UK Street Crime Rise Blamed on iPods

CNET reports that the British Government today attributed the country's 22% rise in street crime to iPod robberies. This has hit CNET close to home. Guy Cocker, a CNET (Gamespot) journalist based in London, was mugged last week. The muggers held 'a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker's head and told him, "we're taking all your stuff"'. CNET's solution to the problem is suggestions on how to conceal your iPod from attackers. These include 'The gaffer tape method,' 'The Coke can method,' and 'The Christopher Walken method.'

Comments

Thank god in a contry

[JamesP]

wthout those baaad baaad guns this would have never happened!

Oh wait...

Re:Thank god in a contry

[0123456]

Why is being murdered with a gun somehow worse than being murdered by having your brains smashed out of your skull with a blunt object? There are far more crimes committed with guns in the UK today than there were a century ago when anyone could buy a gun over the counter and anyone with ten shillings to spare could get a permit to carry one, no questions asked.

The simple fact is that British people murder each other less than most other countries, regardless of what weapons are used. Guns are irrelevant.

Blaming the iPod?

[blcamp]

Really, now... is this the fault of the iPod and not the punk-ass thugs doing this crap?

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace the earplugs with ones with black cables.

Here's a thought

[DrXym]

How about walking around without listening to music the whole time?

Weapon?

[MichaelSmith]

Summary:

The muggers held 'a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker's head

TFA:

His assailants held what felt like a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker's head

For all I know an opened glass coke bottle feels exactly like a semi-automatic weapon when it is pressed into the back of a persons head. The words felt like make all the difference.

Re:Oh, what a wonderful idea.

[LiquidCoooled]

I would reword the grandparent as:

When walking through dodgy parts of town, best to keep your wits about you.

Pumping loud music through your ears when you should be using your senses for protection and information is idiotic at best.

Re:a light touch with the clue stick

[jcr]

this is largely an American idea "the right to bear arms"

Actually, it's an idea from the English common law, which was preserved in America while England abandoned the traditional rights of Englishmen. Before the suppression of the Jacobites, there wasn't much dispute in Britain that free men are entitled to posess arms for their own defense.

In America, we wrote it into our bill of rights, because having just overthrown our king about a decade earlier, we decided that placing a monopoly on armaments in the hands of government was a very dangerous idea.

-jcr

Re:So who is to blame

[theStorminMormon]

Poverty does correlate to higher crime rates. So do a lot of things - like lack of education. Poverty and education do not steal iPods, however.

The GPs point was that even if you have a situation that may be favorable for increasing crime rates, the crimes are still committed by PEOPLE. If you have a libertarian bent, or if you belief in human autonomy at all, then in any given crime you blame the criminal FIRST.

There's a belief out there that those with a more liberal bent tend to eclipse personal responsibility and act as though being poor somehow makes you less responsible for your own actions - less human. The response from those with a more conservative bent (e.g. me) is that if you're poor you have more to gain and less to lose from crime, but this means you have incentive to commit a crime. Having incentive to commit a crime is not the same as being forced to commit a crime. And so I, and many others, would consider the mugger to be responsible for the mugging.

So poverty - which creates incentive - really should be listed as a separate issue then the personal responsibility of those who commit the crimes.

-stormin