Gang of six attack two men in town
Monday 3rd August 2009, 2:59PM BST.
POLICE are hunting a gang of six who attacked two men in Gas Place car park on Saturday night.
One of the victims needed hospital treatment for broken teeth and severe bruising to his face and the other victim suffered minor cuts and bruising.
Detective inspector Alan Guy, of the States force, said: ‘This gang were thought to be in their early twenties and one member was described as being of medium build with a shaven head.
‘He was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and jeans worn in the fashionable, low style. It is believed a young female was with them, aged between 15 and 17.’
Anyone with any information about the attacks should contact the police on 612409 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
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Yet again another sick attack making the streets of jersey unsafer, one thing i can’t understand is, are ther not loads of cameras in that area seeing as it is a car park! also dont the police worry when they see a group of six lads with one girl! if she was being attacked then no one would know! get the cameras working and stop saying there too expensive to run, it will save lives also prevent more car damage!
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I expect that when these men are caught, the full force of the law will be brought upon them to ensure that they never do anything like this again.
I imagine the perpetrators can expect to receive at least six months probation, and if they have past offences of a similar nature then they could be looking at anything up to 40 or even 50 hours community service. That will teach them the error of their ways for sure.
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I no longer venture into town I prefer the safety of Le Pulec. If I offered my idea of a solution to this evil problem I would be called a fascist.
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Nice one Tobias! could’t have put it more succinctly myself, however, chances of finding them – nil.
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Tobias #2 – I agree totally. In fact, as a means of improving community relations, they will probably re-name a street after them
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I have two friends who have both been set upon by young gangs and both have recieved bad injuries, one requiring hospital treatment. We are constantly hearing these stories and how town is becoming more unsafe, the thugs do not car whether their victims are young or old, male or female. However, do you see more of a police presence on the streets, no! They are too busy focusing on generating income and money-making offences like driving offences.
Also, as Jersey is always moaning about the decline in the tourism industry, are stories like these good for an island that has always been percieved as ‘safe’??
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piston broke:
Same here. But I will say this:
If they catch them. Lock them up. Simple as!
Hate what this island has come too now. I can’t even be bothered with town and to be honest I don’t know how anyone else can be!
Lets face it though. We all know the police like to catch real criminals… the “speeding” motorists of Jersey. Easy money standing around pointing a speed gun instead of actually working and solving a crime.
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It’s the same all over the UK, all the attacks are fueled by drink.
The only way you’ll stop it is for society to develop a more sensible approach to drink, which is impossible without radical social change.
In addition, there’s a lot of money to be made by the drinks companies marketing to young people, we now have one, maybe two, generations that have a completely different relationship with alcohol.
When people are drunk they will engage in completely in appropriate activity that they would not normally do.
There’s no quick fix solution, even if you raise the drinking age to 21 that won’t solve it. We have groups of youths drinking in the street, some as young as 13, in my area in the UK. The law does not apply to them it would seem, they get a £60 fine, whoopeeee.
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There was also several altercations around the Weighbridge area, the question is where are the Police? As stated above most of Town is a CCTV hot spot, and I believe the control room is very advanced. What is the point of having all this security and technology if it cannot be implemented? Many of my friends avoid certain areas of Town because of the ‘lout’ mentality which has now taken over. Its pathetic.
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I know a lot of folks who wont be back on hoilday,
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I know what’s needed here, to stop this sort of thing occurring – a great big inflatable football pitch. That should solve all the problems.
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Let’s be honest, as with the UK, if you phone the police about a crowd clearly starting to get out of hand (and potentially ending up as per the story here) then they turn up with lights flashing and sirens blaring and give the crowd plenty of notice to disperse temporarily.
Yet, when it comes to speeding motorists the police will be hidden in little nooks quietly waiting.
Seems to me that a lot of anti-social behaviour that might result in attacks could be nipped in the bud by the police turning up without announcing their imminent arrival!
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What kind of advert is this for potential holiday makers and people thinking of investing in the Island?
In the 1980s and 1990s the police would put out officers on foot to cover six beats in the town and Gas Place was on one of the main town beat areas.
At a week end SoJP could have up to six police officers out on foot patrol, an area car with two police officers aboard, a van with two police officers aboard, plus up to three Traffic cars, each carrying two officers. You also had the now disbanded Motor Cycle Unit on until 2 am.
A night shift at a week end could include up to 25 officers, if you counted the Sergeants and the Inspector. Plus of course you had back up from the Duty Centenier, perhaps a couple of Veignteniers and a number of Connetable’s Officers
In the U.K. where I now live, I’d be lucky if I saw two or three officers in a town the size of St. Helier. (The county is over 1,000 square miles though). Yet I recall in the good old days in Jersey, you’d see police officers and police cars all over the place.
