BenLynch29
Well-known member
We’ve all heard the news and seen the clips on Facebook and Twitter by now. Not good. Obviously.
So two things here:
(1) there was a story doing the rounds about a ‘Rangers’ bar being firebombed that was blown way out of proportion. Be that as it may, it’s entirely possible that the police in Valencia are using that as an excuse to come down hard on our fans. There’s no evidence I’ve seen anywhere that actually supports the claim that one of our supporters was responsible; just innuendo. That said, given the size of our support over there right now, we would be foolish to think that there aren’t a couple hoops-wearing nutters among our support in Valencia. If, and it’s a big ‘if’, any of our supporters had anything to do with this they ought to be held accountable by both the police as well as our club. People who do this don’t represent our club, and the individual responsible must not be allowed to be associated with our club - and if that means a lifetime ban then so be it.
(2) the images concerning the riot police in Valencia are shocking to all. Sadly, we in America see these images all too often in the age of social media and 24/7 news cycles. However, one of the tools that’s being rolled out to police departments across the country is body cameras. This is as much to protect the police as much as it is to protect the population (ie there’s a verifiable record of both unjustified police brutality as well as justified police actions including shootings). We can’t do anything regarding the police in Valencia or any other city, but we CAN utilize similar technology in wearable video cameras and cell phone cameras. The key to making this effective is (1) have the camera recording at all times when in public so that the full story, not just selected bits, can be examined by all, and (2) the recording should be set up to record directly to the cloud rather than to the local storage on the device. That way if someone tries to destroy the camera as evidence, the video survives - or at least the part until the camera is destroyed.
[EDIT]
A great solution for this is a wearable GoPro camera as demonstrated in the video below. This guy isn’t wearing it, but obviously that’s a trivial detail with GoPro as they’re all wearable.
Stay safe everyone!
So two things here:
(1) there was a story doing the rounds about a ‘Rangers’ bar being firebombed that was blown way out of proportion. Be that as it may, it’s entirely possible that the police in Valencia are using that as an excuse to come down hard on our fans. There’s no evidence I’ve seen anywhere that actually supports the claim that one of our supporters was responsible; just innuendo. That said, given the size of our support over there right now, we would be foolish to think that there aren’t a couple hoops-wearing nutters among our support in Valencia. If, and it’s a big ‘if’, any of our supporters had anything to do with this they ought to be held accountable by both the police as well as our club. People who do this don’t represent our club, and the individual responsible must not be allowed to be associated with our club - and if that means a lifetime ban then so be it.
(2) the images concerning the riot police in Valencia are shocking to all. Sadly, we in America see these images all too often in the age of social media and 24/7 news cycles. However, one of the tools that’s being rolled out to police departments across the country is body cameras. This is as much to protect the police as much as it is to protect the population (ie there’s a verifiable record of both unjustified police brutality as well as justified police actions including shootings). We can’t do anything regarding the police in Valencia or any other city, but we CAN utilize similar technology in wearable video cameras and cell phone cameras. The key to making this effective is (1) have the camera recording at all times when in public so that the full story, not just selected bits, can be examined by all, and (2) the recording should be set up to record directly to the cloud rather than to the local storage on the device. That way if someone tries to destroy the camera as evidence, the video survives - or at least the part until the camera is destroyed.
[EDIT]
A great solution for this is a wearable GoPro camera as demonstrated in the video below. This guy isn’t wearing it, but obviously that’s a trivial detail with GoPro as they’re all wearable.
Last edited: