BioTech wrote:
From what I’ve seen, there are a few people trying to organise some sort of donation scheme and fund raisers to help them out. Whether it actually gets put in to practice is yet to be seen but it does seem like some decent pople are backing up these guys and are prepared to help out.
good to hear this – compared with the Welsh/Thames Valley case where everyone got their kit back eventually (despite the incidents which occured at that event leading to a cop being disabled) I think this penalty is not proportionate – fines would have been sufficent.
If anything depriving them of the rig as well as bringing them before Court is a real risk that they may choose to become involved in wider criminality or anti-social behaviour as a reprisal against society!
I know if that had happened to me in my 20s I probably would have looked for “revenge” of some sort – in some areas there is already a culture of kids burgling areas where raves are held as “well, they grass us up to the cops and get the rigs taken!” (I would stress that the kids who do this are not main crew members and the crews themselves do not support this attitude – but this happens)
They need support from the rest of the ravers to keep their spirits and morale up as well as get money. IMO two men have paid dearly for a mistake committed by many others.
Quote:
I know it’s easy to complain and moan about things when you weren’t involved but I feel that if the party wasn’t held near loads of houses and the organisers left when they were given the chance to then it wouldn’t have had the result that it has.
that is indeed true. TBH I think the lads were “out of area” and did not scout the place properly as both appear to live some miles away from the target region. Lots of crews make this mistake.
Last year the Southern crews went up to Mansfield to do a “teknival” there. We got one night before the cops S63d it.
A Traffic Sargeant (who was actually fairly friendly) was actually laughing at this spectacle (perhaps because his computers were showing so many vehicles from miles away down South!) and said to some of the local crews
“I can see you lot are not from here. you guys did try hard to pick a good spot for the party – but (pointing to Sherwood Forest) there’s a big centre Parcs over there and we’ve had hundreds of calls from people saying you’ve spoilt a night of their holiday weekend with the noise. Look – you’ve had a good night, just be on your way now and drive carefully and we’ll say no more about this”.
By this time the local dirt bikers were taking matters into their own hands (probably angry that the rave had attracted cops) by creating a dust storm of red sand as well..
He even gave people time to stand down in an orderly fashion and sober up a bit, and no one IME got any nasty letters / producers / traffic violation tickets or any of the other things cops sometimes do.
But if people are stubbon the cops will send the Territorial Support Group (“riot squad”) in to clear the area; their very name suggests that this is what they are for.
Lets face it – if we lived in a country where a bunch of kids (or anyone else) could overpower the local Police and do what they wanted on someone elses property, we would eventually have a centralised force of Gendarmes like many other countries do. This is something we in Britain often forget.
(Charles Clarke is trying to move in this direction and the cops are actually resisting these moves – apart from Norfolk and Cambridgeshire where they are being overpowered by this sort of action!)