I guess a lot of officers have been hived off to specialist roles in Crime Services, with pro-active and reactive investigators, drugs officers and financial investigators. Yet really speaking the police need to have priorities set for them by the public they serve and not Chief Officers and politicians, doing what they think is best.
In England and Wales, we have Police and Communities Together meetings, where the Neighbourhood Policing Teams consult with the public and community councillors to see what they want.
Believe it or not, in repeated surveys, drugs and major crimes don’t feature highly on the public’s list of priorities. It is more likely to be anti-social behaviour, drunks fighting, treading in dog faeces and people throwing litter, that concern communities here.
Do the police in Jersey consult with the public like this? If not, why not? It may help resolve some of the problems I regularly read about in the J.E.P. like the assaults in Gas Place and the theft from the Red Triangle
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David H – Im sorry but i kind of disagree with what you are saying! There is a massive percentage of people who go out friday and saturday night and get drunk and cause no trouble what so ever! It is a small percentage that insist on making trouble and most of the time it wouldn’t matter if they were drunk or sober, they are just that kind of person!
I had an altercation with about 15 kids in McDonalds. They were all aged between 12 – 16, and decided to abuse some french students that were in there, at first it was verbal but then one of the boys decided to slap one of the french girls! Fair play she slapped him back but i was furious and so started shouting at them saying they should be ashamed of themselves and how they are disrespecting their families and there island and everyone in it by acting like little thugs!! When they began throwing the verbal abuse back my way i just laughed at them! I saw them again on the friday drunk up at Snow Hill and had no hesitation in walking past them, well right through them actually coz they wouldn’t move!
Drunk or sober, people who want trouble will cause it!! Changing a drinking age will not make any difference what so ever!!
More police pressence should definately be an option.
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What’s the betting that when somebody who has had enough,takes one of these little blighters down,they’ll throw the book at the poor devil and he’ll be the bad guy,makes me sick and can only lead to private security and vigilantes,while some fat lazy cop sit’s in a layby waiting to pounce on someone with a dodgy winker light.
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Leah # 12. You are right, the police rush to emergencies in a police car with ‘blues and twos’. If they didn’t and collided with a pedestrian or another vehicle, they’d be ‘hung drawn and quartered’, for not warning the public of their approach.
The way to prevent and deter anti-social behaviour is to deploy officers on foot, in areas known to be ‘hot spots’ for anti-social behaviour. This is often outside well known pubs and clubs at chuck out time. The crime analyst at Police H.Q. would probably be able to give shift supervisors details of locations where trouble can be anticipated – I imagine the public could also tell them as well, but where I live the cops rarely speak to the public (It is a bit difficult when they are always in their cars).
I wouldn’t have thought Gas Place would be a known ‘hot spot’ for crime and disorder – it never used to be.
If the problems on crime and disorder, frequently reported in the J.E.P., are to be resolved, then the communtiy need to engage more with the police – the police need to create the facilities where this can occur more regularly, so they can get constructive feed back from the public on where they want their police officers to be.
By the way Leah, traffic collisons usually cause more injury and death than crime does – that’s why the police sit up in their nooks, waiting to catch speeders.
This could be obviated with the use of static speed cameras at known trouble spots for collisions, realeasing more cops to deal with crime and disorder. In the U.K. the police even employ civilian employees to operate speed camera vans, releasing the cops for other duties where police powers are required.
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Why can’t the Police and Social Services arrange a crackdown period on youths as they do for drink driving.
A simple 2 week period that ANY youth found in a public place under the influence of alcohol will be “escorted” to a receiving place where the parents will be summoned and both the parents and the youth will be interviewed by social services and their names kept on file. If the parents were made aware that they can “get put in the system” because of their youngsters’ behaviour they might think twice about not being responsible for them.
When I see the amount of underage kids opening putting photos of themselves on social networking sites drinking at organised events like this weekend’s Grassroots I wonder what are the organisers of these events doing to stop this. It is not just an offence to sell alcohol to underage at these events it is also an offence for them to be drinking there as well. If we allow so many underage to constantly drink without being stopped then we are condoning it and must also accept their resulting behaviour.
As with the drink driving campaigns a visible strong deterrent must be in place. (come to think of it why not breathalize youngsters at these events and fine the organisers?)
I believe the Police are turning a blind eye to too many of the “less serious” offences. New York used a zero tolerance attitude of policing and it has improved the city – why can’t SoJP have the same zero tolerance attitude as well. Yes it will cause a lot of work for the first few months but the result will be a better behavioured population.
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Paul # 17. In Germany, the Shutzpolizei deal very robustly with anti-social behaviour. They don’t pussy foot around, like they do in the British Isles.
