In the wake of the New Year's eve's sexual assaults Vienna's police chief Gerhard Pürstl advised women not to go out on the streets at night alone, and said that they should avoid suspicious looking areas. The story doesn't say which areas Vienna's police chief considers to be suspicious, although I would love to hear that.
To quote the Game of Thrones, "If you cannot keep the king's peace, perhaps the City Watch should be commanded by someone who can". This is a fair point, and the Green party security spokesman said something along those lines, too. Janos Slynt, the guy in the Game of Thrones to whom those words are addressed, answers something along the lines of "even Aegon the Dragon couldn't keep the king's peace with that budget", which is also a fair point.
What's not a fair point is the idea that half of the population should stay inside after dark, or hire bodyguards. During my lifetime I've heard various police officers and politicians suggest that, and I always keep wondering what the hell are they thinking. Even apart from the lack of factual sense in it (because most sexual assaults happen inside, because men are attacked outside more often than women and any such protection measures should be first aimed at them, because in the situations like the New Year in Cologne the presence of men didn't help much - when there are 10 attackers it doesn't matter much whether there is 1 or 2 of you - because most women cannot afford to hire a bodyguard, and because if all the women could in fact afford to hire a bodyguard some of those bodyguards would turn out to be the people that they should be guarding themselves from), do those people actually realize what they are asking? They are not asking for some easy self-protection measure, they are asking for half of the population to either adhere to a curfew or hire bodyguards.
I can understand that sometimes the police fail, don't have enough resources, have to many criminals to attend to, etc. But when it's actually the case, it's time to arm the population. A gun is a lot cheaper than a bodyguard, and a lot easier to carry around with you.
I don't really think we are quite at that stage yet here in Finland, but if we ever get there, I'd expect the authorities either to put up and keep the peace in the streets, or shut up and start giving out licenses for concealed carrying. Mind you, I vastly prefer the former, but if the authorities can't do it, we need the latter, and not some stupid advice about staying home.
Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Some people should be castrated three times a day with a rusty chainsaw
Russian scams have become more common in Finland and elsewhere lately. They've been common in Russia for a while now, but I had no reason to know about them. Finnish media doesn't write about them much, or at all, because they are never directed at Finns. It's kind of hard to convince a Finn that his kid has gotten into a car accident and a Russian-speaking police officer would like a bribe. Really, I am surprised even Russians believe it.
During the last few months, and especially the last few days, Russian-speaking people in Finland have received phone calls saying their their son was into a bad car accident in Lithuania and needs a lot of money right fucking now (with a young man screaming for his mom in the background, and other theatrics). They have posted about it on the Russian forum here, which is how I know about it; most of them just laughed it off, because this kind of thing is easy to laugh off when you have no children, or your only child is a daughter, or your son is just in the process of learning to eat baby food.
Today, however, I've heard something beyond all imagination, and not from a forum - from the blog of a real-life friend.
Her elderly parents (in Russia) got a phone call, ostensibly from their local health center, saying that the father's blood test shows he has a very severe case of leukemia. His own doctor could not speak to them because her husband just got murdered; they got transfered from one person to another until they got some famous Kremlin oncologist. They were told that their only hope is an experimental treatment that costs 360 000 rubles (9251 euro).
Luckily they called their daughter, she went to the health center, found out that the test is ok and the doctor and her husband is ok, and the whole thing was a scam, etc.
Just imagine those assholes. Sort of makes me wish that leukemia on the scammers, along with the gangrene of all protruding appendages, castration with a rusty chainsaw and porcupine in the anus.
During the last few months, and especially the last few days, Russian-speaking people in Finland have received phone calls saying their their son was into a bad car accident in Lithuania and needs a lot of money right fucking now (with a young man screaming for his mom in the background, and other theatrics). They have posted about it on the Russian forum here, which is how I know about it; most of them just laughed it off, because this kind of thing is easy to laugh off when you have no children, or your only child is a daughter, or your son is just in the process of learning to eat baby food.
Today, however, I've heard something beyond all imagination, and not from a forum - from the blog of a real-life friend.
Her elderly parents (in Russia) got a phone call, ostensibly from their local health center, saying that the father's blood test shows he has a very severe case of leukemia. His own doctor could not speak to them because her husband just got murdered; they got transfered from one person to another until they got some famous Kremlin oncologist. They were told that their only hope is an experimental treatment that costs 360 000 rubles (9251 euro).
Luckily they called their daughter, she went to the health center, found out that the test is ok and the doctor and her husband is ok, and the whole thing was a scam, etc.
