Why can't Britain be like this?

Shoot to Kill, South African Minister Tells Police

Police figures show nearly 20,000 people are murdered a year, sparking public anger at the inability of authorities to ensure safety.

South African police must shoot to kill and ignore regulations in the battle against one of the worst rates of violent crime in the world, a government minister said.
"You must kill the bastards (criminals) if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations," said Deputy Safety and Security Minister Susan Shabangu.
"I want no warning shots, you have one shot and it must be a kill shot," she told police officers, according to the Star newspaper on Thursday.
South Africa suffers some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, with murders, hijackings and rape an everyday occurrence.
Police figures show nearly 20,000 people are murdered a year, sparking public anger at the inability of authorities to ensure safety.
Shabangu told an anti-crime meeting in the capital Pretoria: "I want to assure the police station commissioners and policemen and women from these areas that they have permission to kill these criminals," she said.
"I will not tolerate any pathetic excuses for you not being able to deal with crime, you have been given guns, now use them ... If criminals dare to threaten the police or the livelihood or lives of innocent men, women and children, then they must be killed."
http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=139177


The township I grew up in was not exactly a lawless jungle, but criminals were feared and, in some instances, held in high esteem for a number of reasons. Because policemen were seen as agents of an illegitimate government, anyone who challenged them and succeeded was put on a pedestal of heroism — a warped sense of heroism, of course, but heroism nevertheless.
Many big-time criminals, wily as they were, tended to act as Robin Hoods of sorts, using their ill- gotten money to do some good in the community: buying soccer kits for local kids, putting some destitute kids through school .

This was seen as their contribution to the community, but if you look at it with hindsight you can see that they were buying members of the community into keeping silent whenever the law came looking for the criminals. (So, that's where Griffin got the idea from)

Many members of the community, in their justification of their complicity with the criminals, said that at least the criminals were stealing from “them” — meaning whites — and not “us”.
Which was a bullshit argument because many of these thugs, before they graduated to big crime — hitting banks and other white-owned businesses — served their apprenticeship on our streets, robbing our parents and killing with impunity, knowing that the veil of silence that had been imposed upon the community would protect them from the law.
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight/Article.aspx?id=746852