[SeaGypsy]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2011/0 ... tnews.html

Every sunset, in every town in the NT, police cruise the streets looking for drunks. This is what they do when they find them. After midnight however, kids in gangs roam doing burglaries, home invasions, car theft and arson. 2 people have died in random arsons in Darwin in the last 6 months. The place is getting way out of control. Recently a 17 year old was sentenced to minimum 3 months for stabbing a father 16 times while he held his baby daughter in a botched home invasion. The cops are frustrated, everyone is angry. The jails are brimming, the courts are inept. The statistics are appalling. Darwin is still the world's capital for broken jaws. Yet a house there will set you back at least half a million.
I am out of there thank god, I move to Cairns next week.

[Sixstrings]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2011/02/15/212861_ntnews.html

Every sunset, in every town in the NT, police cruise the streets looking for drunks.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like culturally Britannic countries have a bigger problem with disorderly drunkenness. I guess it's the pub culture in general?

[papa moose]

I would definitely agree with that observation 6, altho i'm not sure it is relavent to SGs post.

[papa moose]

Okay, i watched the video (silenced) and read the article.
All i can say is how embarrassing for the police.

There's not much detail on the original "crime", spitting on an officer. Whilst it is not a pleasant experience aren't the jails full enough without locking people up simply for having a lack of respect for another human? Besides which arresting someone for spitting on you is hardly likely to build but the level of respect you are given either by them or the community.

In the holding cell, well, my take (which possibly matches the judges) is that regardless of what verbal was going on the cop initiates physical contact with the inmate. This is point blank wrong, a heavily armed man in a secure building surrounded by his peers feels the need to grab an inmate by the throat?!
The cop needed to just ignore whatever verbal he was getting, forget his ego and go about his actual job. Of course i'm not surprised that this event took place, recruiting standards, training, manning levels and funding for police are probably just as non-existant in NT as rest of Oz.

As for the charge desk stuff, well seemed fairly harmless. Yes his head was pressed to the table, but he should be thankful they weren't bashing it down (they do know there is a camera).
As for the claim they were breaking his arm, well they didn't so TTFU.
I could also say here that it took, how many, five or six cops to search his pockets, maybe take his shoelaces away? What a waste of manpower! Chuck him in the cooler with whatever is in his pockets, pay one guard to keep watch/raise the alarm if he tries to suicide. That one guard could watch a stations worth of cells and still have time to lurk on PO.com

Perhaps of interest is a bit of my family histroy, it's a bit ancient now but one of my grandfather's cousins(?) was the only policeman in Wiluna for a few years back in the 40s or 50s, back before the cops carried pistols apparently.
This cousin was about 6'6" and built like the proverbial, carried a night stick on his beat and never had any trouble keeping the population in control. I might have the town and the dates wrong but you get the gist.
So, back in the day, i'm sure if the bloke in the video had spat on my "cousin", old Ivan would have given him a friendly whack, bloke learns quick smart not to ever do that again, cop gets respect of community for dealing with situation appropriately (i am NOT advocating a Rodney King style beat down here, just a whack to the temple and a few hours sleeping to sober up). Situation resolved, no crowded prision, no over worked lawyers/judges.

Just a thought. I don't have a strong stance on corporal punishment despite how what i wrote above reads. I don't support capital punishment, altho in certain circumstances (Martin Bryant?) but it is very hard to draw a line. I don't smack my kids and try to teach them all that violence is not the answer to anything.

The big picture as i see it is that most of the population has no respect for the police and this makes the cops job practically impossible. Blame the cops, blame the crims, blame the parents, blame society, blame the russians, it doesn't matter where this lack of respect has come from, it is the underlying root of this issue (IMHO).

[Crazy_Dad]

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2011/02/15/212861_ntnews.html

Every sunset, in every town in the NT, police cruise the streets looking for drunks.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like culturally Britannic countries have a bigger problem with disorderly drunkenness. I guess it's the pub culture in general?

I'd say it has more to do with the inertia of how the FA's were treated during colonial times and the genetic inability to cope with alcohol.
Now they are hopelessly compromised and the police react like in the video.

I would get the same treatment if I put myself in that situation. I have been threatened by cops before, for witnessing a violent arrest.

[Crazy_Dad]

Recently a 17 year old was sentenced to minimum 3 months for stabbing a father 16 times while he held his baby daughter in a botched home invasion. The cops are frustrated, everyone is angry.

In this nightmarish scenario it is the guy with the bigger stick that wins. I have a fijian war club for just this purpose. I'd have an pump action shotgun if I was allowed to. Any consideration of how the dipshit got to my doorstep goes out the window when protecting my family.

[papa moose]

In this nightmarish scenario it is the guy with the bigger stick that wins. I have a fijian war club for just this purpose. I'd have an pump action shotgun if I was allowed to. Any consideration of how the dipshit got to my doorstep goes out the window when protecting my family.

No word of a lie (nor dilution thru fireside retellings), guy i know was living in Willagee, came home from work early and found an uninvited visitor in his living room.
He rang the cops about 10 minutes later to complain about the blood splattered "native" that was lying unconcious in his front yard. Paddy wagon showed up in about 15 minutes, threw said person in the rear, knocked on the front door to check everyone in the house was okay and then just drove off.
Ah the good old days... ie when a cop car would show up when needed in under an hour.

