UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook

An anonymous reader writes "In addition to the 12 arrests from last week, a judge has sentenced 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw and 22-year-old Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan to four years in prison for their failed attempts to use Facebook to incite riots in the UK. The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent. The two men were convicted for using Facebook to encourage violent disorder in their hometowns in northwest England."

Comments

No sense at all

[AvderTheTerrible]

If you are going to make an example of someone, make an example of someone who actually succeeded in using social networking to incite violence and cause damage. These two were just some drunken idiots who thought the riots were cool and wanted to bring them to their town while in a state of inebriation. Fine the hell out of them and make them do some work for the community, no need to take four years of their lives away for something they failed utterly at.

Re:No sense at all

[interkin3tic]

What's up with the apparent urge by the British government to "make an example" out of people? Is it that their voters are angry the riots happened and want blood? Is there a legitimate fear that riots could happen again any time soon? Or is it simply an opportunity for them to look like they are tough on crime, vote for me and we'll protect you from those terrible (fill in the blank with whatever you have an irrational fear of)?

Re:No sense at all

[huiwe]

The voters have been told in rolling news that they should be angry and focus on that. So they probably are. The surprise is the rush to provide all the power the police needs to counter the terrorist threat had provisions that the government still couldn't get into law. This new threat should remedy that. All it took was for the police to literally standby and do nothing, not even using the powers they already had.

Re:No sense at all

[Mushdot]

Blackshaw created a Facebook event entitled 'Smash d[o]wn in Northwich Town' for August 8 but only the police showed up, and arrested him.

He deserved four years for his piss poor organisation.

On a serious note, I think that Blackshaw should perhaps have got two years max (he did create a page which tried to encourage rioting in his home town), but the other bloke perhaps six months for being a drunken dick(he took his page down as soon as he woke up sober.)

However as others have commented I'm sure the sentences will be reduced on appeal once the country has calmed down.

Re:No sense at all

[Ed Black]

The voters have been told in rolling news that they should be angry and focus on that..

How rude and insulting. The voters must be stupid, right?

No. The voters *experienced* the riots and are livid that members of their own communities would betray their own in such a nihilistic orgy of crime costing lives, injuries, homes, at least hundreds of jobs (of people/families in their own communities, not of the banks or politicians) and costing millions upon millions of pounds when the country is facing austerity measures, for entertainment and to put a flat screen tv and an xbox in their front room.

"Told they should be angry". Perhaps if you were injured, or your workplace* and/or home** was burned down, or your community had lots of people hurt, homeless and jobless and was looking down the barrel of rebuilding the town when it was facing cuts in every public service, you might think it warranted a serious deterrent for or at least removal of rioters, for however long is appropriate under the law.

Even if they aren't "mindless zombies controlled by the press".

Perhaps if it was YOU looking at your wrecked community or even life, you might think a little pause for thought was warranted before people labelled you malleable and stupid.

*Lots of places can't afford good insurance now btw
**Nobody can afford home insurance in the kind of deprived areas where homes were burnt down.

Re:No sense at all

[gmccloskey]

I think you are confusing some of the political unrest from the 80s with the self-serving mindless violence of recent weeks.
It is absolutely true to say that government cuts are affecting national and local funding for all citizens, and they are affecting deprived areas. However, these cuts have only come in to effect fully from April this year. The unemployment and illiteracy have been at those levels for a long time, including during the boom years of 1995-2005, and during the previous Labour administration. It is illogical to say that the currently limited impacts of the austerity measures are giving people cause to riot. If you look at the actual activity during the riots, it didn't include political protest, marches, speeches or any other normal signs of protest by ordinary people. It did include a relatively large number of groups causing criminal damage, violence and commiting flagrant acts of theft - typically of high value goods and big name brands. This was theft on a large scale, enabled by breakdown in normal social barriers.
The government is planning to reduce both front and back office police numbers, however these cuts have not taken place yet to any extent. Police numbers are at almost record levels. The police didn't retreat to protect stations, they deployed in the areas that they thought needed protection. However the mobile hoards, enabled by SMS and social networks, just moved to new sites, typically after a short skirmish. In short, asymmetric confrontation and overwhelming numbers. Once the scale of the problem was understood (a d a few politicians returned from holiday) they brought in an extra 16000 police for London alone - an increase of approximately 25% on the normal force. This managed to suppress most of the activity.
There are currently reportedly over 1000 people arrested, and the MPS have suggested that possibly another 2000 will be, once the CCTV and other evidence is analysed. This is hardly tiny by any one's measure.
As for brutal policing, the MPS have been negatively criticised for not being tough enough in the first few days, and they adjusted their tactics subsequently. They have not however used plastic bullets, water cannon, tear gas or any other large scale crowd suppression measures. This is not brutal. If you want to see 'firm' policing, ask the French.
As for fixing problems on the ground, the previous administration spent 10s of billions over more than a decade on enhanced social benefits and programmes for the disadvantaged. While it has doubtless helped many, it has also raised a generation that expects to live off the state, spurn education and employment, contribute nothing in return except vocal occasionally violent protest about how they are not provided enough.

