be treated as such.
Heaven help us all. The Americanization of the UK is almost complete. Welcome to US street culture world.
Liverpool sounds a lot like L.A. in the 1980s. Since then, violent crime has dropped by more than half. And the improvement wasn't made by enforcing dress codes or banning video games.
What you need to do is figure out how the gangs are getting their money. You'll probably find that they get most of it by selling drugs. Then you have to get serious about cutting off that revenue stream.
Beyond that, you have to clean up the neighborhoods that the gangs operate in. Hire a couple hundred extra cops, clean up the trash and graffiti, fix the broken windows, and start hauling people in for minor offenses like truancy, petty theft, loitering, fare-jumping, and vandalism.
When people no longer feel that they're living in a sewer, the police will find that they're a lot more cooperative and that their kids are less prone to join gangs.
A lot of people over here were skeptical of this approach, but the results speak for themselves. New York once had one of the highest crime rates in the industrial world. Today, its crime rate is roughly the same as Provo, Utah.
You take some people out of the slum but you can't take the slum out of some people.
I wouldn't want to be the scumbag that shot this lad when he gets sent down. Boy, we he learn a lot of things -- mainly about pain -- lots of it -- and often -- and for a long time.
Think the screws are going to protect him? Ha!
Oh -- did I mention abject humiliation?
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