If I recall correctly, if the Shutzpolizei found a youngster under the age of 16, out on the street after 10 pm., the juvenile would be detained, then taken to the police station, where their parents or guardians had to come and collect them.
Senior Police Officers, the Judiciary and senior politicians are shy of using ‘zero tolerance’ and prefer to take a more liberal stance. I can see no cogent arguement as to why this method shouldn’t be adopted – people (adults as well as juveniles) need to know exactly what they can and can’t do.
If they overstep the mark insofar as anti-social behaviour and crime is concerned, they need to know they’ll get their just deserts.
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ZBD, I didn’t make my point very clear on that one sorry. If the call to the police is about large crowds of people starting to become more and more aggressive then there isn’t the need for any desperate rush or sirens… Jersey isn’t that big. I had to call the police once when a fight started up at night. The surrounding roads were quiet and the lights would have sufficed, they could have slowed down just in the last two streets and put the lights off.
Without the data in front of me I wouldn’t be entirely convinced about traffic collisions causing more deaths.
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I agree ZBD 13.
I wonder what it would take for SoJ to listen to their employers, i.e., us the public?
Money talks so…..
In this americanised world of sue or be sued perhaps if we started suing the police each time anyone has been assaulted in a public place then they might wake up and smell the coffee. We pay them to protect and serve so when they don’t protect or serve us surely we have a case to file a claim??
Alternatively the states can employ the soon to be redundant clampers and they can be like the “Guardian Angels” of St Helier
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#19 Hello Leah; see if you can get a copy of the Police Annual Report (try to Google it), this will often include statistics including reported offences against the person (assaults, rapes, murders etc). You can then compare this againt deaths and injuries resultant of road traffic collisions.
Before the late 1980s / early 1990s, when the breathalyser was introduced, Jersey had an horrific record for road traffic collisions resulting in deaths or serious injuries.
Of course there are many offences against the person that I we know aren’t reported – the British Crime Survey estimates that 50% of crime isn’t reported to the police. In view of that I imagine you’ll quite rightly be suspicious of the statistics.
No matter what the crime figures are, in comparison to injuries caused through road traffic collisions, I suspect you and I will be singing from the same hymn book, in wanting to cops to be more robust and more pro active in daeling with anti-social behaviour and crime.
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#20 BS Deluxe
The police, and the government in general, have no legal responsibility for protecting an individual from crime. This has been decided before the courts on numerous ocassions. They are simply there to clean up the mess afterwards. So suing them as a result of falling victim to crime is a non-starter.
As for protecting ‘society’, it’s done on ‘best endeavours’.
Of course we simple citizens could not be trusted to protect ourselves – we might arm ourselves en masse and turn our attentions towards those who rule us. Truly a remarkable change from the days when every male islander was expected to own arms and serve in the militia – training on each Sunday. I know of one property on the east of the island where the deed still states that two loaded muskets are to be kept in the property at all times.
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They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. — Benjamin Franklin
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Please forgive my typographical errors – the speed of the fingers deceives these old eyes. I of couurse meant to say…”in wanting the cops to be more robust…etc”
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Steve C # 22 – With regards to your comment that the police have no legal duty to protect the public, I think you will find this has changed with the stated case of Osman, as decided by the European Court of Human Rights.
Until October 1998 police forces could not be held legally responsible for failings during an investigation.
But this historic case in the European Court of Human Rights overturned that immunity and gave them the same rights as other public bodies.
It was brought by Mulkiye Osman and her son, Ahmet, who was badly injured and his father, Ali, killed in March 1988 by obsessive Paul Paget-Lewis.
The family had repeatedly told the police about attacks on their home believed to be by Paget-Lewis. They wanted to sue, arguing that the police were negligent in not following up the incidents.
When denied, by both the Metropolitan Police and the Court of Appeal, they took their case to Europe, and won compensation against the UK Government of £10,000 each.
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24 ZBD
That’s very interesting.
Maybe that’s what we need. A threat to those who “rule” over us that if they do not do as we have elected them to do then we can sue them for “breach of contract”.
It’s about time the people regained the power and got these civil “servants” working for US again.
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….could Jersey people take this argument to the European Courts considering we are not part of the EEC?
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Leah # 19 Sadly my comments on road fatalities will have been illustrated to you with the recent road traffic collision in St. Martin.
Statistics will invariably show more people are killed an injured on the roads than those caused through physical assaults. Even if figures aren’t wholly accurate, they often do give a fair indication of trends.
The police deal with a multitude of incidents and it often takes a lot of time and effort to resolve them. Road safety is of prime importance and that is why the police put so much effort into this commitment.