Just imagine those assholes. Sort of makes me wish that leukemia on the scammers, along with the gangrene of all protruding appendages, castration with a rusty chainsaw and porcupine in the anus.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The worst drinking game ever
A friend of my mom's, herself a Russian-born woman, once said "I'd believe anything they'd say about Russia, even if they say that nowadays bears eat people in the streets". The longer I live the more I realize how right she was.
I keep following the story of the Lame Horse nightclub that burned down in Perm almost two weeks ago. If the story were a movie, I would laugh at it as unrealistic.
Unfortunately it's not a movie, it's a horrible human tragedy. None of those people deserved to die there, not even the owner.
Inevitably, though, for the people who did know anyone involved the sense of tragedy slowly dissipates, and the whole thing starts resembling a drinking game. Drink once for every official who got fired afterwards, drink twice for every violation the club committed, drink three times for every person crimilally charged... Drink once for every firework whose instructions were not read because they were in Chinese, drink twice for every firework whose instructions were in Russian and said "for outdoor use only" that got used inside nevertheless.
The findings, so far (might change as the investigation proceeds):
- The club was on the first floor of an apartment building. The premises were owned by the Ministry of Defense, and rented out illegally.
- On the paper, the place was a cafe for 50 persons, with an area of 460 m² and huge windows. In reality it held 400 people on the most crowded nights (which the fire night luckily wasn't), had no windows to speak of and was 660 m². The extra 200 m² appeared and the windows disappeared when they moved and rebuilt the wall. Nobody admits having ever received any rent for the extra square footage, or metrage, and none of the inspectors noticed it.
- Emergency exits? We don't need any fucking emergency exits! We have those huge windows, just look at this paper! (OK, there was one unmarked extra exit that only the staff knew about.)
- The first fire inspection paper was signed in 2003 by a person who got fired from the position of a fire inspector in 2002.
- The ceiling was made of twigs and highly flammable polystyrene that was so poisonous that it took people a couple of breaths to pass out.
- The wiring was under the polystyrene, so the lights immediately went out. Emergency lights? What's that?
- Most employees were not officially working there.
- Come to think of it, the place didn't really exist, at least not as far as the tax office was concerned.
- The police who were investigating where the fireworks came from found 700 cubic meters of fireworks in a plastics factory in Chelyabinsk, where they were stored without any fire safety measures. They also believe that 120 tons of fireworks are being stored in a research center called "Geodesy" in a Moscow suburb, and that this is where the nightclub fireworks came from. They'd like to test this hypothesis, but the research center police is not letting them in. The research center in fact happens to be an artillery range and has nothing to do with any geodesy.
Stop it, I can't drink that much.
I keep following the story of the Lame Horse nightclub that burned down in Perm almost two weeks ago. If the story were a movie, I would laugh at it as unrealistic.
Unfortunately it's not a movie, it's a horrible human tragedy. None of those people deserved to die there, not even the owner.
Inevitably, though, for the people who did know anyone involved the sense of tragedy slowly dissipates, and the whole thing starts resembling a drinking game. Drink once for every official who got fired afterwards, drink twice for every violation the club committed, drink three times for every person crimilally charged... Drink once for every firework whose instructions were not read because they were in Chinese, drink twice for every firework whose instructions were in Russian and said "for outdoor use only" that got used inside nevertheless.
The findings, so far (might change as the investigation proceeds):
- The club was on the first floor of an apartment building. The premises were owned by the Ministry of Defense, and rented out illegally.
- On the paper, the place was a cafe for 50 persons, with an area of 460 m² and huge windows. In reality it held 400 people on the most crowded nights (which the fire night luckily wasn't), had no windows to speak of and was 660 m². The extra 200 m² appeared and the windows disappeared when they moved and rebuilt the wall. Nobody admits having ever received any rent for the extra square footage, or metrage, and none of the inspectors noticed it.
- Emergency exits? We don't need any fucking emergency exits! We have those huge windows, just look at this paper! (OK, there was one unmarked extra exit that only the staff knew about.)
- The first fire inspection paper was signed in 2003 by a person who got fired from the position of a fire inspector in 2002.
- The ceiling was made of twigs and highly flammable polystyrene that was so poisonous that it took people a couple of breaths to pass out.
- The wiring was under the polystyrene, so the lights immediately went out. Emergency lights? What's that?
- Most employees were not officially working there.
- Come to think of it, the place didn't really exist, at least not as far as the tax office was concerned.
- The police who were investigating where the fireworks came from found 700 cubic meters of fireworks in a plastics factory in Chelyabinsk, where they were stored without any fire safety measures. They also believe that 120 tons of fireworks are being stored in a research center called "Geodesy" in a Moscow suburb, and that this is where the nightclub fireworks came from. They'd like to test this hypothesis, but the research center police is not letting them in. The research center in fact happens to be an artillery range and has nothing to do with any geodesy.
