CRIME FOR THE CAMERA
Once, thugs used to hide from CCTV. But in today’s Wild West Britain, they’re so unafraid of the law that they film themselves in the act – and boast about it online. Can there be a more terrifying indictment of today’s toothless police?
MIDDAY in a busy Hertfordshire town and on a bustling street corner a young girl sits weeping on the pavement, cowering as another girl, bigger and older, pulls her hair, slaps, hits and kicks her. The full, deeply distressing, assault is captured on a smartphone. Not by chance, but on purpose. The teenage accomplice behind the camera laughs as he films it. Hours later, the victim — 12-year-old Riley-Grace Slater — returned to her home in North London. Her mother Lisa Marie Smith was horrified: ‘I thought she had been raped. All her clothes were messed up, she was in a terrible state,’ she said this week. And the ordeal didn’t end there.
‘A friend forwarded the video of the attack to Riley-Grace,’ said Ms Smith, 44. ‘ Within minutes it was being circulated on social media. She was in tears saying, “they are laughing at me, I look ridiculous. I’m on the ground and I didn’t fight back”. Not only had they physically and emotionally hurt her, but then they had attempted to humiliate her on social media.’
It’s hard to comprehend why anyone would behave in such a way.
The viciousness of the attack aside, by publicising her crime in the way she did, the perpetrator hugely increased her chances of being caught by the police.
But, then, maybe she didn’t care. In a world where success is measured by ‘likes’ and ‘views’ on social media, today notoriety for something — anything — is better than nothing. And, maybe, also, she wasn’t worried about what would happen to her if she was identified. If that was the case, she wasn’t far wrong.
Because when police interviewed her about the assault in Borehamwood earlier this month, they decided that she had shown sufficient remorse to be given a caution and a ‘ community resolution order’. The terms of that order simply required her to write a letter of apology to her victim.
Given the severity of the attack, and its subsequent distribution online, some will doubtless find that hard to believe.
But, in many ways, it explains why a new generation of criminals not only commit crime, but then flaunt their ‘scalps’ as trophies on the internet for everyone to see.
Whether it is schoolgirl bullies beating up younger children and posting the footage on Snapchat, thieves amassing thousands of followers on Instagram, or gangs sharing pictures of bloody turf wars on YouTube, social media is now awash with images of crime.
Victims and police appear powerless to stop it — reduced to pleading with the tech giants to remove the footage when it appears.
The fear among experts now is that the urge to record and share crimes on social media is actually fuelling and changing the nature of crime itself. Viewers are desensitised and assaults become more vicious just to look ‘good’ on film. Indeed there are growing calls for sentences to properly reflect the added impact such activity has on its victims.
In the case of Riley-Grace, police in part based their kid- glove treatment of her attacker on the fact that the victim suffered ‘no serious, long-term injuries’. But, as her mother points out, that ignores the fact that what happened to her could re-surface on the internet at any time and is now effectively hanging over her head for ever.
‘Since it happened, I’ve heard from lots of people who have suffered in a similar way,’ Ms Smith, who runs her own commercial cleaning company, told the Mail. ‘It needs to be taken seriously — it needs to be stopped.’
Of course, attention- seeking criminals have always existed — be they terrorists or protesters. But, today, growing numbers of ‘ordinary’ criminals seek to publicise what they have done online.
Raymond Surette, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida, has studied the growing phenomenon of so-called ‘performance crime’.
‘Whereas crime traditionally was comprised of low visibility events in which the actors strove to hide their identities, in the new media world surreptitious crime competes with a growing number of high-visibility crimes,’ he says.
While Professor Surette says it is hard to rule out ‘stupidity’ in some cases, other explanations include increasing their status among their peers, the search for local and even national notoriety, and an underestimation of the risks of getting caught.
He also points to the fact that when celebrities today fall foul of the law, it rarely damages their career — and in some cases actually enhances it. Take the case of Jeremy Meeks. Dubbed the ‘hot felon’ after his mugshot went viral on social media, he went on to launch a modelling career and is now engaged to Chloe Green, daughter of multi-millionaire retail tycoon Philip Green.
Such positive outcomes not only change attitudes to crime, but encourage others to copy.
‘Look at some of the videos that are shared and you will see people treating other humans horribly, enjoying themselves, and not making any effort to hide their identities,’ says Professor Surette.
‘This can only happen if they feel that what they’re doing is going out to an accepting, supportive audience and that there will be no negative consequences but only positive ones.
‘For non- celebrities, especially the young who have no real prospects for fame and success through the regular social channels, if you’re going to be a loser you might as well be a wellknown loser.’
That notoriety can be achieved in this way was highlighted earlier this summer by the activities of a particularly brazen thief on Instagram. In July the masked man amassed more than 16,000 followers in a week filming himself apparently carrying out a burglary and then stealing from a supermarket and a KFC.
In one clip he can be seen breaking into a house using a knife to force open a window, climbing inside and then leaving with a television. His friend filming the footage can be heard saying: ‘Mad ting! He got a TV you know!’ In another clip he runs into an Iceland supermarket and steals a case of drinks. In a third he enters a fast-food outlet where he steals a customer’s food and runs away, with a man in hot pursuit.
Not content with that the individual, who went by the name @no.face.ryo and whose motto is ‘no face, no case’, even invited those following him to suggest where he rob next.
One suggested he target a Subway restaurant and another that he shoplift from Homebase. The account has now been disabled but it’s not known whether he carried out these crimes or has been caught.
