You can be sure after the last year of demonisation by police for the crime of defending themselves, the Carvells would have thought several times before putting themselves through that again. In an interview for the next Free Radical Ray Carvell said the earlier ordeal has affected his son Greg.
"It has changed him, there’s no question about that. He’ll never be the same man again. It takes a lot of guts to pull a trigger on somebody. You ask anybody who’s had to do it; it’s not an easy choice to make... The end result of this prosecution is what they do every time somebody defends himself. He is criminalised and punished even if he gets off; he is punished by remuneration. The kind of pressure that goes on to you --where you are made to feel like a criminal -- this is the real thing that takes a toll on you: the whole thing is not clear cut, and I can swear that with everything going on, the criminal has had better treatment than us.""The kind of pressure" the Carvells disgracefully had to endure undoubtedly led them to risk their own lives for ten minutes this morning by calling the police and waiting rather than responding as they did before. Thank goodness there are no reported casualties.
6 comments:
PC - the guy was suicidal. Like, actually suicidal. He went in there with the express purpose of getting the Carvells to shoot him. To my mind, they reacted correctly - defending themselves with batons (two on one with greater reach than suicidal nutter's 30cm kitchen knife). The guy wouldn't have had a chance had he had a crack at them.
The way you've written this, it seems that you think a response more in keeping with the first incident was appropriate? That would seem a mite trigger happy to me...
DenMT
I didn't see that at all in the post.
I I saw was the discraseful way that they had been dealt with for darinfg to defend themselves.
PC - the guy was suicidal. Like, actually suicidal. He went in there with the express purpose of getting the Carvells to shoot him."
When you think about this it proves,in a round about ironic way, that at least the criminals are well aware of what will happen if they attempt to attack the Clavells...;-)
It took the cops 10 minutes to respond to a nut in a gunshop about 1 minute from Mt Eden prison?
WTF? How many cops were on duty that day.
Phil, that's a different gun shop (and it's now a vet clinic). The Carvell's shop is in Penrose, down by the railway bridge.
Den, I'm not saying at all that a response more in keeping with the first incident was appropriate. After all, I wasn't there. What I'm saying (maybe not too clearly) is after the way the Carvells were treated, they're going to be putting themselves in danger by being reluctant to act with the same certainty as they did last time.
The right to self-defence is also being abolished in the UK.
Read this and weep.
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