Stop it, I can't drink that much.
Friday, December 04, 2009
And now for some statistics
Decided to check out the statistics on crime vs. race in the US cities. While doing so picked up some interesting trivia, and added more stuff to the table (nativity, language, education, median household income and poverty rate).
There are 34 cities with more than half a million population in the US. One of them, Chicago, still hasn't learned to calculate its crime rate, so I didn't include it.
I was not sure whether to count hispanics separately, as used to be traditional, or together with whatever race they actually are, so I did both, like the US Census Bureau. The population data come from the American Community Survey, which is a survey they do to complement the data between the censuses. For one city, Louisville, I had to make up the numbers of non-hispanic whites, because it wasn't available, but it was easy and correct to about one percentage point, because they don't really have almost any hispanics there.
The crime data are FBI's for 2007. The numbers are crime rates for 100000 people.
The table is sortable.
I'll write more comments later, but here are the first few:
- The first thing that surprised me was how few people claim to be of two or more races, in comparison with what you see in the streets. Except in Honolulu, where they don't seem to care.
- I'd known that there is a negative correlation between the number of hispanics and the violent crime rate, but I didn't realize it was that strong.
- The correlation between the percentage of people below the poverty line and violent crime is not nearly as strong as I expected.
- Some things are kind of obvious: the positive correlation between number of blacks and crime is well known, and the negative correlation between the number of immigrants and crime rates is understandable too: you come to the US, you wanna move somewhere nice, as opposed to Detroit. Some things are quite interesting, though: for example Louisville is much poorer than Boston, much blacker, and very much less educated, yet much safer. El Paso is a very poor, very hispanic and very safe city.
- It's interesting that the cities with a non-hispanic white majority tend towards the middle of the table when ranked by safety.
There are 34 cities with more than half a million population in the US. One of them, Chicago, still hasn't learned to calculate its crime rate, so I didn't include it.
I was not sure whether to count hispanics separately, as used to be traditional, or together with whatever race they actually are, so I did both, like the US Census Bureau. The population data come from the American Community Survey, which is a survey they do to complement the data between the censuses. For one city, Louisville, I had to make up the numbers of non-hispanic whites, because it wasn't available, but it was easy and correct to about one percentage point, because they don't really have almost any hispanics there.
The crime data are FBI's for 2007. The numbers are crime rates for 100000 people.
The table is sortable.
I'll write more comments later, but here are the first few:
- The first thing that surprised me was how few people claim to be of two or more races, in comparison with what you see in the streets. Except in Honolulu, where they don't seem to care.
- I'd known that there is a negative correlation between the number of hispanics and the violent crime rate, but I didn't realize it was that strong.
- The correlation between the percentage of people below the poverty line and violent crime is not nearly as strong as I expected.
- Some things are kind of obvious: the positive correlation between number of blacks and crime is well known, and the negative correlation between the number of immigrants and crime rates is understandable too: you come to the US, you wanna move somewhere nice, as opposed to Detroit. Some things are quite interesting, though: for example Louisville is much poorer than Boston, much blacker, and very much less educated, yet much safer. El Paso is a very poor, very hispanic and very safe city.
- It's interesting that the cities with a non-hispanic white majority tend towards the middle of the table when ranked by safety.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Disqualified from human race?
Stories like these (this link really could cause you nightmares, think before you click) occasinally make me wonder whether I am wrong in my disapproval of death penalty.
Short summary: Robert Williams forced his way into a woman's apartment, raped and tortured her for 19 hours, threw bleach in her face, slashed her, made her swallow lots of Tylenol (she did, and it caused liver failure), tried to make her gouge her own eyes out with a knife (she didn't, try to kill herself instead, failed), then when she lost consciousness, tied her down, set her apartment on fire and left. She regained consciousness, melted her restraints on the fire, and escaped. He, being apparently way on the wrong side of the IQ bell curve, immediately used her ATM card in an ATM with a video camera, and was arrested a week later during a burglary in Queens.
It's not that I think that all rapists should be killed. I am sure that most rapist are just people like everyone else (uhm, not really) and that after a few years of prison most of them are capable of understanding that what they did was wrong, or in any case that the price/performance ratio of this kind of fun is rather poor.
It's when rape becomes one of the least serious crimes on the list that I start wondering whether they should be in fact disqualified from human race for shoving.
Let's see what else Mr. Williams has accomplished in his 31-year-old life. Apart from raping, torturing, mutilating and trying to kill that particular woman:
- in 1996 he shot a neighbor 4 times while trying to rob him of a chain. The neighbor survived, and so, unfortunately, did Williams. He got 8 years for the effort.
