When I heard about the story of the ‘incident’ in Edmonton North London where a police station was rammed by a vehicle, I must admit that my first suspicion was that this was in some way connected to Islamic extremism. After all, the use of a vehicle to hit a symbol of the British state along with the accompanied arson outside the police station, had all the hallmarks of an Islamic attack. However that is not the case and my initial suspicion that this was Islam related turned out to be wrong, very wrong. It was the work of an ‘Edmonton Rambo’.

According to a report on Breitbart Europe, this incident was not Islam related at all, far from it, but appears to be the result of someone going completely postal over an excessive coronavirus fine imposed by the police. The Breitbart article does not contain any detail to allow us to ascertain exactly why the police allegedly imposed a massive fine on this man and his business, who then according to Breitbart, snapped and attacked a police station. However later articles in other publications name the defendant as Adam Pawlowski, 45 and that the motive for the incident was the failure by the Metropolitan Police to properly investigate a theft that he reported to the police two years ago. It may well be that the motivation for this attack may be a combination of both the impact of a life destroying Covid fine and the result of police laziness and inaction with regarding the matter of the theft. Whatever is the main motivation for this incident, what we have here does seem to be a person who has been pushed over the edge by something.

This is how Breitbart has reported this story on the 12^th November:

The man alleged to have rammed his car into Edmonton police station in London before lighting the road outside on fire “snapped” after being hit with a £10,000 coronavirus fine, according to reports.

The 45-year-old suspect, who can be seen pouring petrol on the road outside the station just a few feet from occupied cars and buses before lighting it on fire in video footage shot by members of the public and shared on social media, was detained by officers at the scene and arrested “on suspicion of arson and a number of other offences”.

It is now being reported by The Sun and others that the suspect had “snapped” after being given the maximum possible fine for breaching state lockdown regulations, imposed across England in response to a so-called “second wave” of Chinese coronavirus infections.

The nature of the suspect’s lockdown breach or breaches is unclear, but fines can be ratcheted up from £1,000, £2,000, £4,000, to a maximum of £10,000 for repeat rule-breakers.

Although as a constitutional conservative and an opponent of political violence wherever it comes from I condemn this act of violence, I can see one speculative scenario in particular that could be possible to explain what may have happened. That is that what we have is a person who has been treated like shit by the police when he went to them with a crime complaint only to be hit by a covid fine by the same force that had previously treated him like shit. It is the sort of thing that can push people over the edge. We will however have to wait until the inevitable Crown Court trial to get the full details of what has happened here. I believe that more will come out about this case when the full trial gets going than has either come out during the initial Magistrates Court hearing or what the police have released.

Dissatisfaction with the police is rising and it is causing Britons to disengage with the police as they realise that the police are not going to help them deal with the crime that plagues their areas. Contacts in one of Britain’s major Metropolises have told me that they have even encountered former Neighbourhood Watch stalwarts who are now openly expressing a hatred for the police because the police have failed to deal with crime in their areas and are ‘no criming’ criminal damage cases without even giving these criminal damage complaints a reasonable hearing. In one case that was reported to me by one of my contacts, a woman previously on good terms with the police, who worked with the police on crime prevention matters and who respected the police, finally lost patience with them when a vandalism crime that they reported to the police was binned after less than 24 hours with the police declaring that there was no further action going to be taken about it. This person now despises the police for their failure to do their proper jobs and keep law abiding people safe. She is not the only one in that position, there are thousands upon thousands of Britons who used to be police supporters, including myself, who now are either ambivalent about the police or who actively dislike them.

When you have people going postal towards the police in a nation like Britain then this is a very bad sign indeed. It is a sign that the relationship between police and citizen has broken down, that citizens feel that cannot get redress from the police for poor performance and that an ‘us and them’ situation has been created with the police on one side and the citizen on the other. I am very pessimistic at the moment, especially after reading the story of the Edmonton Rambo, as what we have here appears to be a person who may have felt that they had nothing to lose by being stupid. People who feel that they have nothing to lose are often the most dangerous of all as they cannot be placated, pacified or diverted away from what they may see as a ‘heroic’ or ‘spectacular’ action by logic.

What bothers me is that daily we are seeing stories of people who because of the government’s mismanagement of the covid situation and their subsequent destruction of the economy have had their lives harmed. It’s my worry that these people may in desperation fall into the category of feeling that they of ‘nothing left to lose’. The current situation is likely to create many more people who feel that they have nothing to lose by lashing out and I suspect that the Edmonton Rambo might not be alone, there may be many more people out there who are at the ends of their tethers and who have lost faith in just about everything. This is not a situation that I wish to see.

This bad situation can be turned around but it will take political will in order to do so and I can’t see that political will coming from our own current political Establishment or police leadership. I truly believe that Britons should instead of resorting to violence, vote for something better than we are getting in terms of politics before the situation gets out of hand. We could, in a worst case scenario, end up in a situation where we have our current levels of police, 126,000, being expected to have to deal with potentially half a million or more angry citizens who feel that they have been shafted and have nothing left to lose. I want to live in a stable, prosperous democracy that is governed honestly and openly and which is policed equitably. I want that in part because it is the morally correct thing, but also because I understand that the alternative, which is an unstable, violent, impoverished and capricious society, is so horrific as to be something to be avoided at all costs.