Re:Overturned on appeal, most likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Half agree, half disagree.

Incitement, aiding and abetting, attempted etc. tend to incur the same standard as the crime itself. (Indeed in terms of such disorder it's often those quietly encouraging others who perpetuate the whole thing). So they should get similar sentences to those actively participating in the riots, if you increase those to 4 years, then these sentences are fine, if on the other hand they're all getting fines and suspended sentences then these are excessive.

Re:Off with their...

[phantomfive]

I almost was going to vote for you, then I read your sig.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[gnasher719]

Where is the limit with political speech ? Is that forbidden to state the opinion that violent action is the only way to bring change in a corrupt system ? Not that I defend this opinion, but the fact that is is censored disturbs me deeply.

I'll use my right of free speech and call you a bloody idiot. This wasn't to "bring change in a corrupt system", this was about having a bit of fun destroying stuff, beating up people, and looting.

Re:Overturned on appeal, most likely.

[DurendalMac]

I think they should be punished, but they didn't actually smash in storefronts, burn down buildings, or throw bricks at cops. I think the end result of the actions should definitely have a bearing on the length of the sentence.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the limit with political speech ? Is that forbidden to state the opinion that violent action is the only way to bring change in a corrupt system ? Not that I defend this opinion, but the fact that is is censored disturbs me deeply.

The limit is in both impact and the success. There shouldn't be a limit on your speech as long as you are nonviolent and not forcing yourself upon others. If you are willing to become violent to make your point, you had better be ready to take it all the way *and win*. See American Revolution (violent, yet successful) vs. current situation in Syria (violent, yet getting mowed down in the streets).

As far as "this is censored" goes... I call bullshit. One of the few things that government is actually supposed to do is to protect its law-abiding citizens from real dangers - most tangibly represented as foreign armies and violent thugs. Physical security is among the most basic responsibilities of a government. The rioting kids are fortunate to be alive at the same time as the most convenient and far-reaching communications breakthroughs in human history. The government isn't telling them they can't have a voice, the government is telling them they can't smash up poor shopkeeps' storefronts to make their point.

Re:Overturned on appeal, most likely.

[fremsley471]

No, it was a judge sitting in Chester crown court. Magistrates have a maximum sentencing power of 6 months. IANAL, just heard that expression repeated a lot recently; many looters who plead guilty are being remanded for sentencing at a later date.

Re:It will get reduced, however . . .

[FireFury03]

It just goes to show that even on the internet you can get in big trouble. A lot of people are learning that you can't get away with "everything" on the internet anymore. I'm surprised these people actually used their name. Haven't they heard of the people that have gotten fired for posting things about their job from there?

I'd suggest that these people (and most of the other people involved in the riots) aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box...

Others crimes

[Anonymous Coward]

The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent.

This could be a pretty big problem.

The Judge himself is pretty much saying here that he considers the punishment to be excessive compared to the crime but that Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan should be punished more because the legal system doesn't want to bother with the rest of the criminals.
Well, it is not exactly his wording and it might not be that way in this particular case but I have seen that kind of reasoning in other cases and I seriously doubt that the two boys even would have been arrested if it weren't for a lot of other people running around causing trouble in the UK at the moment.

Compare to the average file sharing case where the plaintiff is punished because he could potentially have distributed a work to 10000 other people.
In those cases it is assumed that the plaintiff has distributed the work to 10 other people and that he should take the punishement for the crimes that those other 10 people did. (Not that it clears them from any legal action in the future.)

Bully for Cameron!

[radio4fan]

Prime Minister David Cameron said:

Mr Cameron said: “What happened on our streets was absolutely appalling behaviour and to send a very clear message that it’s wrong and won’t be tolerated is what the criminal justice system should be doing.

Mr Cameron is no stranger to appalling behaviour, being a former member of the Bullingdon Club, "notorious for its members' wealth and destructive binges". The club song apparently goes: "Buller, Buller, Buller! Buller, Buller, Buller! We are the famous Bullingdon Club, and we don't give a fuck!"