- during the 8 years in prison, he has assaulted other inmates and guards, and thrown shit at people. He committed 28 infractions and was denied parole 3 times. In the end the parole board had to let him out. They wrote in his file "as a candidate for your release at this time, your readiness is in doubt" when they released him.
- he was also tried for attempted murder as a juvenile. The outcome of this trial is sealed, and I am sure some people are wrongly accused, but somehow I doubt he was a just choir boy in the wrong place.
- he has committed unprovoked assault on somebody in a street a couple of years ago.
- he was arrested six days after the rape, at he scene of a burglary in Queens. Just passing by, I am sure.
This is not a post in favor of death penalty, but I think it's quite enough here to figure out that this guy is never going to become a real person. Not to the point of deserving be released, and not to the point of deserving any human contact. I just hope that when he is convicted, they put him in a single cell. Your average rapists and murderers don't deserve that for a roommate.
(Yes, I am aware that I am getting ahead of the events, and he is just a suspect so far. However, when a suspect has been identified by the victim, a neighbor and an ATM camera, and left some of his DNA on the scene, I think I am justified in making an educated guess on the outcome of the trial.)
Short summary: Robert Williams forced his way into a woman's apartment, raped and tortured her for 19 hours, threw bleach in her face, slashed her, made her swallow lots of Tylenol (she did, and it caused liver failure), tried to make her gouge her own eyes out with a knife (she didn't, try to kill herself instead, failed), then when she lost consciousness, tied her down, set her apartment on fire and left. She regained consciousness, melted her restraints on the fire, and escaped. He, being apparently way on the wrong side of the IQ bell curve, immediately used her ATM card in an ATM with a video camera, and was arrested a week later during a burglary in Queens.
It's not that I think that all rapists should be killed. I am sure that most rapist are just people like everyone else (uhm, not really) and that after a few years of prison most of them are capable of understanding that what they did was wrong, or in any case that the price/performance ratio of this kind of fun is rather poor.
It's when rape becomes one of the least serious crimes on the list that I start wondering whether they should be in fact disqualified from human race for shoving.
Let's see what else Mr. Williams has accomplished in his 31-year-old life. Apart from raping, torturing, mutilating and trying to kill that particular woman:
- in 1996 he shot a neighbor 4 times while trying to rob him of a chain. The neighbor survived, and so, unfortunately, did Williams. He got 8 years for the effort.
- during the 8 years in prison, he has assaulted other inmates and guards, and thrown shit at people. He committed 28 infractions and was denied parole 3 times. In the end the parole board had to let him out. They wrote in his file "as a candidate for your release at this time, your readiness is in doubt" when they released him.
- he was also tried for attempted murder as a juvenile. The outcome of this trial is sealed, and I am sure some people are wrongly accused, but somehow I doubt he was a just choir boy in the wrong place.
- he has committed unprovoked assault on somebody in a street a couple of years ago.
- he was arrested six days after the rape, at he scene of a burglary in Queens. Just passing by, I am sure.
This is not a post in favor of death penalty, but I think it's quite enough here to figure out that this guy is never going to become a real person. Not to the point of deserving be released, and not to the point of deserving any human contact. I just hope that when he is convicted, they put him in a single cell. Your average rapists and murderers don't deserve that for a roommate.
(Yes, I am aware that I am getting ahead of the events, and he is just a suspect so far. However, when a suspect has been identified by the victim, a neighbor and an ATM camera, and left some of his DNA on the scene, I think I am justified in making an educated guess on the outcome of the trial.)
Friday, May 30, 2008
Note to self: just punch them
Seppo Lehto got 2 years 4 months for many counts of defamation and libel (it seems to be the same offense here).
I don't doubt that Lehto has insulted and defamed pretty much everything that moved, and I do think that libel should be a criminal offense. But 2 years 4 months? In Finland?
For comparison, the Wikipedia article that refers to the statistics from the year 2002 says that for an aggravated battery, 62% got a suspended sentence, 2% got community service and 37% got a prison sentence, and the average suspended sentence was 12.5 months, and the average prison sentence was 18.1 month.
Aggravated battery in Finland is a battery that causes a serious injury, is dangerous to one's life, is done in a cruel and unusual way or is done with a deadly weapon.
OK, granted, those are sentences for one aggravated battery, and Seppo Lehto committed many defamations, but damn, there should be some sense of proportion. Something is seriously wrong when defaming people on the Internet brings a longer sentence than punching those same people in the nose would.
I don't doubt that Lehto has insulted and defamed pretty much everything that moved, and I do think that libel should be a criminal offense. But 2 years 4 months? In Finland?