[SeaGypsy]

A friend of mine was called to his staff house in Alice Springs last year. He had 7 female Eupean witresses living there, 5 minutes from the hotel he owns and runs. The girls were screaming and there was a lot of noise; he rushed to the scene to find a guy halfway into a window he had ripped the screen from with a star picket. My friend picked up the star picket, dragged the guy out by the ankles and knocked him out with the star picket. He then drove the guy to hospital and reported the incident to police. He was charged with agravated assault causing grievous bodily harm. He pled not guilty and they couldn't find a jury to convict, so he walked after a years drama and $50k.

Another friend was gaurding his family shop with a cricket bat after 2 bad breakins in a week. The gang showed up and my friend knocked out 4 of these guys before the others convinced him to let them carry the others away. One of them was utterly unconcious and appeared not to be breathing. He then called the police and handed them the splintered cricket bad, soaked in blood, showed them the broken window and blood everywhere. The cops said "Well mate we'll figure out who to charge with what when these guys turn up in hospital or the morgue." They never did. Nothing happened. Now this guy has to live with the fact he is probably under sentence in traditional law and one day the relatives of the guys he bashed will get him for payback. He blanked it and can't even remember their faces.

I could tell stories this weird and horrific for days.
I don't blame the cops per se; but they could be far better organised and more efficient with targets.
It is common to have a police liason answer 000 who doesn't even know where Alice Springs or Katherine main streets are. It is also common for the cops to harrass someone for reporting a crime before investigating it.

[americandream]

Life's pretty cruisy in New Zealand bar a few gangs and the usual weekend drunk.

[Sixstrings]

I'd say it has more to do with the inertia of how the FA's were treated during colonial times and the genetic inability to cope with alcohol.
Now they are hopelessly compromised and the police react like in the video.

I would get the same treatment if I put myself in that situation. I have been threatened by cops before, for witnessing a violent arrest.

Well Native Americans have high rates of alcoholism too and are similarly genetically vulnerable. But from just what I gather the drunkenness problem seems worse with aboriginals. So your culture might be playing a part there somewhere -- if there's more acceptance in general of adults getting drunk off their arse, then no wonder native people are really off the wagon.

About the video.. locally we had a video on the news where a wheelchair bound man was getting booked. For some reason, the female officer decided he was "faking it." She lifted the chair up and dumped him on the floor and told him to get up.. which he couldn't do of course, since he wasn't faking it. It's bizarre what cops do sometimes, that's why sheister lawyers protect all our rights by keeping them on their toes.

As for this vid in particular, maybe I missed it but I didn't see anything too bad. The guy was probably resisting.. people drunk or high can be very powerful and it might take four or five men to hold them down.

[SeaGypsy]

There is a little known fact of Australian history, glossed over I'm sure before it gets as far as our 1st cousin, the USA.

For much of Australia's colonisation a form of slavery known as the 'flour, tea, sugar and tobacco economy' flourished throughout the interior. The early pioneer farmers would co=opt local aboriginals to work by offering payment in these substances. Alcohol was initially a highly gaurded rarity. When farmer squatters did allow imibing they quickly learned not to. This corruption of the original hunter gatherers continued throughout most of the country through the 1800's, being gradually phased out along the eastern seaboard in the early to mid 1900's but continuing in the remote north until as late as 1974.

Alongside these FTST economies grew a burgeoning church welfare sector. This being split between imbibimg Catholic and teatottalling Lutherans. Churches sprang up in the most remote parts of the country, the 'Missions' became the foundation for what is now the aboriginal outstation and township program. Most of the on farm work is now done with helicopters, machine pumps, motor bikes etc.

When welfare rights were delegated to aboriginals, after the 1967 referendum, rules were drafted to get these people into the system. This is why a genuine remote aboriginal person over age 50 will usually have a birthdate of the 1st of January or July, they are made up dates. By 1974 it is estimated 85% of remote aboriginals were on the system, recieving some kind of payment.

Ok, so in the case of the NT, 100 years ago 98% of aboriginals were living in hunter gatherer groups virtually untouched by white society. 50 years later you have about half living at work on the cattle stations, the other half in mission camps on the fringes of the station. There is no money. Most aboriginals never saw money until welfare kicked in. So in 50 years they moved from nomadic to dependent on the colonialists. In another 50 slavery was converted to cash welfare dependence.
Now over 98% of the money supporting these communities is government.

Alcohol was popularised in the Catholic Mission Stations during and after the second world war.
VB (Victoria Bitter) was trucked and flown in all over the place to supply troops holding the front line against the Japanese to the north. Of course cases of this would find it's way to the stations, the missions and the mission stations. Soldiers would get a laugh out of getting people drunk who had never drunk before, they also taught how to play cards. Missionaries used VB as a way of motivating competion among the young men, handing out beer rations of 2 cans a week to the reliable guys and 4 to the forman and his offsider. Beer became a status object way before people even knew what money or wages were.

From nomad to slave to dependent to alcoholic in 100 years. That is what happened.

Strangely or not, the states which started paying proper wages first, have the least problems with mal adjusted people. There are many highly functional aboriginal people from good families who have normal lives and careers, not many of them are from the tribal language areas. The myth of ongoing hunter gathering by tribal aboriginals is at best a part time affair with a substantial welfare top up or royalty check backing up the Toyota.