When the Watts riots kicked off in America, Asian shopkeepers - particularly the Vietnamese - armed themselves with shotties and threatened the bastards with the death of a thousand pellets. They soon scarpered and went on to molest other businesses.
I get the feeling that the Met is just letting this take hold so that they can claim they're already undermanned, and that any cuts to their numbers in future could lead to the whole country being taken over by roaming gangs of pillaging youths. In other words, let's frighten everyone to death with this and we won't have our numbers reduced.
Person after person interviewed by the Beeb tonight is saying that the police just weren't there when places were set on fire, as if they were quite deliberately not responding to the rampage.
Meanwhile, yesterday, I heard of a friend's daughter's car being rammed behind by a bloke who didn't seem to realise she couldn't zoom forward, owing to there being three cars in front of her at an intersection. He ranted and raved at her, said he didn't have his insurance docs or licence with him, and was incredibly, loudly, abusive. When she said she wasn't going to be intimidated into leaving, he said "I'll run you over and crush your skull, you bitch". (An American, btw, not an Ingleesi.) When the police came, oh-ho-ho, he suddenly does have his docs and says that she's a mad cow for saying he didn't. She then yelled at the very young cop that he'd threatened to kill her, and what do you think happened? He threatened to arrest her if she didn't calm down. Luckily, her company has a very hot lawyer who is going to take the police apart on this, as well as the other driver.
And today, at Lingfield: a dear old boy in his early 80s spotted a cop car driving close behind him, and slowed down a bit, in case it wanted to do the usual and tank past at 140 mph. It didn't. Its driver hauled him over, and very sharply said, "Get out of the car." Just that - no "please, sir" or kiss my arse. When the old lad asked why, he was told he was driving too slowly. He explained why, this wasn't accepted, and he was told he was to appear in court this week, and possibly lose his licence for "dangerous driving".
Good to see, then, that our resources are going into such useful support of the public.