For comparison, the Wikipedia article that refers to the statistics from the year 2002 says that for an aggravated battery, 62% got a suspended sentence, 2% got community service and 37% got a prison sentence, and the average suspended sentence was 12.5 months, and the average prison sentence was 18.1 month.
Aggravated battery in Finland is a battery that causes a serious injury, is dangerous to one's life, is done in a cruel and unusual way or is done with a deadly weapon.
OK, granted, those are sentences for one aggravated battery, and Seppo Lehto committed many defamations, but damn, there should be some sense of proportion. Something is seriously wrong when defaming people on the Internet brings a longer sentence than punching those same people in the nose would.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Holy ass!
General Butt Naked returned to Liberia and confessed to killing about 20000 people during its civil war.
"Damn," - I thought, - "if my parents called me Butt Naked, I'd probably become a homicidal maniac too." But no, this guy was originally called Milton Blayee, and earned the Butt Naked nickname for killing people without any clothes on. (He was not wearing any clothes, not his victims. Or maybe they too. Who knows.)
One of the activities he did while naked was sacrificing children and eating their hearts. For luck. I know politicians demand that people should make sacrifices during a war, but I didn't know somebody took this quite that literally.
Later Mr. Ass found God and became an evangelical Christian preacher in Ghana. I can imagine that his sermons on what exactly a good Christian is not supposed to do are quite graphic and colorful.
All that right when Helsingin Sanomat just told us that there were more murder and manslaughter per person in Lappi than in West and Central Africa.
Let's see. Liberia: 3,195,935 people (now), 250 000 killed during 1989-2003 (Butt wasn't the only participant). That would make 7822 killings per 100000 people during the whole time, about 559 a year. Lappi has just above 6 killings per year per 100000 people.
But of course, the killing done during a war does not qualify as crime. Logical in a way, but how do you count murder and manslaughter during a war? And let's face it, sacrificing children and eating their hearts while naked does not quite conform to the Finnish idea of warfare. The Geneva Convention says that you have to wear a uniform to be a legitimate soldier. Their standards of uniforms are quite lax, an armband would be enough, but I am pretty sure that a heart sticking out of a naked combatant's mouth still doesn't qualify.
"Damn," - I thought, - "if my parents called me Butt Naked, I'd probably become a homicidal maniac too." But no, this guy was originally called Milton Blayee, and earned the Butt Naked nickname for killing people without any clothes on. (He was not wearing any clothes, not his victims. Or maybe they too. Who knows.)
One of the activities he did while naked was sacrificing children and eating their hearts. For luck. I know politicians demand that people should make sacrifices during a war, but I didn't know somebody took this quite that literally.
Later Mr. Ass found God and became an evangelical Christian preacher in Ghana. I can imagine that his sermons on what exactly a good Christian is not supposed to do are quite graphic and colorful.
All that right when Helsingin Sanomat just told us that there were more murder and manslaughter per person in Lappi than in West and Central Africa.
Let's see. Liberia: 3,195,935 people (now), 250 000 killed during 1989-2003 (Butt wasn't the only participant). That would make 7822 killings per 100000 people during the whole time, about 559 a year. Lappi has just above 6 killings per year per 100000 people.
But of course, the killing done during a war does not qualify as crime. Logical in a way, but how do you count murder and manslaughter during a war? And let's face it, sacrificing children and eating their hearts while naked does not quite conform to the Finnish idea of warfare. The Geneva Convention says that you have to wear a uniform to be a legitimate soldier. Their standards of uniforms are quite lax, an armband would be enough, but I am pretty sure that a heart sticking out of a naked combatant's mouth still doesn't qualify.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Acid attacks
Maybe somebody should write a manual for the really stupid criminals. One advice would be: "if you purchase hydrochloric acid in order to make bombs, don't throw that acid in the face of total strangers on the subway right in front of a surveillance camera. This attracts a bit of unnecessary attention, increases the likelihood of being caught, makes for pretty good evidence in the court of law, and besides you'll run out of acid that way."
That's what happened in Rouen on New Year's Eve. Three boys aged 14-15 saw a girl on the subway, tried to harass her a bit but got no response, and threw some hydrochloric acid in her face. This did indeed elicit a bit of a response, even from the police. The response might be up to 7 years of prison, and the conviction is likely, considering that they did it in front of a surveillance camera.
Now it turns out that the acid was meant for tiny little homemade bombs. The kind that make a lot of smoke and throw acid around in the radius of a few meters. Isn't it lovely?
