Photo: Instagram / Richy Ahmed
Firework attacks are becoming more frequent in the UK, with gangs of yobs using them either as an intimidation tactic or as a means to scare off the cops.
The video below is one of the latter instances. It popped up on Instagram and then on various motorists groups on Facebook, and it is believed to have been shot in London (although Liverpool also seems like a solid guess as far as location goes).
It shows a police van pulling in, responding to a call in a residential area. What looks like a bonfire is already burning in the middle of the street and the police crew pulls near it in the van. However, the very next second it does so, the fireworks attack goes off, forcing the driver to pull away.
From the grainy video, which seems to have been shot from one of the nearby balconies, at least one of the fireworks hits the van directly. As of the time of writing, there’s no word on whether the van suffered any damages or whether the cops have any idea who might have led the attack. The media attributes it to “yobs.”
Needless to say, while they’re visually impressive, these firework attacks can cause serious injury. If whoever conducted this one thought this would make for a funny joke, they were wrong: it was by mere chance that no one was hurt, because the street was empty. Then, we would have been talking about something more serious than an act of vandalism on a police vehicle.
This isn’t the first incident of the kind. Things have gotten so bad in the UK that campaigners are already asking the government to ban fireworks for public use, with the exception of large, organized displays.
This isn’t a guarantee that yobs will stop using them as “weapons,” but it would, at least in theory, limit their access to them. If fireworks were more difficult to come by, the number of attacks would (probably) go down.
It shows a police van pulling in, responding to a call in a residential area. What looks like a bonfire is already burning in the middle of the street and the police crew pulls near it in the van. However, the very next second it does so, the fireworks attack goes off, forcing the driver to pull away.
From the grainy video, which seems to have been shot from one of the nearby balconies, at least one of the fireworks hits the van directly. As of the time of writing, there’s no word on whether the van suffered any damages or whether the cops have any idea who might have led the attack. The media attributes it to “yobs.”
Needless to say, while they’re visually impressive, these firework attacks can cause serious injury. If whoever conducted this one thought this would make for a funny joke, they were wrong: it was by mere chance that no one was hurt, because the street was empty. Then, we would have been talking about something more serious than an act of vandalism on a police vehicle.
This isn’t the first incident of the kind. Things have gotten so bad in the UK that campaigners are already asking the government to ban fireworks for public use, with the exception of large, organized displays.
This isn’t a guarantee that yobs will stop using them as “weapons,” but it would, at least in theory, limit their access to them. If fireworks were more difficult to come by, the number of attacks would (probably) go down.
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