It is understood that more needs to be done to deter violence on the streets and I feel sure that the police want to achieve this goal, but to reiterate they have so many other commitments as well.
That said, I still feel that a current priority should be to combat the level of violence and disorder on the streets of St. Helier and indeed in other parishes too. (I am probably telling granny to suck eggs – the cops will already want to do this).
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# 26 B.S. DeLuxe…..Isn’t Jersey a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights? As I was preparing to leave Jersey, when I retired from the police, the Island’s Government were in the throws of getting it’s own human rights legislation – the Human Right (Jersey) Law 2000 …. don’t tell me they didn’t introduce it? (I should Google it…alas I can only get dial up where I live and it takes ages)
Then of course you also have the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. The Island’s authorities would be daft not to follow that, so I imagine the Royal Court may support an action against the police where it can be demonstrated they failed in their duty to protect someone.
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Thanks for the info ZBD. It has been a very sad week for both Guernsey and Jersey where the roads are concerned.
Even today I was very close to being witness to the death of two young children. I’m probably failing to make the point that road accidents are not always due to the driver (something I imagine you’ll know anyway). I know I’m clutching at straws to think the law will ever do anything about pedestrians but in my time I have had dealings with people who use the roads to attempt suicide, I have had dealings with many people whose own stupidity as a pedestrian was the cause of the vehicular collision that nearly took their life.
Something makes me think that if vehicular accidents had their cause investigated more thoroughly and a tougher line was taken against what is simply bad driving (rather than just those that speed) AND against pedestrians who completely disregard common sense that this would be the best line of attack in preventing these tragedies. There seems to be an automatic assumption in a person v car accident that the driver is most likely the cause and that just isn’t always the case.
Todays’ sad story aside, many accidents in the papers in Jersey seem not to be about someone officially speeding but more someone driving at a speed that does not suit the road conditions at the time, or simply just not paying good enough attention to the road and surroundings. Remember the recent story of the young female friends that had two accidents in two days, neither involving any other vehicle? That has to be bad driving and licences should be removed in such cases. I believe attitudes need changing far more than the actions themselves, as changing the attitudes is the best way to change the actions. I hope that makes more sense anyway
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ZBD
I wouldn’t want to punish the police force, but I feel action needs to be taken against those in charge making all the stupid decisions…..as well as the dictatorship running this island.
It is scandalous how much the populace is being ignored.
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Leah # 29 – I hope the police do investigate offences of careless, reckless and dangerous driving; they always used to. They used to have an excellent accident investigation team with state of the art equipment to determine the cause of collisions and sadly, more often than not speed was a major contributory factor. I agree however that a lot has to do with drivers not driving in a manner that is not suitable for the conditions.
B.S. DeLuxe # 30. I definately wouldn’t want to criticise the ‘bobby on the beat’, the average working police officers often try their best in difficult circumstances. It is not easy trying to deal with hostility on the street, in the knowledge that there is very real potential that you could become assaulted yourself when making an arrest.
The Senior Officers are ultimately responsible for setting aims and objectives of their officers. They should also ensure that they have sufficient officers to patrol at the times when they are most likely to be needed and in those locations known to be ‘hot spots’. They need to be leaders and not merely managers and they need to lead from the front….there are senior officers on the Island who are very capable and hopefully they can rise to the task.
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This is shocking. St Helier is geting rougher and rougher. It’s getting like Liverpool or Glasgow -I’m really glad that I don’t live there and can avoid the place most of the time. These girls and their parents should be deported.
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If they want to fight and think they are “hard” when they’re caught send them to Afganistan and see how they get on over there!!
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Cant wait for the day these people will pick on the wrong person,(ie. marshal arts expert)so be warned who ever you are!!Mind you knowing the justice system over here,that person will probably go to prison for defending themselves and get a harsher penalty than the thugs who tried to attack the individual!!
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Windsor Lad # 34. I agree with your comments about the Criminal Justice System (C.J.S.) (Infact saying it is a system is bit of a misnomer).
If people defend themselves against these thugs, they are more likely to fall victim to the so called C.J.S. than their attacker or as is often the case attackers.
The lawyers will highlight the ‘law of rereat’ and how you should run away if possible, rather than hit back. They also speak of using ‘minimum force’, when defending yourself – if only it were that simple.
When you are frightened, you often lash out for all you are worth and you have’nt got time to worry if it is minimum force. You just want your attacker/s to stop.
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“Cant wait for the day these people will pick on the wrong person,(ie. marshal arts expert)”
They’d better not pick on a Battle of Flowers steward then!
Or, worse still, someone from the Martial Islands!
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“He was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and jeans worn in the fashionable, low style.”
Obviously not planning to do a runner, then.
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