As an aside: how are people like that not afraid of their victims? Or are they? I mean, even I found myself idly wondering whether or not you can construct an enema from materials that would hold acid, and administer it to the offenders, and what the result would be, and I don't even know any of the participants. For all we know the poor girl might have already designed and made such a device and be waiting for them with it. In any case they won't ever be able to be sure.
In any case I wish the boys a really painful accident in their next handling of acid. Hopefully resulting in a Darwin award.
On a related note: in London last week five teenagers raped a 16-year-old girl a poured lye all over her in order to destroy DNA evidence. One of them has already been arrested. The article says "poured caustic soda over her, but it leaves to everyone's imagination where else they must have poured it to remove the DNA evidence from rape.
Ugh. Hope this doesn't become a trend.
Maybe I should invest in a toilet plunger company, for the times when we won't be able to buy any acid, lye, drain cleaner or suchlike anymore.
That's what happened in Rouen on New Year's Eve. Three boys aged 14-15 saw a girl on the subway, tried to harass her a bit but got no response, and threw some hydrochloric acid in her face. This did indeed elicit a bit of a response, even from the police. The response might be up to 7 years of prison, and the conviction is likely, considering that they did it in front of a surveillance camera.
Now it turns out that the acid was meant for tiny little homemade bombs. The kind that make a lot of smoke and throw acid around in the radius of a few meters. Isn't it lovely?
As an aside: how are people like that not afraid of their victims? Or are they? I mean, even I found myself idly wondering whether or not you can construct an enema from materials that would hold acid, and administer it to the offenders, and what the result would be, and I don't even know any of the participants. For all we know the poor girl might have already designed and made such a device and be waiting for them with it. In any case they won't ever be able to be sure.
In any case I wish the boys a really painful accident in their next handling of acid. Hopefully resulting in a Darwin award.
On a related note: in London last week five teenagers raped a 16-year-old girl a poured lye all over her in order to destroy DNA evidence. One of them has already been arrested. The article says "poured caustic soda over her, but it leaves to everyone's imagination where else they must have poured it to remove the DNA evidence from rape.
Ugh. Hope this doesn't become a trend.
Maybe I should invest in a toilet plunger company, for the times when we won't be able to buy any acid, lye, drain cleaner or suchlike anymore.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Guns don't shoot balls. People shoot balls.
How not to do armed robbery:
A man comes into a convenience store, threatens the clerk with a gun, demands money, gets the money, demands cigarettes, puts the gun into his pants, pulls the trigger.
The man takes the money and runs, the clerk reports armed robbery by a man who shot himself in the balls, the man calls an ambulance about the balls, the ambulance and the police arrive.
The article does not say whether or not the injury was severe enough to improve the local gene pool.
A man comes into a convenience store, threatens the clerk with a gun, demands money, gets the money, demands cigarettes, puts the gun into his pants, pulls the trigger.
The man takes the money and runs, the clerk reports armed robbery by a man who shot himself in the balls, the man calls an ambulance about the balls, the ambulance and the police arrive.
The article does not say whether or not the injury was severe enough to improve the local gene pool.
Monday, January 07, 2008
For fuck's sake!
People who like to talk about immigration, occasionally myself included, tend to talk about the problematic groups. This is understandable: the people who are concerned about the security issues are primarily interested in the groups that pose a high risk with regard to crime and terrorism, the people who are concerned about humanitarian issues are interested in the groups that need help, the people who are concerned about the financial issues are counting the unemployed and the people who wish to show how tolerant they are feel it's a bit lame to preach about the tolerance towards, say, the Norwegians.
It's quite OK, really. The problem is not that people want to talk about the specific groups. The problem is that they tend to refer to those groups as "immigrants" and disregard all other immigrants as a marginal phenomenon. Since all other immigrants tend to include the majority of immigrants, this makes all the conversations about statistics quite surreal.
The normal modus operandi of the anti-immigration folks:
1. Point out, more or less correctly, the problems of the highly problematic groups.
2. Look up the immigration statistics concerning all immigrants, and in some cases also some Finns.
3. Faint in horror.
The normal modus operandi of the pro-immigration folks:
1. Look up some statistics concerning all immigrants.
2. Claim that all the immigrant groups are doing OK, since on average they do, unless they don't and you can somehow blame it on the Finns, in which case:
3. Claim that all the immigrant groups are doing badly, and blame it on the Finns.
Pointing out the facts works, but only temporarily. Still I'll try one more time:
First of all, the number quoted recently by HS: 25900 people have moved to Finland last year. No, this really doesn't mean that 25900 Somalis armed with Kalashnikovs and screaming "Allahu Akbar" have immigrated to Finland. This doesn't even mean that 25900 of anyone have immigrated to Finland. This is the number of people who have moved to Finland after living somewhere else. Fairly many of whom are, not very surprisingly, Finns.