Cameron's 'Buller' escapades include running from the police through the streets of Oxford after a heavy flowerpot was thrown through a restaurant window.

Re:Is this pretty much because..

[BasilBrush]

No they probably won't catch most. There were an awful lot of rioters and looters. But they have arrested nearly 3000 people with 1300 having been in front of the courts so far. And they'll be continuing to track them down for weeks or months to come. So it's not that they don't have people who actually rioted/looted that they can make examples of.

The motivation is obvious. They don't want anyone else to incite a riot. Deterrence being one of the 3 justifications for punishment, and the most important one in this case.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Zouden]

Oh come on.

How exactly would civil unrest against a perceived corrupt political system manifest?

With a political message and marches in the streets, not blatant theft of consumer goods. To illustrate:

This is a political riot.
This is people stealing things because they want to.

The guys in this article started facebook pages called "Smash dwn in Northwich Town" (sic) and "The Warrington Riots". There is nothing political about what went on in the UK.

When you have massive riots in multiple cities, I'd be hard pressed to consider it just reckless lawlessness as entertainment.

Welcome to British youth culture.

Re:Wow?

[Suferick]

They pleaded guilty. That tends to short-cut proceedings a little (no fancy speeches to a jury, questioning of evidence etc)

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Pecisk]

I agree with you, except Syria hardly violent revolution, it was peaceful demonstrations with emotional crowds for sure, but Assad didn't wait for them to turn violent - he just crushed them to show that dissident won't be allowed at any measure. Fact that he tries to do some cynical PR in same time just speaks volumes what he exactly thinks about his nation.

Those people on the top in Syria aren't that afraid from revolution than the fact that they will have to answer about their crimes.

Facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

4 years in primary school would have been more appropriate.

The judge is an idiot

[he-sk]

First of all, research has shown again and again that harsh penalties simply do not work as a deterrent to other offenders.

Secondly, does the judge expect that another riot is around the corner? Who is he trying to deter?

I expect the sentence to be reduced on appeal.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Ed Black]

"civil unrest against a perceived corrupt political system"

Nobody involved cared about that. Seriously - you had to be there, it really was people of various walks of life just grabbing everything out of shops then setting fire to them (then attacking firemen when they tried to rescue the families in the flats above), kicking people half to death, etc. - just going nutz to get stuff and get money and get away with settling scores against specific people or whatever community they disliked.

People being violently and/or sexually assaulted, robbed or even killed in the street. Not bankers, not politicians. Their own.

Not one bank or political institution was touched, only places with Cool Stuff in, and the cars/houses/persons of the working and/or poor people in their own communities.

"a chaotic mess of angry people lashing out"

A chaotic mess of rapturously smiling laughing people taking what they wanted and doing violence to people. Families having their homes torched and their lives endangered, swathes of jobs being ended by businesses being torched when nobody can afford insurance these days.

Killings of people who tried to help the victims, attacks against ambulances trying to treat the victims, attacks against firemen trying to put out fires.

Seriously, I don't know how to explain this convincingly enough without sounding emotive - this is in the place I've grown up in. Don't let people get away with saying it was a political demonstration - I mean you had to be there but seriously it REALLY. WASN'T., I would say what we all saw and endured had no protest component to it whatsoever past about 9pm on the first night - it was just open season for the cannibalistic predators of London to hurt/take from their own.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Cryacin]

OK pal, you must be snorting the cheap home made acid a bit too much, or you're simply speaking from the comfort of your mom's basement outsie of the UK. I can tell you that I am. Let me definitively tell you that these guys aren't political protestors. They are cheap hooligan thugs who enjoy a bit of the old smashy smashy and in and out.

Monday week ago I was caught between the looters and teh police in Lewisham while returning a car. I had rocks and bricks sailing past my head. Then on Tuesday, one of our neighbours decided to make a stand and stop these little pricks from taking his wheelie bin to transport their ill gotten goods by asking them politely not to do it. Their response? They stabbed him. He's in intensive care and may not live.

Last night, we had 3 thugs breaking in to the place next door to us. We called the police and they responded very quickly and arrested the 3 of them. This is the same kind of "protestor" that everyone is talking about. So you know what? NO. These ARE NOT protestors, they're opportunists. The BBC has given them ample opportunity to present a case, and none have been able to do so. The internet is not rife with reason, but rather rampant stupidity on the topic.

This is not society's fault, nor the fault of the police, or the government, but the fault of a generation of bottom feeding scum sucking opportunists that need a harsh lesson in reality dealt to them.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Richard_at_work]

As a British Subject, I'd love to see actual examples of an ASBO being issued for criticism of the government...