Sveinung Sandberg, a professor at the department of criminology at the University of Oslo, has also identified a number of reasons why criminals film their crimes.
‘First, some pictures and films are inspired by the rise of amateur and rape pornography and are recorded to produce such images,’ he said. ‘Second, some recordings are made to further humiliate the victim in what is a new online culture of humiliation.
‘Third, as part of a new snapshot culture, pictures and films are recorded on impulse when something extraordinary is happening. The instinct to document when something extraordinary is happening is not new — but what is new is that today we always have a camera available. And that changes a lot.’
A recent court case highlights just that. In July self- confessed Snapchat addict Fatima Khan, 20, was found guilty of arranging the killing of her boyfriend Khalid Safi.
A key piece of evidence was the video she posted of him online dying in a pool of blood. She had added the caption: ‘This is what happens when you f*** with me.’
During the trial Khan’s own barrister described her as a ‘Snapchat queen’. He told the court: ‘I don’t say that to make light of it. She’s another example of youngsters who seem to live their life through the prism of Snapchat. It’s a product of a mobile telephone driven obsession. It’s not healthy.’
Professor Sandberg also believes that the desire to share imagery online and the ability to post anything and everything is actually causing crimes to be carried out and changing the way that they are committed.
‘The film element can make violence or assaults more serious than they would have been otherwise to “make good films”,’ he says. ‘So it might have started out as a “regular” attack, but then when filming starts it creates a more destructive dynamic.’
In recent months, real concern has been voiced by police in London about the role social media has played in fanning the flames of gang warfare in the capital.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick believes websites and mobile phone applications are partially to blame for the bloodshed.
The fuel for this epidemic of violence, she says, is aggressive communication on social media sites such as Snapchat, Twitter
Criminals flaunt their ‘scalps’ for all to see The thief asked his followers who to rob next
and Instagram — as well as a flood of horrifying YouTube videos showing stabbings, violence and inter-gang mockery.
Concern has also focused on the widespread sharing of homemade gangster rap videos, known as drill videos. Made by the gangs, these serve to threaten rivals, as well as glamorising their crimes.
The commissioner has also told how trivial disputes quickly escalate as impressionable youngsters are goaded to seek violent revenge to keep face or gain street cred.
In 2016 Leoandro Osemeke, a 16year-old rapper known as ‘Showkey’, was stabbed to death at a party in Peckham, South London.
This week, footage of the moment he collapsed on the floor was still available to watch on YouTube. Posted more than a year ago, the distressing footage had been viewed 24,000 times. And while the video is bad enough, the comments section below provides a forum for claim, counter-claim, provocation and further threats. When this newspaper contacted YouTube and asked why such content was allowed on the platform they immediately removed the video, stating that it violated their policy on graphic violence.
A spokesperson said: ‘ We have developed policies specifically to help tackle videos related to knife crime in the UK and are continuing to work constructively with experts on this issue.’
Other platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat all claim they have a zero- tolerance policy towards content that bullies, threatens, harasses or intimidates, and work to remove explicit material.
But the fear is that reacting to this content after it has been posted is not good enough — it should not be available in the first place.
Such sentiments will chime with motorcycle enthusiasts in Bristol targeted by a gang of thieves. Not only does the so-called Bristol Bike Taker gang boast about their thefts on Instagram by posting images of the stolen bikes, they have even used the site to try to extort money from their victims.
In February a 1951 Triumph Thunderbird worth £10,000 was stolen from a garage in Clifton. Bragging about being in possession of the bike on Instagram, the gang threatened to torch it unless the owner paid them £1,000.
A day after issuing the ransom, the bike was filmed being set on fire while a youth in a tracksuit and motorcycle helmet looked on.
To add insult to injury, the gang then tagged the owner, who was alerted to the theft on social media, in the comments section.
In April, Finlay Thompson also fell foul of the gang when his customised vintage Honda was stolen and then flaunted on Instagram.
It was pictured with the caption ‘Anyone want this scrap?’
In response to the thefts police have launched an operation to target the gang. An Avon and Somerset force spokesman said criticism about them not moving to close down the gang’s social media account st was unfair. ‘‘ I Inst agra mt actually provided us with valuable intelligence,’ he said.
Catching criminals who share footage of their crimes in this way will no doubt act as a deterrent. But so too will tougher action by the law. The sharing of sexually explicit footage when done without the subject’s consent and with the intention to cause distress — revenge porn — is now an offence.
But with other crimes police and prosecutors are having to make do with existing legislation.
Police in London recently announced that gang members suspected of inciting violent feuds on social media would from now on be treated like terror suspects.
Currently, officers have to prove that videos and social media posts are directly linked to individual acts of violence to secure a conviction for incitement.
But the Terrorism Act allows suspects to be convicted even if videos or posts are not linked to specific violent acts.
Meanwhile, although sentencing guidelines for offences of assault don’t list the recording of footage as a specific ‘aggravating factor’, it can be deemed by the courts to have increased both the harm caused and the culpability of the offender.
‘Those who take and share footage while committing a crime to humiliate their victims face harsher sentences, including more time behind bars,’ said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice.
Little consolation, one imagines, for victims like Riley- Grace. Because while the 12-year- old’s bruises are already fading, the knowledge that the footage of her attack still exists will remain with her for ever.
A fatal stabbing was viewed 24,000 times