I don't have the breakdown for 2007, but the latest year for which I do have the breakdown, 2004, had 20333 people move in: 11511 foreigners and 8822 Finns. The rates might have changed, but hardly a lot.
Tilastokeskus has the breakdown by the country from where people move, for 2006 when 22451 person has moved to Finland. 11580 were from the other EU countries, 4229 from the rest of Europe (which included Turkey), 1272 from Africa, 1116 from North America, 377 from South America, 3460 from Asia. All these numbers include Finns returning from those countries.
From Väestörekisteri, for 31.12.06:
1. There are 5276955 people living in Finland
2. 121739 are foreigners, which makes them 2.3% of the population.
3. 158599 have a native language that is neither Finnish nor Swedish nor Saame, and probably are or used to be foreigners, which makes them 3% of the population. This statistic is probably strongly skewed by not taking into account Finnish- and Swedish-speaking immigrants.
4. 42420 foreigners are from EU, which makes them 34.8% of the foreigners.
5. 25314 foreigners are from Russia, which makes them 20.8% of the foreigners.
6. 16748 are from Somalia, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Bosnia, which
makes then 13.8% of the foreigners
7. 34896 speak Somali, Arabic, Kurdish, Albanian, Turkish and Persian as their native languages, which makes them 22% of people who are current or former foreigners, and a whole 0.66% of the population of Finland.
I am not saying all this to shut up the people who are concerned about minorities with high rates of crime and/or jihadist activity. It's better to be concerned now when they are few and far between, then in the distant future when burning cars becomes a regional sport in the sensitive neighborhoods and you need to take your belt off and go through a metal detector to get into a public library. Also, the fact that such a tiny group is responsible for such a high percentage of Turku's violent crime probably means that the problems are very severe indeed.
I am saying this because I am sick and tired of people freaking out every time they see any statistic that mentions immigration. It is quite right to be concerned about crime, terrorism, and political Islam - just remember that a random person in Tilastokeskus's statistic of people moving into Finland is a lot more likely to be a Lutheran than a Muslim.
(Sorry for mentioning the groups that I deem likely to be responsible for the surge of the violent crime in Turku. I don't have the statistics by country, but again, I would be very surprised if many of the culprits turned out to be Danish and Japanese, and I would immediately write about it here; occasionally shit does happen, and everyone remembers at least one Danish murderer in Finland. The reason I am sorry for mentioning the ones I mentioned is that it is quite possible that only members of some of these groups are responsible, and the whole crime surge has happened without, for example, a contribution of a single Iranian.)
It's quite OK, really. The problem is not that people want to talk about the specific groups. The problem is that they tend to refer to those groups as "immigrants" and disregard all other immigrants as a marginal phenomenon. Since all other immigrants tend to include the majority of immigrants, this makes all the conversations about statistics quite surreal.
The normal modus operandi of the anti-immigration folks:
1. Point out, more or less correctly, the problems of the highly problematic groups.
2. Look up the immigration statistics concerning all immigrants, and in some cases also some Finns.
3. Faint in horror.
The normal modus operandi of the pro-immigration folks:
1. Look up some statistics concerning all immigrants.
2. Claim that all the immigrant groups are doing OK, since on average they do, unless they don't and you can somehow blame it on the Finns, in which case:
3. Claim that all the immigrant groups are doing badly, and blame it on the Finns.
Pointing out the facts works, but only temporarily. Still I'll try one more time:
First of all, the number quoted recently by HS: 25900 people have moved to Finland last year. No, this really doesn't mean that 25900 Somalis armed with Kalashnikovs and screaming "Allahu Akbar" have immigrated to Finland. This doesn't even mean that 25900 of anyone have immigrated to Finland. This is the number of people who have moved to Finland after living somewhere else. Fairly many of whom are, not very surprisingly, Finns.
I don't have the breakdown for 2007, but the latest year for which I do have the breakdown, 2004, had 20333 people move in: 11511 foreigners and 8822 Finns. The rates might have changed, but hardly a lot.
Tilastokeskus has the breakdown by the country from where people move, for 2006 when 22451 person has moved to Finland. 11580 were from the other EU countries, 4229 from the rest of Europe (which included Turkey), 1272 from Africa, 1116 from North America, 377 from South America, 3460 from Asia. All these numbers include Finns returning from those countries.
From Väestörekisteri, for 31.12.06:
1. There are 5276955 people living in Finland
2. 121739 are foreigners, which makes them 2.3% of the population.