Because it's something I've never heard of.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[TheRaven64]

I'm sorry to say that but for an outside European observer the UK is becoming more and more like a totalitarian country. There are cameras everywhere

Let me guess, an outside European perspective gained from reading The Daily Mail? The number of cameras in Britain is massively over exaggerated. The number that's usually thrown around was generated by taking a mile of one of the busiest streets in central London, counting the number of cameras (including speeding cameras and privately owned CCTV cameras inside shops on both sides) and then multiplying that number by the number of miles of roads in Britain.

The more realistic number includes motorway monitoring cameras, which are not recorded, have one person monitoring about 100 of them, and are used to notify radio stations and so on of large traffic jams and dispatch emergency services to accidents. The next highest number is automated speed / red light cameras. The government controlled ones in city centres are operated by the local councils and are mostly being shut down because they provide little benefit and the councils can't afford to operate them.

and face-recognition software is used to identify people on it

Not sure why this is a sign of totalitarianism. Is it less totalitarian if you have a human matching the faces to photographs? The face recognition that's been talked about in the media recently has been matching the faces of people from Facebook who said things like 'I got a new 42" TV in the riots!' to images from shops' CCTV. How evil...

internet and phone serveillance everywhere,

Unless you think The News of the World and Phorm are government agencies, I'm not sure where this comes from.

and all big parties are decidedly right-wing

Bullshit. One of the two parties in our coalition government is still slightly left of centre, and my MEP is from a decidedly left-wing party.

it is still legal in the UK to beat up your children

any UK news source, then you'd see examples of parents being imprisoned and having their children taken into care for this.

Re:And that is the problem in England

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're making some serious exaggerations there, there were a handful of Lords sent to jail over the expenses fiddling (Lord Taylor and Lord Hanningfield are the two that spring to mind), not bus loads.

In terms of sleaze you're about 14 years out-of-date for that. The last election where sleaze was ever a big issue was 1997 when Tony Blair came to power, and the reason that that was a big issue was because it was an easy target for Labour, and an easy one to sell to the tabloids. The last election was mainly fought on the economy and suggestions of a less confrontational style of politics ("I agree with Nick" became fairly well known at the time).

Your last paragraph is a bit of a joke as well, it's nothing like that over here. Yes we're cutting now because of the global financial crisis, but we did very well for the last decade, making a significant amount of money through financial services which is one reason that we were hit quite hard by the financial crisis. However it's nothing like Greece over here, nor Portugal, Spain or Ireland. There's an argument that we're actually probably in a stronger position than France or Germany as well, because due to their stake in the Euro they are having to bail out Greece, Ireland et. al.

Hoodlums aren't at the controls either, yes there were some riots that were disgraceful, but they were brought under control within days and the main reason that they got as bad as they did was due to the Police not going in hard enough initially and a lot of people just deciding that they could get away with it. If they were in control it would still be going on, and there would have been some political motivator behind it. It was just a tiny minority who wanted to get a new TV without paying for it. The international media were quick to sensationalise what were fairly small scale (although destructive riots), but much less was made of the thousands who turned out afterwards to volunteer to clean up the mess.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[2sheds]

Only because it was raining in Scotland.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Cryacin]

Actually, you are referring to a case where disproportinate force was used by a farmer against a 16 year old burglar. The force was him firing a shotgun into the kid, and the disproportion was that he shot him in the back when he was running away for his life, screaming don't shoot me.

This has been widely misinterpreted in the UK that you can't do anything when someone breaks into your house and threatens your life. According to the westminster system, you have the right to use proportionate force against an intruder. Proportionate being the grey zone. Thankfully, a recent case where a family was help up by knifepoint cleared the waters somewhat, as when the father killed the guys with a knife, he eventually got off on self defence because he had an honest and reasonable fear for the safety of his family. David Cameron, our PM, intervened and said that an investigation of clear disproportionate force should be able to be used against an intruder to remove all doubt, although it has been argued that this would simply cause a spiral of violence. However, the judiciary and the legislate have made it quite clear. If your robber is running away, you can't do anything, but if he's entered your home and you have a genuine fear for your life, smash him in the face with a brick.

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Nursie]

There is a difference between demonstrating people who want political change in a non-democratic country, and people who go on a looting rampage in one of the richest democracies in the world.

I do not think that the rioters were trying to achieve change. I have yet to see anything other than people taking stuff and destroying things because they thought they could. Why it seemed like a good idea is something to look into.

It's not even a basic level of morality that's required, a political protest requires at the very least some sort of aim (other than acquisition), wouldn't you say?