How to Control Riots by Theresa May
August 9, 2011
WHEN ASKED whether police should resort to water cannons to control looters and rioters in London and elsewhere, Home Secretary Theresa May replied:
I don’t think anybody wants to see water cannon used on the streets of Britain because we have a different attitude to the culture of policing here. We police by consent and it depends on that trust between the police and the public.
— Comments —
Alex writes from England:
Theresa May, who describes herself as a Home Secretary, says that the British tradition of “policing by consent” would be subverted if much tougher measures were used to control rioters and looters. And that’s why mobs on the rampage will never be confronted by armed police and water cannons.
What this well-meaning woman doesn’t appear to understand is that policing by consent assumes in the first place that a bedrock of civilized values exists which are universally endorsed. But these values have long since been abandoned in the amoral sub-cultures that produced the feral youths now rioting in England. Policing by consent doesn’t mean a thing to large numbers of lawless individuals who have no family background in which respect for strangers and their property has been inculcated.
It is often supposed that the phenomenal rise of juvenile delinquency in English cities is a result of family collapse. It’s worse than that; it’s the failure to create any family at all.
