School age teens running wild .

On the BBC News this lunchtime a film of a gang of young teens, girls and boys, terrorising local shops and their owners , yet the Police seem helpless or unwilling to attend.
They were even totally brazen mouthing off to the shops CCTV.

With the same thing happening with the national shoplifting problem thats beeen going on for ages, why do the the politicians fail to take proper action ?

Seems not too long ago, though probably more years than we think, the Police were cleaning up the country, even fining folk for litter, little chance these days !

 

Yeah I saw that, they spoke to a copper and he basically said you cant do much as they are just teenagers.

You cant do anything about shoplifters because they are either poor people or foreigners and gangs.

What they need is a good kicking, I'd not be surprised if we dont get vigilantes on the streets before long, government and police need to step up and sort these people out, instead of moaning we dont have the finances.

 

Rightly or wrongly if I was a shop owner I would have a baseball bat behind to counter.

 

But you would get arrested, this is where laws need changing, lots of laws just protect the wrong doer rather than protecting the law abiding.

Its all swung in favour of the criminal.

I'd send them all to Australia.

 

You can however send a whole vanful of coppers to the house of someone who said hurty words on the internet.

 

And all this CCTV etc was supposed to make us safer and help prevent crime. Yeah, right!

It is solvable. Stop calling teens "children". Enforce the age at which they are deemed responsible for criminal acts. (I think it is 10, though 12 would seem more reasonable to me.) Make the behaviour have consequences - curfews, financial compensation for damage, etc.

 

They should get community service. Every teenager is old enough to pick up litter, scrub graffiti etc. Give them a humiliating bright orange tabbard and post it on their social media.

My friend, who was a well behaved young guy, saw some youths kicking a fence when we were at school. They thought, well thats hard isn't it, so playfully gave the fence a lite tap, just as the cops turned up. He spent the rest of the day in the cells as did someone who I know that stole a pencil at the age of 14. When I worked in retail we regularly had little kids thieving and we would call the police who came out and scared the crap out of them.

 

Also, we need to invest in youth services. Every secondary school pupil should have the option of access to a club of some sort.

 

They should, in my day it was freedom or borstal.

 

I joined the Young Liberals when I was a teen, but only because they had parties every weekend.

 

It's not just teenagers - it's primary age children here that are the worst for shoplifting and being mouthy.
Poor parenting in a lot of cases though - same as ever. 'My wee Johnny would never do that'. I've personally experienced it, and it's astonishing the ignorance of parents who think their kids are perfect. My younger daughter challenged a kid of about 8 a year or two ago -they get lots of school kids coming in the shop. She saw him put sweets in his pocket, and then come to the till to pay for one thing. He denied he had anything else, but she insisted he paid for the stuff she'd seen him take, and told him it was on camera. He then realised the game was a bogey, and coughed up, but went home and told Daddy, who then came to the shop to cause a fuss.
The manager showed Daddy the cctv footage of his precious poppet putting stuff in his pocket, then told him 'where to go', and that they were both banned. Result.
They're quite fortunate that the cops did turn up reasonably well when they had the gangs sweeping stuff off shelves, although lots of those products are now under lock and key. The police station is quite near them, but they're limited in what they can do. It definitely needs to change, but so do lots of things in the world, so it won't be high on the list of priorities.
It's just us decent folk that are ultimately paying for it. No surprise there.

 

I also saw that Teen Rampage - still don't get why the faces are "blurred" out. We're happy enough to Name and Shame companies with a poor record but draw the line at doing the same with someone caught performing an illegal act on camera. Agree with @fairygirl that many parents are either completely unaware of what their offspring get up to or will strenuously deny that it was their child involved. Once a child becomes involved in this sort of criminal behaviour, if no strong reprimand is provided in some form, the child becomes immune to what is or isn't acceptable as they grow older. I've no doubt Human Rights would be involved but those rights are due to every citizen not just to those misbehaving. Why should others be frightened to go to work or simply be on the streets or in a store where these children are creating havoc without reprisal. Absolutely mad !!

 

I went to New york in the 80s and was amazed to find a liquor store with nothing other than iron bars, where you had to ask for what you wanted and they passed it through a small hole in the bars after you had paid.
I think we are heading in that direction.

 

That's been the case in some city centres for years. I can remember seeing it in London and I haven't been there since before they built the Shard!
Security tags are now being applied to cheese and coffee.

 

The security tags have been in place for quite a few years @Escarpment . It's become a dreadful problem, and was increasing massively during the pandemic, due to organised gangs going into shops - especially the smaller supermarkets. Staff where my younger daughter works [a well known smaller outlet] and the one in my previous post, are told not to confront people who are blatantly stealing. I still worry. You simply don't know what they have under their jacket, or what they'd do.
I still remember being astounded as a young-ish child, being in the local sweet shop when coming home from school. It was a typical layout of that time [60 years ago or so] with counter service. There were a few other kids in front of me, and while I stood back waiting my turn, I watched while the lady served one child, and while she was doing that, others were taking sweets off the open, sloping counter and shoving them in their pockets. Just shows that stealing isn't something new, and neither is the age group involved.