3. 158599 have a native language that is neither Finnish nor Swedish nor Saame, and probably are or used to be foreigners, which makes them 3% of the population. This statistic is probably strongly skewed by not taking into account Finnish- and Swedish-speaking immigrants.
4. 42420 foreigners are from EU, which makes them 34.8% of the foreigners.
5. 25314 foreigners are from Russia, which makes them 20.8% of the foreigners.
6. 16748 are from Somalia, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Bosnia, which
makes then 13.8% of the foreigners
7. 34896 speak Somali, Arabic, Kurdish, Albanian, Turkish and Persian as their native languages, which makes them 22% of people who are current or former foreigners, and a whole 0.66% of the population of Finland.
I am not saying all this to shut up the people who are concerned about minorities with high rates of crime and/or jihadist activity. It's better to be concerned now when they are few and far between, then in the distant future when burning cars becomes a regional sport in the sensitive neighborhoods and you need to take your belt off and go through a metal detector to get into a public library. Also, the fact that such a tiny group is responsible for such a high percentage of Turku's violent crime probably means that the problems are very severe indeed.
I am saying this because I am sick and tired of people freaking out every time they see any statistic that mentions immigration. It is quite right to be concerned about crime, terrorism, and political Islam - just remember that a random person in Tilastokeskus's statistic of people moving into Finland is a lot more likely to be a Lutheran than a Muslim.
(Sorry for mentioning the groups that I deem likely to be responsible for the surge of the violent crime in Turku. I don't have the statistics by country, but again, I would be very surprised if many of the culprits turned out to be Danish and Japanese, and I would immediately write about it here; occasionally shit does happen, and everyone remembers at least one Danish murderer in Finland. The reason I am sorry for mentioning the ones I mentioned is that it is quite possible that only members of some of these groups are responsible, and the whole crime surge has happened without, for example, a contribution of a single Iranian.)
Scary statistics from Turku
Turun Sanomat has published an article about the crime committed by foreign-born people in Turku. The statistics included foreign citizen resident in Turku, foreign-born Finnish citizens, and tourists.
It is no news that on average foreigners commit somewhat more crimes than Finns. Usually, however, the statistics are not as awful as in Turku last year.
About 6% of the residents of Turku are foreign-born. Foreign-born people, however, are the suspects in 34% of sex crimes, 21% of batteries and 37% of robberies and extortions.
As usual, they mention that because of a higher percentage of the young people among the foreign-born population, the somewhat higher level of crime is to be expected. However when they break it down by age, in the 15-20 age group the statistics are even worse: they commit almost 36% of sex crimes, 42% of robberies and extortions, 37% of batteries and almost half of the aggravated batteries in their age group.
The statistic would probably be even more amazing if broken up by the country of birth. Somehow I seriously doubt that those are Swedes and New Zealanders doing all that crime out there. Even though according to a earlier study Russians, Estonians and Swedes in Finland commit a little more crime than native Finns (whereas for example Brits and Germans commit less). Even though from listening to the immigration debates one can conclude otherwise, about 1/3 of the foreigners in Finland are EU citizens, and another 1/3 are the citizens of other civilized and semicivilized countries.
It would be interesting to know all about these people in the Turku crime statistics. Nationality, age, sex, religion, the year they moved to Finland, profession, marital status, educational attainment, who their parents are or were, how many will get convicted, how many of those will get sent back to where they came from, and how many of those who won't will commit more crime.
It is no news that on average foreigners commit somewhat more crimes than Finns. Usually, however, the statistics are not as awful as in Turku last year.
About 6% of the residents of Turku are foreign-born. Foreign-born people, however, are the suspects in 34% of sex crimes, 21% of batteries and 37% of robberies and extortions.
As usual, they mention that because of a higher percentage of the young people among the foreign-born population, the somewhat higher level of crime is to be expected. However when they break it down by age, in the 15-20 age group the statistics are even worse: they commit almost 36% of sex crimes, 42% of robberies and extortions, 37% of batteries and almost half of the aggravated batteries in their age group.
The statistic would probably be even more amazing if broken up by the country of birth. Somehow I seriously doubt that those are Swedes and New Zealanders doing all that crime out there. Even though according to a earlier study Russians, Estonians and Swedes in Finland commit a little more crime than native Finns (whereas for example Brits and Germans commit less). Even though from listening to the immigration debates one can conclude otherwise, about 1/3 of the foreigners in Finland are EU citizens, and another 1/3 are the citizens of other civilized and semicivilized countries.
It would be interesting to know all about these people in the Turku crime statistics. Nationality, age, sex, religion, the year they moved to Finland, profession, marital status, educational attainment, who their parents are or were, how many will get convicted, how many of those will get sent back to where they came from, and how many of those who won't will commit more crime.
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